Staying the Course Even When the Water Gets Rough

posted 27th October 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1, What I've Learned

StormyWaters_Biarritz

This post is an extension of an e-mail I sent to a friend who is also very much struggling with figuring out how to create a rhythm and a pace for contentment. I know she’d be more than okay with me sharing it with a wider audience.

Profundity escapes me, I have no answers and I’m too tired to ask any questions beyond “Will things get better?”

We of the Quarter Life Crisis have decided or are on the precipice of choosing a less common path. Many of our friends have picked steadier, more well worn paths and now as we sink into the depths of our depression, as happiness withdraws into an ever dwindling glimmer, we reach out to them to pull us towards the light and we’re left to question the wisdom of our decision.

They reach back to pull us up, but they can’t lift us up because they don’t ‘get’ it.  Why we don’t want a ‘normal’ job, why we can’t seem to settle on a city, on a career, on a path. Some of them want to get it, but most of them I think don’t even really want to.

Who leaps willingly into the abyss?

They love us and they want to help us, and in truth they may be no happier than we are, but theirs is a managed unhappiness. A predictable unhappiness, while we feel buffeted about by the winds of chaos, alone in a storm of our own making.

This is not about an ‘us’ or a ‘them’, because really it’s all ‘we’. It’s about figuring out what fits, living a lifestyle that you love. And the most important part in doing that is recognizing what’s real and what isn’t.

It is true you know; we made this mess. This beautiful, blessed thing that is our life is a creature of our own making. And that is a reassuring thing. If we can make such a mess, we also have it in us to make lives of great beauty.

We just have to start doing it.

We have to accept the tempest and nonetheless turn our tiny boats in the direction of our heart’s desires, correcting as we go but ever certain of our direction as our beacon beats within our chest.

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