Two weeks ago, I got a new
haircut. Last week I joined a dating site. Today, I told my landlord that I
would not be renewing my lease because I planned to spend the next year backpacking.
Through where? I do not know. All I know is that I feel stuck.
I am 25 and confused and in
the middle of what has been referred to as a "quarter-life crisis." I
feel permanently behind, as if time sped up and forgot to take me with it. I am
overanxious and underwhelmed. Every piece of mail seems to be either a bill or
an invitation to a wedding or baby shower, and I don't even have a plus one.
This is not how my 20s were supposed to turn out.
I recently looked back at the
Crayola timeline of goals that I had scribbled for myself to accomplish by the
age of 21. I have achieved one. I finished college. I am neither a lawyer nor a
screenwriter. I am a graduate student reading about the law and media theories.
I am neither a wife nor a mother. I am single, childless, and have recently
considered freezing my eggs and someone's sperm. I feel hopeless. Damian Barr
describes similar feelings in his book Get It Together: A Guide To Surviving
Your Quarter-Life Crisis
Disney movies, our parents'
expectations, and childhood platitudes ("just think positive, things will
work out, something will turn up, look on the bright side...") don't
prepare most of us for our 20s. No one warns us that "dream jobs" are
a myth or that "the one" doesn't exist and that "happy
endings" are something that you pay for in massage parlors. We do not
learn about unemployment and debt, loneliness and structural inequality -- we
do not experience reality. Instead, we are told to get good grades so that we
can go to a good college and get a good job and find a good husband or wife.
Where is the Dr. Seuss book on what to do when your reality seems to consist
only of a bunch of unmet expectations -- unemployment, a job you tolerate, debt
you can't afford to pay, a relationship status that makes you want to
deactivate your Facebook?
As a member of the
Google/WebMD self-diagnosis generation, I took it upon myself to seek a virtual
diagnosis. After pinpointing signs and symptoms, I detect that I, along with
many other twenty-somethings, am a victim of Obsessive Comparison Disorder and
Undefined Purposeness. Paul Angone, author of 101 Secrets for your Twenties,
defines this new OCD as "our compulsion to constantly compare ourselves
with others, producing unwanted thoughts and feelings that drive us into
depression, consumption, anxiety, and all-around discontent." In other
words, we waste far too much time clicking through select Facebook albums,
telling ourselves that everyone "has it better," instead of
celebrating our own accomplishments and trying to figure out where we are going
next and how we plan to get there. Which takes me to "Undefined
Purposeness." I define this as a lack of knowing one's life purpose, which
results in a state of stuckness, an inability to live a truly meaningful life.
I have yet to figure out my
true purpose in life, and unfortunately, everything that you do -- in your
personal life, professional life, free time -- falls out of a grasp of what
your purpose is. Until you figure that out, you are pretty stuck.
In an attempt to cure my
recent diagnoses, a friend recommended that I read Clayton Christensen's How
Will You Measure Your Life?. The author suggests that a major reason so many of
us end up unfulfilled is that we have a fundamental misunderstanding about what
motivates us. Too many of us focus our attention on factors that determine
dissatisfaction ("hygiene factors"), such as income, status, and work
conditions, rather than those that determine true satisfaction
("motivators"), such as interesting work, personal growth, and
recognition. Good hygiene factors may feel great at the moment, but the problem
is, this is not what makes us happy in the long run. According to Christensen,
"That's not enough. You have to work out what you really love doing, what
gives you a chance to shoulder responsibility and achieve meaningful things,
what makes you want to get up in the morning and feel like your job is an
absolute joy."
I am currently trying to
figure out my motivators. Instead of constantly thinking about how my life is
"supposed to be," I have started to write and reflect more on what
makes me happy. Searched for healing in the wounds. I also remind myself that
life takes time and that to even be able to have a "quarter-life
crisis" means that I am privileged, and more than anything, should be
grateful. Yes, the falseness of "happily ever after" has left me, as
well as many others, delusional and unfulfilled. But let us not forget about
the millions of people who cannot afford to eat, let alone Google cures for
their unhappiness, because of the falsities of popular myths such as "the
American Dream."
As I get ready to backpack
with no (physical) destination, I plan to use what remains of my Millennial OCD
to figure out my purpose. Instead of comparing myself to my recently engaged
friends, I hope to embark on a journey of self-discovery, in which I find a
more productive way to measure my life and the direction necessary for a happy,
satisfying, and purposeful future.
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