Frankly Put: Maybe It’s Quarter-Life Crisis
There is this uncomfortably lukewarm water I have found myself wading through for a while now. Maybe it is a quarter-life crisis.
This feeling that you should be figuring things out now. Figuring out who you are and who you would like to be in the future. Not necessarily who you were expected to be. I mean, the answer may have been there maybe a couple of years back out of ignorance and naivety but… life has come out and said the trial period is over, kindly input card information for payment.
Parents do a great job of calling out things for you especially when they are not letting their opinion be meddled with their personal biases. I remember being in a period of my life when I wanted to study veterinary medicine and had everything down to where I could put those skills to good use. Then life happened and things switched up and at some point if asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’d just say happy.
In that, wherever this thing goes, I just want to be assured of satisfaction and the feeling of joy waking up to do whatever it is life wanted me to do. In there came the idea of purpose which became my quest to find whatever I had a vocation in. This idea that you were “called to do something”. It’s hard to face the facts but there isn’t really a vocation of just “being happy” in this life and to some degree it became clear that “happy” is in some ways a privilege.
It also brought about the question of whether this thing is supposed to find you or you are supposed to find it. They say in the early years after secondary school, you are supposed to try everything and see your match. See how far you can cast your net and hope and pray that you have roped in something you can hold on to and you go with it. Life is short and if you get the smallest window to find something you can identify with, jump through — was the mentality.
What do you do once you’ve tried everything and now you have amassed this repertoire out of all the things you found some enjoyment in and let’s be honest some level of competence? Do you filter through everything and pick the one that stands out to you? Do you carry the one you feel most appeals to you and your values?
I think that was something I wish I was asked, “Does what you are choosing appeal to your values?” It has found its place in my list of points in the advice I often give to those who ask for it. I remember this question I was asked whilst I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to take on as a course of study at University. The question was “What do you see yourself doing in five, maybe ten years?”
Which I think I found myself tweaking here and there to fit in that, whatever you see yourself doing, does it align with who you are as a person and what remains of you once you are gone? The Western perspective is that your purpose must be tied to your job whilst a lot of Eastern perspectives are shaped by the possibility that perhaps you are just to exist in nature. That yours is a line to interweave in the complex nature of life and in doing so leave your mark in the way you responded to life.
Now a number of thinkers in the West are adopting this Eastern perspective and it’s cool that humanity is finding this trading point of thinking in just trying to figure out this life thing. Religion has its own say in what purpose is. Philosophy has its own voice in what purpose is. Society too has a say. I think this becomes clearer when you become an adult, an adultier adult.
I think that at this quarter-life junction, life gives you a jolt to wake you up to your own reality and it’s jarring. It’s accumulated awareness that there is a reality out there, commonly found in the news and seeing things outside one’s neighbourhood and community. Then there is the reality of the community around you that commonly you spend most years trying to find yourself within. Lastly, there is the reality that you are. All your experiences, choices, mistakes and wins come together in a mosaic of glasses you can see life through for real, for real.
We all must face our own realities to figure out where we are or who we are because the idea of getting to the sunset years and feeling like you did nothing worthwhile is daunting. Sometimes, that looks like taking the plunge into the ice-cold water of the unknown. It jolts you to action but try not to wade in it too long because it starts to get warm or you start to get used to it so much so that getting out is less urgent and boom, suddenly you are in your midlife wondering where the hell all the time went.
Maybe that’s where I am and the water around me is beginning to feel warmer and lulling me into a false sense of complacency that is hurting whatever I had dreams to achieve. These new perspectives that keep being brought out, pour into this warm murky feeling of doubt into the water adding to the discomfort that is the lukewarmness of the water.
The question of whether this thing should find me or I should be the one finding it has been doing laps in my mind and honestly its cousin “maybe you already found it or it found you but you were not ready to receive it” is there walking somewhere in the background.
So yeah, it’s a transition period but maybe it’s a quarter-life crisis… to put it Frankly
