Quarter Life Crisis? Yes, it exists!!!

It was just another typical day, the only difference being it was my 25th birthday. And I was home. There wasn’t anything remarkable to do. So I decided to hunt through my worn out wooden cupboard that once served as my personal ‘chamber of secrets’. One quick glance and I saw myself smiling at the big pile of dusty old diaries. Some of those dated back to 2000, when I was just a happy go lucky 6 year old who didn’t give a damn about flaunting her cute laugh even with half of her teeth missing. Well, I took out a random diary and turned the pages one by one. I was amazed at how beautifully I had penned down all those school time memories. That’s when I stumbled upon my “bucket list” : the list of things to do before I turn 25 which ranged from publishing my autobiography to owning a red Ferrari just like the one in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Woah!! I felt a sudden chill down my spine, a wave of twitchiness shaking my whole body ; one look at my trembling fingers and you could say I was in a blue funk. The realisation has dawned upon me that I have already turned 25 without fulfilling at least one of those childhood dreams that kept me going.

It made me wonder about what exactly had I been doing in the past 25 years of my life. The first 18 in school, trying “hard” to get into college. The next 4 in college studying electronic circuits and control systems only to land on a corporate job that has nothing whatsoever to do with all those funny field theories. A new job, a new city, a new bunch of people around me, it all looked very promising in the beginning and it indeed was, until those tiniest things started to haunt me : a facebook post about a friend landing on his/her dream job, insta stories shouting out a perfect vacation at one of those dreamy landscapes, Monday mornings, my celebrity crushes who are at least 3 years younger to me. It’s true : most of my friends have their dream careers sorted with some of them planning destination weddings to their college sweethearts and some even popping out their first babies. I have hit a brick wall and now I don’t know what the heck am I supposed to do.

Google told me I was experiencing what is called a Quarter Life Crisis. Hmmm. A nice, fancy word for the complete sense of purposelessness I was feeling. It also told me am far from alone to feel like being in that vaccum between those teenage years and late 20s where it seems like I am navigating a no man’s land with no clue as to when I’ll reach the other side. Apparently a LinkedIn study in 2017 claims that 75% of the adults in their mid 20s to early 30s have experienced a quarter life crisis.

I can probably pin the first inklings of my own quarter-life crisis to that itsy-bitsy itch you start to get when you’re not feeling super fulfilled at work: the itch for something more meaningful, the itch to use more of your potential, the itch to keep growing. Being part of clubs like Toastmasters, dancing my stress off twice a week, teaching kids Math, burying my head into a pile of books….nothing seemed to help me from wanting to run away; to start again; or indulge myself in anything that will distract me from my own reality. I appear to have it all. I’m healthy, with a good job, close friends and a loving family – and yet I feel lost. So I decided to open up about it to two of my close friends. That’s when it started getting a bit less blurry. Of course they both were no miracle workers but I understood talking about it to the right set of people who might also be going through the same phase, could help to some extent.

I still haven’t figured out my customized routemap towards overcoming whatever it is I am experiencing right now. With the course of time, I hope I will and I may even own that red Ferrari some day down the lane. Who knows? Just like Forrest Gump’s momma said “Life is a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get”.