The idea of using the twenties as a period of exploration isn’t a new idea.  What is new is the name, which both Beth and I adopted the moment we saw it in the NY Times.  From early college on I tried to suggest to my offspring that the twenties are the years in which one finds where one is going and how one wants to get there. It’s a time to take risks, experiment, explore. One of your comments suggests that your parents didn’t have a chance to do this.  I disagree; it may be that they just didn’t take the chance.  Our generation had lots of options that could be followed.  Many of my peers did try new things – extended world travel, living in a tree house, changing work and geography, working at the Oregon Shakespeare theater, taking a national forest job in Homer, Alaska for the summer season only, working as a ski instructor in Colorado, living as “dirt” farmers, going freelance, working in the Stanford lab and cleaning mouse cages while gigging around.  The list really goes on and on.  If you think about it, your Spangler grandfather who graduated from high school in 1929 right before the market crashed, did much the same thing for the next ten years or so.  In one period of time during these years he worked as an extra at movie studios and then camped in the mountains outside LA while reading a pile of books until the money ran out, then back to the movie sets.  Our opportunities for adventure and stretching our lives vary, but they are there.  You have to be willing to take the risk.  Perhaps more young people do that than in the past -- but that is something I am not convinced is true.