The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind.
-Wayne Dyer
Characteristics of a quarter-life crisis may include:
(per Wikipedia)
- realizing that the pursuits of one's peers are useless
- confronting their own mortality
- watching time slowly take its toll on their parents, only to realize they are next
- insecurity regarding the fact that their actions are meaningless
- insecurity concerning ability to love themselves, let alone another person
- insecurity regarding present accomplishments
- re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
- lack of friendships or romantic relationships, sexual frustration, and involuntary celibacy
- disappointment with one's job
- nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
- tendency to hold stronger opinions
- boredom with social interactions
- loss of closeness to high school and college friends
- financially rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipated high cost of living, etc.)
- loneliness, depression and suicidal tendencies
- desire to have children
- a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you
- frustration with social skills
Being twenty-something is no walk in the park. I am gradually coming to realize this, and thankfully registering at the same time that I am not alone in this thinking. As I was perusing the Kripalu (yoga school) website for my airport shuttle times this Friday I came across a six-day workshop entitled Quarter Life Calling: Creating an Extraordinary Life in Your 20's and got me thinking, maybe I'm not so mentally strange.
Only an hour later I found myself at lunch with my early 30's friend L and the same topic came up. She reassured me that it is in fact a troubling time of uncertainty and angst (her word,) not just my imagination, I am thankful for friends like these.
Knowing I'm not alone makes me rest easy. Already, I' feeling breezy.
Angst: German for "fear." American for 'a deep and essentially philosophical anxiety about the world in general or personal freedom.' (click for cute video, I hate wind as well!)
The man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
-Henry David Thoreau
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