Quarter Life Crisis

Quarter Life Crisis

I believe that in every stage of our lives, we are struggling, and that struggle is what defines us. What we strive for, what we aim to be - is who we are.  Life is an everlasting race, where we are in constant pursuit for things we find valuable. The direction of our race is our values and our identity. 

From adolescence, where we start to construct a sense of self-identity, we struggle for this direction. Without direction, we are light. Like a plastic bag (shoutout to Katy Perry), we simply drift in random directions, by the wind of the world - whether it’d be the media, parents, or our culture. With no self steering and power system, we are dependent. Sometimes the wind carries you too far, into harmful territory.

But as every high-teen Netflix show about a high school senior shows, we start to grow our goal, our struggle, our identity. To be honest, I don’t think anybody fully knows what they are doing graduating out of high school, but merely just a general sense. Then we go to university, or out in the world, to refine our direction. Some people take much longer, some people never, but most of us gradually grow a sense of direction and path. Once you are set on a path, you put your head down, and go. You are on your journey, with a turn-by-turn direction.

Like taking an interstate highway on your road trip, you get on it, turn on the cruise control, and go. Your destination is already on your google maps and the road, destination, is laid out for you. I think that was the case for me. I went to university to become a nuclear engineer. I had no idea what that meant, but I did it, because I found nuclear energy valuable to the survival of the species. I took the classes, passed the classes, built my skill set, published papers, wrote my thesis. Throughout my journey, I met a lot of good people who helped me to grow and mature as a person, blah blah all that stuff. I graduated with a Master’s in nuclear engineering and got a permanent job at a steady job after a year or interning. Fireworks and standing ovation. According to my original destination, that I set when I wasn’t even old enough to buy cigarettes, I was here - graduate college, get a good job. Done. The google map app says you’re here. Family and friends congratulate you, and you feel a sense of accomplishment. Then the silence settles in.

After I got my job offer, I had a chance to sit down with a colleague who also got an offer at a similar time. We sat on the couch, congratulating each other, but neither of us seemed ecstatic, truly joyful. It was a sort of melancholy victory.  ``What now?’’ she asked. ``I don’t know, we just keep doing a good job.. Right?’’ I replied, rather clumsily, like a tennis player that is returning an unexpected serve. I honestly had no idea. What IS next, buying a house? Getting married? Having kids? Getting a promotion? Becoming the president? Living in space? I’ve come this far, I have this much, what am I to do with this?

According to many articles, this was the definition of a quarter life crisis (sometimes referred to as / confused with `millennial burnout’). It is defined, in popular psychology, as ``involving anxiety over the direction and quality of one's life’’. This anxiety can be triggered in many different ways. Usually, these are triggered by a realization that one has no achievements, like having a relationship, degree, or a career. In my case, it was a bit trickier. I achieved something I was striving for all my life, and now I was lost.

This might be a terrible metaphor, but the feeling was similar to this - whenever you play an open-world game, like GTA or FarCry, and finish all the main story missions, you feel this brief sense of accomplishment, but are pretty soon consumed by a gloom (and you do dumb shit like killing strangers or jumping vehicles off a cliff or something). Or when you read an excellent book and you finish it, closing the book without a bookmark simultaneously provokes a sense of accomplishment and sadness, like you are no longer connected to the author anymore. 

So we cling on - we look for easter eggs in the game to give us more purpose to play the game, as we look for other books by the author, to continue our connection. I too, clinged on, well, at least psychologically. I miss the late nights in the university office, where I would cuss at the rubber duckling, and asking it why my code is still failing. I miss studying for the qualification exam all day, only taking short breaks to get Panda Express, which I devour while solving differential equations. As messed up as it sounds, I miss them times when I had classes to go, homeworks to do. Change is hard, and odd.

Back to the conversation with the colleague, I honestly had no good answer to `what now?’. The atmosphere seemed heavy so I diverted the conversation to a more positive note. ``Now that we got a raise, what are you gifting yourself?’’ She said she wanted to get one of those KitchenAid Mixers. ``How about you?’’ she asked. Shit, I had no idea. I didn’t even want anything. There’s nothing I want. There’s nothing I struggle for. The flame that kept me going, the perpetual discontentment I had about my life, me wanting more, has now been extinguished. I didn’t want anything. 

I love my job - I go into it every day, excited to make progress on the projects I partake. But I think one of the main struggle points is this - the permanence, and the stability. 

Am I going to do this forever? Will I live in Knoxville forever? Will I be able to find someone I truly enjoy and love in Knoxville, and make a family and shit? What then? Will paying off my mortgage be my drive? Raking leaves and shit on the weekends?

In response to a crisis of identity (quarter or mid life), one seeks for a new meaning, something new to focus on, to pursue, to identify with. This could be in the form of a Corvette (just get a less obviously crisis-like car), a marriage, or going to Europe (or India, depending on how `spiritual’ you are). For some messed up reason, that’s what life is, it seems, that we unsustainably seek meaning from meaning, only to find, at the end of the road, that there’s really nothing that great about it. It’s like that one Avengers movie - the one where everybody dies - you go in all hyped up, only to emerge hours later, disappointed, but afraid to speak about your disappointment because everybody seems to have enjoyed it, and you don’t want to be that outlier. But deep inside, we all were (and are, in life,) confused and weirded out. But that does not mean we are not going to see the next one, knowing that it’s going to have the same thing.

Everything is a blip, nothing is permanent, and happiness and fulfilment is an elusive process. This frustration leads many people into religions, since they give you something permanent to hold on to - an everlasting, omnipotent, omnipresent being, that gives you meaning and loves you and stuff. It even tells you to do things and how to do things, which is convenient, because deciding and thinking for oneself is actually pretty tiring, and confusing. Frankly, I believe that if a person can truly have faith and believe all the things in the scriptures and the leaders, there cannot be a bigger blessing, since you’re set for life. You’re always part of something bigger than yourself, bigger than your job, bigger than anything the impermanent world can offer. I can’t, trust me I tried, but I just couldn’t. Perhaps a more secular version of that would be marriage. It has the similar hint (or illusion?) of permanence, that taking this route will provide us a constant stream of meaning, that this added identity of spousehood, and eventually parenthood, will sustainably feed our desire for meaning.

Speaking of religions, Buddhism, my sort of go-to for philosophical advice, tells us that suffering and pain come from pursuing impermanent things. Combining this idea and my previous idea, we are fucked. Indeed, Buddhism says that life is pain and suffering, and that we should strive to escape from this pain-stricken cycle by mindfulness and stuff, I won’t get into the details. 

I guess what I want to say is that everything is a struggle. We don’t like struggling because ``them millenials like things handed to them’’ , but in reality what is life without struggle? It is what defines us and gets us out of the bed in the morning. Being super meta, finding what our struggle is, itself, a struggle. Considering our state as an identity is mostly going to put us in a bad place. Your direction is your identity. It is very hard to change your status or state in a short amount of time, but it’s relatively much easier to change your direction, your attitude, your goal, thus your identity. When you lose that direction, like me, I honestly can’t tell you what to do. Although I am quite sad about this situation, I now enjoy this struggle, where I do random things, read random books, try random hobbies and experiences, to see what sticks.

I’m trying to be vegan, which was something I both scoffed at and admired at the same time for a while. I’m also reading books about money management and real estate. I also started a record collection, and bought a turntable. I started writing things, in hopes of a meaningful connection to others, but more importantly, myself. 

Life is shit for everybody in their own way, and there’s always almost no one answer to solve all our problems. But I think one thing that holds true is that we are all struggling in our own way. As sadistic as it is, that fact makes us feel better, enough to continue living.