He bought a motorcycle at 50. It's a mid-life crisis.
She got a face-lift at 47. It's a mid-life crisis.
He left his wife at 52 and started dating a college student. It's a mid-life crisis
She quit her job at 55 and went back to school to train as a professional singer. It's a mid-life crisis.
But...
He graduated from college at 23 with a degree in English and became a waiter at TGIFridays...
She quit college at 25 in the middle of her Master's program and went back to her college retail job...
He taught high school for one year and then at 24 enrolled in college again to start back at square one...
She was engaged to her boyfriend at 20 and changed majors to get married sooner, but when he left her at 23 she realized she hated her new major...
What crisis is this?
It's quite unfair that the world fails to acknowledge the quarter-life crisis, the one that tends to have almost more serious effects on people's lives than even the mid-life crisis. At the quarter-life, we are trying to discover who we are, trying to place ourselves in a state of mind where we expect to be for the rest of our lives, and consider what we are going to be DOING for the next 40 years before retirement. Sure, we are told often enough that this decision doesn't have to be final, but there is no mistaking that this understanding follows us anyway. We spent 4+ years in college pursuing a degree and making plans for a future career with the impression that real life starts when college ends.
Kindergarten prepares us for grade school, grade school prepares us for middle school, middle school prepares us for high school, high school prepares us for college, college prepares us for real life...graduation day passes, and we ask, "Okay, where's life? When does this start?" And they look at us like we're crazy! "Ooh...that...well that was all a joke. You've been in 'real life' all along...this is as good as it gets!"
Oh. Thanks for letting me know, though!
This is the reevaluation period, the "now what?" phase when we discover that nothing is as we imagined, nothing goes the way we hoped it would go, and everything is all pretty dull and normal--why don't they inspire us to see that college is the best it gets? What comes after is pretty ordinary, after all.
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Mundane and monotonous, these are real life.
ReplyDeleteI've had this conversation numerous times with numerous people. When we were modern American youth we were bred to believe that we alone were special and destined for big things. Excitement and adventure would simply be available right at our fingers, as long as we followed the tried and true path laid before us.
It's disheartening, at the absolute minimum, when that fantasy is shattered and you're thrust out from the ivory tower. You quickly realize where the fantasy diverges from reality.
You are not special. Neither am I. We simply are.
I don't find that as depressing as I once did. I take solace in it now. I don't feel the once ever-present pressure to succeed or make something of myself.
I am now content to exist.
Presently, my biggest struggle is fighting off the general malaise which threatens to effortlessly consume me. Like waves of tepid water slowly rising above my head, the spirit of languor is at once inviting and comfortable, yet deceptively destructive.
My weapons against the impending waves of apathy and boredom are my friends and creative outlets. Both help keep my mind sharp and provide random, albeit satisfying, tastes of the unknown; just enough to keep my thirst for risk and adventure sated.
To sum up this miniature treatise on the dissolution of the modern adolescent illusion I am giving in to lethargy and resting upon a cliche: Life really is what you make it.
I wouldn't say anything is really ordinary, it's just we have to work a whole lot harder than expected for the great successes in life. We all want to be handed the dream job, the great house, and the perfect relationship right after college, but we have to work for many of those things, and the working for success is basically life.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention, I'm sure you can think of some pretty amazing moments in your life, they're just not the majority. If life was one big continual moment, we'd never know it was amazing or special or anything out of the ordinary. The spectacular will come and go, but that's what makes it stand out and lets us know we've had an amazing experience.
It'll happen, but you have to TRY for it, take chances, do new things, strive for success and change, because life won't change itself.