Waithood, a portmanteau composed of “wait” and “adulthood”, is a period of stagnation in the lives of the youth, unemployed and newly graduated, in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA), India, etc. It can be described as “a kind of prolonged adolescence”, during which a large proportion of these guys spend its best years waiting.
Waiting for a job, waiting for economic independency, waiting for the decisive transition from adolescence to adulthood.
After the 2008 economic crisis, this term can be easily applied to the young europeans as well, who, after having ended their studies, start to wait, seek and hope.
The national borders do not exist anymore, it is way easier to travel, searching desperately somewhere else what you cannot find in your own country, in order to stop waiting.
It’s been a while since I have reached this life’s period and it is hard to see the end of it.
Trying to find a solution I’ve started to move myself, almost compulsively, between Portugal, Italy and United Kingdom, hoping to be fulfilled in one of these countries.
My generation grew up with the belief that everything it’s possible, but, finally, it finds itself alone and hopeless, with no inclination to compromise.
Escaping elsewhere seems one of the best reliefs, but it leads to more loneliness and indifference from the surrounding world.
The stability’s search ends up in wandering, without any direction.
