I came across the word “Quarter life crisis” few days back. I wondered what it was and then realised that i too am facing this quarter life crisis in my life.. right now. I am about to graduate from my college in a few months.
The quarter life crisis is the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence.
It occurs shortly after a young person enters the “real world”. After entering adult life and coming to terms with its responsibilities, some individuals find themselves experiencing career stagnation or extreme insecurity. The individual often realizes the real world is tougher, more competitive and less forgiving than she/he imagined.
It is when we stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t know and may or may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.
You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren’t so great after all.
You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.
One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.
When you’re younger, you’re more apt to settle. We settle in relationships (It’s better than being alone), we settle for high-stress, low-satisfaction jobs (It could be worse), we settle for all kinds of things that later in life would be simply unacceptable.
When you’re younger, you think once you get your own place with your own paycheck coming in, and no homework to do, you’ll have it made. And that’s not the reality of it. Being a grown up has a lot of responsibility, but I think part of the trick of getting through the “Crisis” is to focus on the freedoms of being an adult rather than the restrictions.while winning the race would be great, right now we’d just like to be a contender!
This period of life can be the best time to passionately and honestly explore what we want to do, and what we want our life to mean.
We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.
