# People Fall in Love with Themselves While Facing Conflict

There's a concept in sociology called the Odyssey Years.

It uses the metaphor of Odysseus drifting at sea for ten years after the Trojan War before finally returning home to describe a prolonged phase of drift, exploration, and confusion lasting roughly a decade—from the end of adolescence in the early twenties until true adulthood and stability are established.

Every person experiences an inner conflict between ages 25-35. You've left youth behind, but haven't fully entered adulthood. You've escaped your original protection, but haven't yet found a new home.

This period is prolonged self-denial. You become aware of your own ordinariness, then gradually accept it through struggle. You more clearly realize that some chasms may genuinely exist that you'll never cross in your lifetime.

You more clearly realize that you may never leave a mark on this world.

At the same time, you still long for miracles. After all, life has only just reached 7:12—everything remains undecided. So each day you leave small crevices amid the rush, spaces to hold those distant daydreams.

Everyone cries in their twenties. This era is an eternal dampness. Anticipation of phased life success and anxious unease combine into a complex anxiety, forming unnamed growing pains.

After several years of this kaleidoscopic confusion, you begin to long for a settled home, for a peaceful life. Those tumultuous years seem to fade into distance, and when remembering the past, a dull ache from regret emerges.

But what the Odyssey Years truly changes about you isn't the day you finally reach shore—it's how you navigate the three relationships embedded in the process: what I want, what I should, what I cannot.