The Quarterlife Crisis is Real

posted 3rd December 2010    Written by: Alisha    CATEGORY: Alisha, All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, What I've Learned

Mention the phrase “quarterlife crisis” to someone over the age of 45 and they’re likely to laugh and roll their eyes.  Then, if you’re lucky, they will tell you that your generation is selfish, spoiled, dependent, lazy, and self-indulgent.  “When I was your age, I worked two jobs, was married, owned a house and fed 3 children!” they might say.  We kids have made up this quarterlife crisis thing because we just don’t want to work hard.

That’s rather insulting and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor of psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts, agrees.  Arnett’s main focus of research is in the area of development, specifically “emerging adulthood.”  He has conducted various studies of individuals in their late teens and twenties in order to demystify this challenging period of life.  According to Arnett, emerging adulthood is characterized by these key features:

it is the age of identity explorations;

the age of instability;

the self-focused age;

the age of feeling in–between;

and the age of possibilities.[1]

Tell me that doesn’t sound like you—or any of your friends.

Your parents and their parents may not have had it very easy, but our generation faces some unique circumstances.  We grew up during the Clinton Era, one of the most affluent in US history, which gave us high expectations for our experience in the “real world.”  Yet the reality is that right when we were about to head off into the land of golden opportunity, our dreams were dashed by downsizing companies, outsourcing, bursting real estate bubbles, thieving CEOs who drained bank accounts, and the exponentially increasing costs of higher education.  Pension plans and employer 401k contributions are rare, and we probably won’t see any social security.  People are marrying and having children at a much older age, thus lengthening the time between graduation and “adulthood” and that feeling of being “settled.”  And, ok, so maybe more and more of us live at home with our parents and our salaries barely cover the bills—but don’t despair.  There is some light in this tunnel.

Our generation has also experienced one of the largest technological booms.  My first cell phone was a tiny Nokia with like, a 16-bit screen and all you could really do was make phone calls and text.  Oh, and there was DOS.  Remember audio-cassettes?  If you didn’t know how to read maps or hadn’t memorized “Never Eat Soggy Wheat,” then you were S.O.L.  Now you can send emails, listen to music, find the nearest coffee shop and then tell 100 million people what you ate at said coffee shop all from a little piece of plastic that’s the size of your palm.  I mean, wow!  We’re no Jetsons, but we’re pretty damn close.

As technology expands, so do our horizons.  Through the internet and cable television we can see how the other billions of people on this earth live.  We no longer connect with just our friends and family, but with the whole world.  Access to information is instantaneous (at least for much of the developed world and non-communists countries).   We can run a business from our home.  We can run a business out of a hotel room or on a boat or on a space ship if we’d like.  It’s no wonder we are confused, overwhelmed, depressed and won’t settle down!  One of the worst things about having options is that if there are too many, you become paralyzed.  However, we. have. options.

So you want to know what I really think?  I really think that deep down, the people who scoff at us are really just jealous. They are jealous because they let their vibrant years slip past them in a haze of “yes sir”s .  Instead of blazing their own trails, they blindly followed others through the forest.  They didn’t question authority and challenge convention.  And now, they feel trapped by the lives they allowed others to create for them.  That must suck.  Hopefully that will not be us.

This period in our lives—the quarterlife crisis, emerging adulthood, whatever you want to call it—is not self-indulgent.  It isn’t laziness.  It isn’t selfishness.  We are being responsible.  We owe it not only to ourselves, but to the world to become leaders and freethinkers.  Yes, by taking this time to connect with ourselves, and remember our core values (if you don’t know them yet, The Joy Equation can help you with that!), we can become of service to the world.  This journey is about gaining self-awareness.  The discovery of our gifts will allow us to shine.

Even though this quarterlife crisis thing is a pain in the butt, it’s just another step we have to take to become the adults we want and need to be.

[1] http://www.jeffreyarnett.com/windingroad.htm

(photo credit: emerging photographer and my brother Clarence G. Richardson III)
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Comments (9)

9 Responses to “The Quarterlife Crisis is Real”

  • Marianne_A Says:
    December 3rd, 2010 at 2:17 pm

    Well said! I don't want to end up in a haze of "yes sirs" like you mentioned. But it's funny because the first 18 years of life kinda felt like that for me. I went to school and got good grades because it was expected, I went to college because it was the right thing to do. But I've stumbled around since then because I got tired of doing what was expected. I don't want the rest of my life to be like that. That's where my crisis comes in.
    I believe it's something that can be overcome. I believe there are things I can do to be happy without becoming a victim of the conventional world. I just think that too often kids have expectations drummed into them and I think that ought to change.

  • nikki_klecha Says:
    December 3rd, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Lovely – especially the last big paragraph. You summed it up just right – we owe it to ourselves AND the world to figure out where our own personal talents & skills & interests can be best used and by us being happy, we'll be much more likely to benefit society.

  • Gina-Bo-Beena Says:
    December 4th, 2010 at 9:11 am

    You stated it so perfectly. And, it's SO TRUE!!!! We do owe it to ourselves and the world! :-)

  • Alisha Says:
    December 4th, 2010 at 3:48 pm

    Yes…those days of education where we did all that we were supposed to do. I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that we were unaware of the fact that we were doing things, just for the sake of doing them. The education was good, but we weren't given the tools to really become independent free-thinking adults. And I hope that I can change tha twith my children.

    I am certain that you will find your way through the crisis :) You have a lot of life left to live!

  • Alisha Says:
    December 4th, 2010 at 3:58 pm

    Thank you Nikki. I do hope that the next few generations start to take to the time to ask the big questions a littler earlier in life…maybe our world will be a little different.

  • Alisha Says:
    December 4th, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    Thank! I can only hope that more people begin to realize this sooner rather than later!

  • Lindsey Says:
    December 7th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    " it’s just another step we have to take to become the adults we want and need to be" – YES! It's like even though we are technically adults now, it's the first time in our lives that we have the chance to evaluate adulthood and determine what that should look like. Also, I completely agree that we owe it to ourselves and the world to be leaders and freethinkers – and that only comes with the deep introspection & self-exploration of the QLC.

  • Alisha Says:
    December 12th, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    Yes, we are techinically adults, and yet, no one wants to respect our decisions to make the choices we need in order to grow into responsible and enlightened individuals. Perhaps as long as we keep creating communities such as Stratejoy and encouraging others to follow in our footsteps, the future QLC'ers won't experience so much resistance.

  • Lea Says:
    December 13th, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    Exactly! We're really only taken partially seriously even though we're expected to be adults. I read somewhere recently that one of the problems older generations don't see is that we have unlimited choices. Since we were young, we've been told we could be anything we wanted and go wherever we want in life, but we're not really taught how to narrow that down! Those people who "worked two jobs, was married, owned a house and fed 3 children!" didn't have that.

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