If you're in your mid 20s and you're feeling lost, chances are you're familiar already with the term "Quarterlife Crisis". If not, wikipedia it quick so you can find out what it is and stop having one before you completely lose touch with reality.
I read this today. I think some of you need to hear it:
"...If identity is going to come only from doing that right special something, then the something becomes the everything. When identity comes from the doing, the something becomes secondary. Baking bread is as glorious as planting flowers, as doing a cardiac bypass, as teaching a child to read.
The moral of this story is to not get stuck in looking for the right thing to do, the outstanding thing that will make you special. It is the process of doing, of committing yourself to something that makes the difference in your enjoyment of life and your satisfaction with self."
I was neck deep in the QLC for a while, but I feel I am now making great strides. At the breaking point, I felt certain that I needed to seek practical advice in the form of self-help literature and through the guidance of a therapist. I needed lists and instructions on what to do to figure things out in a practical way.
However, what I discovered was that the simplest answer was essentially the philosophical one.
If you're confused about the meaning of your life, create. Create something every single day, even if it's just breakfast, make something. Do something and do it to the end. You'll be surprised what you'll learn from yourself by just following ONE of your hair-brained ideas. It doesn't have to be the "best" one (besides -you've been trying to figure out what that is this whole time so just give up that nonsense), you just have to pick one. Newton's laws of physics apply also to the human psyche and I promise you that once you're in motion you will stay in motion.
I hope y'all don't think I'm some kind of sap for posting this. I just think there's a few souls out there that could use the encouragement.
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I need the encouragement.
ReplyDeleteThere's a pen on my keyboard. The pen's condition is poor. It has special ink that makes it more secure from robbers. The surface of the pen is coated in some kind of stuff that chipped off in places. My keyboard and desk and drawers seem to collect and lose pens. Some days more pens, some days less pens. I have no idea where the pens come from, or where they go. I've spent 7 hours a day at this desk for 5 days per week. I've done this now for, maybe, 2 years. That's just shy of 4000 hours. How many pens is that? A river of pens. I can remember some of them. Some of them I probably never saw. Some of the pens left with tooth marks. Some of them I wrote small poems and doodled with. These pens are like a time lapse video of a highway. The cars keep coming and going, people walk across the bridge, but the highway and buildings mostly stay the same. Yeah, some encouragement is appreciated, not sappy, no.