Guidebook Points Young Adults Toward a Flourishing Life

In recent years, even the mainstream media occasionally reports on young singles’ fear of meeting others “in real life,” or a university course helping students learn to date or offering happiness instruction for every corner of life. The courses are described as wildly popular—even oversubscribed—by students not only eager to hear about relevant empirical findings, but also interested in gaining practical experience and the chance to escape life patterns that don’t seem to be working for them.  

Without a doubt, there are many more young adults—and their parents—interested in what these courses might offer than there are available courses. But a new book aims to bridge this gap. Written by Villanova University theologian Anna Moreland and Catholic University of America dean Thomas Smith, The Young Adult Playbook walks young adults through the course that Professor Moreland teaches at Villanova entitled, “Shaping an Adult Life.”  

Like the course, the 110-page book addresses three core elements of life very much in play during young adulthood and beyond: work, leisure, and love. Within each area, Moreland and Smith consider the leading problems young adults face, some common responses, the inadequacies of frequently chosen strategies, and ways of reconceiving—and acting upon—new possibilities.  

Regarding work, for example, young adults are encouraged to trade existing pressures for status and income for work that both builds upon natural capacities and serves others in a meaningful way. Regarding leisure, they are encouraged to look beyond prestige internships, social media, and drinking, toward activities that build relationships and promote feelings of well-being and joy. And, using a memorable image regarding love, Moreland and Smith warn young adults not to “start in the wrong room,” i.e., oversharing online or having casual sex, as a way of finding someone they can really talk to at the kitchen table. Instead, they note that casual sex is nowhere near as prevalent as advertised, and they invite readers to follow a detailed guide for undertaking casual dating that might lead to real friendship and intimacy: the “ask” must be in person; the date should be public, about 90 minutes, with phones off; the person who asks pays the bill; and physical contact is limited to a brief hug.

Some of the most valuable materials in the guidebook are the recommended journaling and real-life exercises, and the stories of actual students’ experiences in the before, during, and after phases of their efforts to follow the authors’ advice. Young adults are asked to journal, for example, about people whose work-lives they admire, and maybe even ask to meet with their role-models. They are advised to consider hosting a dinner party or a series of get-togethers with old friends and new, featuring interesting questions provoking substantive conversation. They are invited to recall what leisure activities have made them feel happy and free, including activities they loved as a child. 

Moreland and Smith warn young adults not to 'start in the wrong room,' i.e., oversharing online or having casual sex in the bedroom, as a way of finding someone they can really talk to at the kitchen table.

The stories—sometimes composed of the conflated experiences of several students and graduates—are exceedingly helpful. They feature young adults candidly evaluating their own experiences. There is no moralizing from on high. Rather, the writers are reporting young adults’ emotions and thoughts as they move away from unsatisfying work, love, and leisure to more satisfying or even joyful experiences of each of these, by means of experimenting with the guidance offered in this book. Their stories are all the more appealing because they are realistic. Yes, important and positive changes happen. No, change does not happen overnight, or without trial and error. Persistence, vulnerability, and grit are all required. In a marvelous summary of an insight the authors hope that young adults will achieve throughout their struggles, they urge readers to love life because of what they are putting into it, not primarily for what they are wringing out of it.  

The Young Adult Playbook’s underlying strategies seem likely to appeal to its intended audience—without discouraging them. Moreland and Smith don’t belittle young adults’ desires or their struggles, whine about their current habits and predilections, or catastrophize current trends regarding social media influences or 'hookup culture.' Instead, they fairly characterize the strength of the pervasive influences in their world, while helping them to understand that they are made to desire even more and better in the realms of work, love, and leisure, and that their desires are achievable with effort. In this way, the book offers both hope and reasons for hope. 

Impressively, The Young Adult Playbook also manages to capture the appropriate relationship between love for the other and for the common good, along with a proper self-regard. It insists upon the necessity of consulting one’s own needs for meaning, respect, health, love, and joy, while also acknowledging that human beings are built for relationships. Considered together, this means that doing love and work and leisure right will not only enhance one’s own happiness, freedom, and search for meaning, but will also turn a person toward loving others and contributing to the common good. 

Here and there throughout the book, Moreland and Smith reference social sciences, as well as wisdom from philosophy and the Bible, and even the classic film, Babette’s Feast, which highlights generous gift-giving as a source of life for both giver and receiver. Their interdisciplinary work is both expertly sourced and expressed without confusing jargon. 

Finally, a signal contribution of The Young Adult Playbook is its simple invitation for young adults to stop and think: Stop the racetrack that characterizes the life of so many of us today. And think about our deepest desires for meaning, love, joy, respect, and community. The authors’ tone—respectful of the young men and women they have accompanied—and their practical advice make this a beautiful gift for any occasion for the young adult in your life.  

Helen Alvaré is Professor of Law and the Robert A Levy Chair in Liberty and Law at the Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, where she teaches and writes about Family Law and the First Amendment.