Gilmore Girls (Spoilers Free!)

Anyone else watch the Gilmore Girls revival? I wasn't as big a fan as many of my friends, but I've seen most seasons and I do like it. I'm 85% of the way done watching the new episodes.

And.... it's interesting. The original is a classic coming of age, watching a girl go from 16 to 24. I sort of grew up with her.

The revival (without giving too much away) is about her quarter life crisis. She's 32, she's not married, she doesn't have a stable job, she gives up her apartment and just couch surfs from friend to friend. She's nowhere near where she (and we!) thought she would be at the end of the original series, and she doesn't know what to do.

There's a whole subplot involving the "Thirty Something Gang," a group of young adults in Stars Hollow who have "been to college, then out in the real world, and it spit ‘em out like a stale piece of gum, and now they’re all back in their old rooms." Oooooof.... That one hit a little too close to home.

I mean.... I wouldn't say that the world chewed me up and spit me out. But I did end up moving back home in my late twenties... and that was never in the plan. Actually, my life hasn't turned out anything like I thought it would. It's still good, but... very few of my childhood dreams ended up happening.

Every YA novel and movie ends when the person is at the brink of adulthood, when hope is bright and anything is still possible. But if you skip ahead a few years (like Gilmore Girls does) for those characters, you'll find that dreams don't come true for anyone.

Life is crazy and unexpected. No one has all of their childhood dreams come true. Okay, maybe there's a very rare person who has everything happen that they wished, but my guess is even they would tell you life hadn't turned out quite the way they expected.

That doesn't make life bad. I still have a good life, even though it's nothing I hoped for or expected. I think an important part of life is accepting that most of it is out of your control. You can choose how you react, and you definitely make decisions that shape your life path... but a big part of it is learning to enjoy the ride even when it doesn't take you where you thought.