Quarter Life Crisis...Anyone?
The current issue of India Today has an interesting article on Quarter Life Crisis.
While Mid Life Crisis is a relatively better known phenomenon (even I had heard about it!), the term quarter life crisis was coined as late as 1998. It is a state of mind that affects twenty somethings. You are a couple of years out of college, have a job but probably not good enough, there seems to be hardly the kind of professional growth that you had imagined, relationships are not so great and, to top it all, all your buddies seem to doing so great! In a word, life is going nowhere and you are stuck. Sounds typical, doesn't it? Bingo! You are going through a quarter life crisis.
I see these in myself and I see it in my friends. We are restless and unsatisfied. Some are disillusioned with research, some are sick of coding for banks and want to go for research. One guy is in IIM and says " MBA is the biggest hype I have known"; the other is dying to get in. There is no money in manufacturing sector, but yaar IT mein to slog hi slog hai! Retail banking sucks, but there is no life in investment banking.
If this was not enough, you are growing old. You are 27 and parents are pushing for marriage. You may be 24 and worried that if you cannot hook up with somone decent then it is going to be an arranged marriage, and you hate it! Worse, your girlfriend of 4 years ditched you and married this guy from McKinsey who came from no where.
All of what I wrote in the last two paragraphs is true about someone or the other I know. If none of the above applied to you, God Bless You! But you know what I am talking about, dont you?
This is where the India Today story comes in. It talks about these 24 years old B-school grads who set out of their campus and want to start handling mergers and acquisitions. It this is not the classical case of unrealistic expectations then I do not know what is.
Quarter life crisis is essentially a mind thing. It has more to do with the unrealistic goals we set for ourselves than with anything else. It also has to do with that very stupid, but very real, thing called peer pressure. As the article puts it succinctly
"Unlike mid-life crisis, quarter-life crisis is essentially an attitudinal problem. Impatience and a lack of reality check are the key symptoms which result in a sense of disillusionment and at times streaks of over-confidence and arrogance. Failure to meet their great expectations even pushes some into depression and, as a result, causes psychosomatic disorders. However, the majority just grapple with confusion and disillusionment that results in frequent change of jobs and lack of dedication to their work."
This is not to say that it is okay to just be laid back and take whatever comes our way. It is important to aspire. It is important to dream and to work towards fulfilling that dream. It is also important to change tracks when the time is right and to be flexible. Because if there is no aspiration, there is no progress in life. Some of the most amazing things happened in this world because a set of young people believed in themselves and took huge risks. Some came out cropper, other became rich and famous.
But there has to be balance. Feet need to be firmly planted on the ground and there has to be constant reality checks. Because, in these interesting times, it is easy to get crazy!
posted by ankan @ 4:44 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
I don't think its an attitudinal problem. The reason we are the first generation in India to face the quater-life crisis is we have grown up in a different India with very different aspirations and objectives. We go through it because increasingly we feel confused with what we are doing and what we want to. Once we reach where we wanted to, we suddenly that this is not where we wanted to... I also feel it becuase for the first time, I feel I am getting old. In a few months, I will turn 25 and will be in the wrong side of the demographic divide (statistic show that the median age of the country is 25).
I guess the quater-life crisis is a reality and we have to live with it. Even if we try, we can't escape it.
well written article ..liked it..
I would say that this so called phenomenon is more visible today than ever, however, that shouldn't rule out the existence of it in the past. I remember the predicaments of my father and uncles to make decisions because of the conflicting emotions between them and the Family. Where earlier, the conflict was so great that many an aspirations were nipped in the bud (you had to withstand not only your parents but also theirs and many more, remember joint families).
For us, at least for me, till the time we were a part of the joint family, we were kids and its great to be a kid in a joint family. By the time we were to pack our bags to take the world on, we had gone nuclear.
Then, the disparity in the geographical divide of educational institutes in our country forces us to go singular and we start learning to live alone in a crowd. I remember writing this in response to one of Ranjan's pieces that all of us who have lived in a hostel have to undergo a great difficulty to find that ground beneath our feet once those confines are removed.
So where like an ancient warrior you go to battle the others like you and thank your stars to be spared to fight the next day, there is no real tent to come back to.
Where I have already crossed 25 and look way more than that and sustain the dreams of people a decade and a half older, I think I am fortunate to have lived with those strings that pull u to this crisis. Yes, where the probability of undergoing this crisis runs very high and I am no exception in being a victim, the roots of these strings made us what we are and like every bad drive, am sure, we will get over it to face the next one.
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