Generation What? | Bess Vanrenen | Talks at Google

Bess van Renan works for assistant editor at Roman Littlefield Publishers. She received her Master of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004. She has lived in New Jersey, Egypt, Nevada, Florida, New York, and France. She has had a brief stint waiting tables at TGI Fridays in Paris, where she saw a small cockroach climbing across a tray of apple fritters. Her French co workers seemed unpreturbed. She also worked a paper route for one night, smiled at a greet and greeted IHOP customers, where she received the laurels of Employee of the Month, chauffeured packages around her college campus and later sub sandwiches around her college town, though she was convinced the selling of sandwiches merely disguised the selling of more interesting, albeit legal, substances and provided elderly folks with debatable, humorous holiday cards. To anyone seeking a quarter life crisis, she recommends graduate school welcome Best.

Hi. Thanks for coming to talk about the Quarter life crisis and Generation Y so as he said, I work now at a book publishing company in Boulder. We do academic books. So no they didn't publish an extreme lot, but I did sort of learn how to do a book proposal by working that job. So the other day I was reading a manuscript on the representation of women and minorities in the media and I got to a paragraph where the author was saying it seems like every generation talks about how the younger generation is pretty much the worst ever. But then he proceeded to argue but this generation was is the worst ever. I think someone who says something like that, you know, A doesn't know any young people and B has sort of lost the hope in humankind that the Lord of the Rings reminds us that we have to hang on to. And you know, I guess my point is just that it does seem like every generation of young people has, you know, their own crises or their own difficulties. All you have to do is look back at the Romantic era. Those poets were pretty much exactly like Saving Cure, except for instead of wearing white face paintings with song lyrics, they were wearing wigs and writing romantic poetry. Or you can look at modernist poets like Ezra Pound posturing around London in a cape and talking about the despair of again, humankind. So what makes this generation different? Why are we the ones having the quarter life crisis? On the one hand, I would say it is sort of universal, as universal as anything can be, that people in their 20s or late teens, whenever you enter adulthood, are going to have some kind of psychological difficulty entering that stage. On the other hand, I would say every generation does have some socio cultural factors that will make its experience a little different than the one that came before. So what is the quarter life crisis, and how is it different from people have had in their 20s in the past? On the one hand, everyone knows what a midlife crisis is. You know, you're in the middle of your life and you're suddenly thinking, oh, my gosh, I'm almost dead and I haven't done any of the things that I was going to do when I was younger. So what you do is you pretty much shuck off all adult responsibilities and kind of act like a kid again. A quarter life crisis is similar, but different. And there's kind of two ends of the spectrum which kind of seem like they don't fit together, but they actually do. And I'm going to kind of give two examples of two people who live a Boulder, and I give them different names, but that kind of represent the two ends of the spectrum. And they're actually friends from childhood. Both grew up in California, Both my age, 27. And on the one hand, there's Karen, we'll call her, who went to college, got an English degree, maybe took an extra semester, so maybe about four and a half years, had a professor say, oh, you should go to graduate school. And she didn't know what she wanted to do with a graduate degree in English, a master's degree in English. But she said, okay, you know, because it's a. That's something to do, and I don't have to, you know, go into the real world just yet, which is kind of why I went to graduate school, too. So I don't blame her. But. So she's in graduation, two years, takes an incomplete in one of her classes, you know, never actually finishes it in complete. So technically, she's never finished her master's program. About that time, she decides, you know, there's actually, you know, a young man wooing her that she's not committing herself to, and she ends up leaving Boulder, moving to Boston in the dead of winter to meet a friend, leaving behind boy and master's program. She's in Boston for about three months before she realizes, and in the middle of winter, everyone's going to realize this, I don't want to be in Boston. Comes back to Boulder, and then at this point, she's suddenly, what am I doing with my life? And kind of freaks out. And so she commits to said boy and finds the first job that she can get. And she's still in the exact same position today with the same job and the same boyfriend. And I think those Decisions are great for her. But my point is that that kind of instability for so long can finally lead to you feeling completely overwhelmed and latching onto, I mean, any secure thing that you can feel Find. That's probably more closer to my experience of the quarter life crisis. Just as a side note, you know, I hate the term quarter life crisis, and I'm sure you all do too. It's kind of an annoying term, but that's what we're calling it, for lack of a better term. But so, on the other hand, there's her friend, and we'll call her Brianna. Brianna grew up in California as well. Went to college, did finish in four years, did well. She got her job directly afterwards. And it was something, and I don't remember what, but like accounting or bank teller or something. Not a bad career path, but something she never envisioned herself doing. Worked at that job the whole time that Kara was Karen. Worked that job the whole time that Karen, you know, in graduate school doing her thing. About the time that Karen was deciding she wanted to leave Boston, come back to Boulder, Brianna was saying, what am I doing? I don't want to be a bank teller. That's what it was. I haven't done anything. I went from high school to college, college to job, and here I am in this job, and if I continue like this, I'm going to be doing this job the rest of my life, and then I'm just going to have a midlife crazy. So she quit her job, came to Boulder, because that's where Karen was now. And she didn't have anything going on in her life. She didn't have a relationship, she didn't have a job. She didn't know what she wanted to do. She's basically at that point in high school or college where you're taking those tests that tell you what your strengths and weaknesses are because you have no idea what you want to do with your life. So even though those two things seem totally different, the thing that kind of connects them is that what you're doing is you're battling with the expectations that you have for what your life in your 20s is going to look like. And where those expectations from. A lot of that is unique to our generation, our era. First of all, we all grew up learning that American dream. Anyone can grow up to be president. You're uniquely fitted to some currency path, and you have to find your passion and follow that through. So that's a lot of pressure. Because when you're in your 20s and you're not finding yourself Doing that thing that's supposedly your passion or your one true path in life, you know, then what do you do? So I guess the other thing about the quarter life crisis is that there's not really. What we're talking about is the crisis part of it. And what sociologists will say is there is this thing going on that is unique to this generation for all these different reasons, some of them just to backtrack. Also there's more wealth in general in America and other developed countries, more of an expectation that everyone's going to go to college. More rights, more freedom that we have a lot of that is civil rights movements or the women's rights movements, et cetera. So now we do have all these options. And what it is, is it's basically you feel overwhelmed because you have so many choices. So where our grandparents generation might have gone from high school or possibly college directly to a clearly defined path, what our generation is finding is that there isn't that clearly defined. Proud and so then what do we do? So you know, actually I want to talk about another experience that I had recently. About a month ago, I was talking to a woman who, she's about my parents age and telling her about the book and she said, oh, what's a poor life crisis? And I was telling her and I basically said what I just said to you, that it's, it's sort of like a paralysis of the idea of having too many choices. And of course the first thing that you're going to say is oh, that's so sad, you have too many choices. You know, what she said was well, that's better than not having enough choices. And that is obvious. That's an obvious point to be made. But what the thing is that I don't like to hear is people belittling it like this doesn't count because you're not suffering enough for this to be a problem. And there's a lot of reasons why I would say that that's not a worthwhile point to be made. For one thing, like I was saying with the sociologists studying this prolonged adolescence, it can be what we're calling a quarter life crisis, which is like a crisis that, oh my gosh, we, you know, I'm freaking out, blah, blah, blah, you know, I'm working in a service industry job for five years or all these other different things. But on the other hand, it can be a really positive thing because we do. And I'm not just talking about middle class and up in America, although it's more distinctly the Case we all do, living in America, have now in this era have more of a more options and more of a cushion to fall back on. So we have more time to figure out what it is, you know, even if we're not going to call it our true passion or whatever, but whatever it is in work and you know, relationships or whatever that pleases us. And so, you know, I'm not saying that this time period is all bad for a lot of people. It's a really great thing. Another reason why I don't like, like to hear, you know, oh, it's just, you know, it's a crisis, you know, only spoiled kids will have or whatever is because. Totally lost my train of thought. Sorry. I'm totally drawing a blank. I'm sorry.

So the problem is that potentially only spoiled kids are kids who are privileged enough to be given too many choices of a. Ones who might actually follow this trap.

Yeah. So like I was saying, on the one hand it's a, thank you, a positive thing. On the other hand, no one chose to be born into the life that they were born into. Anyone who's having a psychological crisis is going to set crisis is going to really be feeling the effects of that crisis. And if anyone has been depressed or someone who's clinically depressed, a lot of times you'll hear a oh, snap out of it. If you could do that, then you would because no one likes to feel like crap, you know. So whether or not you want to compare it on a wide range of spectrums, the worst problem you could possibly have is kind of beside the point. If you're having depression and anxiety as a result of it, then that in itself is enough of an issue to take seriously. So I guess that's just a little bit of background on what the quarter life crisis is, how it's different than other crises, other generations crises, and different aspects to it. Whether it's going to be, you know, like Karen not wanting to commit to anything for a really long time until that prolonged instability kind of leads to a really distinct sense of anxiety or following that path that was laid out for you and doing everything that's supposedly right and then looking around and saying, you know, this isn't necessarily what, you know, comparing it to what my friends are doing or what I'm seeing people on TV shows or movies doing or what have you, this isn't the life I want to lead and then suddenly throwing all that away. So that's a little bit of background, I guess about it. I was gonna read a little Bit. But I think what I could maybe do is read a little bit from my essay and then go ahead and just talk about, you know, I guess if you guys have had experiences with the Corona crisis or something like that, or if you know anyone who has, or if you do think it's, you know, like a lot of people do, you know, oh, not a big deal. Not a worthwhile crisis. And that's fine too because I actually included an essay from somebody who does have that kind of a point of view. Excuse me. So kind of open it up to just talking about people's own experiences with a quarter life crisis. And also because this isn't a self help book, I thought it might be interesting to talk about if anyone did have a crisis of that sort. And you don't have to call it a cross, but some setbacks or whatever it was. What kinds of things? Because I'm not the expert. I didn't study that end of it. What kinds of things people can do to kind of work out of that. So let's go ahead and read. Take my glasses off because they're not reading.

This is your essay.

That's a nice book. Yeah, I wrote the introduction and then one of the essays and then there's 16. Just to talk a little bit, I guess. I didn't do that, talk a little bit about the book. So I wrote the introduction in one essay and then I solicited other essays for the book. A few of them are from the Denver Boulder area. Jarrett King Mayer is a staff writer at the Westward. Vince d' Artangelo is the previous managing director for Weekly and now he's doing internal entertainment music pieces and reviews for the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News. Rebecca Landwer used to be the managing editor at 5280 and now she's actually. She started Family and then otherwise there's some contributors from New York, San Francisco, Iowa City, Austin, Texas, just various other places where I either had contacts who were writers or somebody I knew did. So. Yeah.

Did you write your essay from other people or did you write them in response to the essays that you got?

I came up with the idea and wrote a book proposal before I wrote the essay. And then I had to. Actually, it's kind of funny because talking about how I don't like the term quarter life crisis, I remember hearing it for the first time, probably about the time I was having quarter life crisis and thinking it was stupid. And I heard it in a John Mayer song. And I immediately knew what it meant. You know, I'D never heard the term before, but I was like, obviously, I know what that means. It is heavy, intuitive. So when I wrote this, when I came up with the proposal and the idea and everything, I thought, well, did I record all these crisis? And then I remember this time period, and I definitely didn't think of it that way at the time, but I remember talking to one of my friends on the phone and being like, her being like, I'm so depressed lately. Da, da, da, this and that. And I was like, I've been really depressed at me, too. And then thinking, like, all my friends were stuck talking about how depressed they were. Is there something in the water? What was going on? And then, you know, I do see, like, some major shifts that I kind of outline in the essay that were happening, but only in retrospect. So I don't think if you're going through it, you can really necessarily think, you know, I'm experiencing this transitional time where I'm, you know, moving from childhood to adulthood, truly entering the realm of, you know, that you just feel it kind of either anxious or depressed. You don't know why. So I wrote an essay about when my dad had an affair. And he had been sort of the caretaker of the family. And so. And I was living at home because I was in graduate school, and it was right here in Boulder. My family's from Boulder. And I thought, why get myself further into debt when I can not? Because I'm not making any money in graduate school, whatever, living home, blah, blah, blah. And so then my, you know, me and my brother. My brother was there, too, which I kind of talked about in the essay. And we start to notice what's going on. And then that was just really shocking because, you know, he had been the one that was so responsible and such a caretaker. So how could it be that this person was now trained? This is what it felt like. And then when, you know, when things really kind of became obvious, it was just like, I don't care if I'm in debt from undergraduate. I don't care if I'm gonna have to take out a loan. Like, I just have to get out of this house. And so that's what I did. And what it was was a blessing in disguise because, yes, you can say, you know, I can live with my parents and they can live, you know, that way I don't have to pay rent and I can get my foot in the door and, you know, blah, blah, blah. But what ended up happening for me was that I still wasn't Assuming responsibilities that I should have already been assuming. And that was a lot of things. Financial, emotional, what have you. And so only when I. And also because of the nature of the. What was happening, I kind of cut myself off from my dad. And again, what that allowed me to do was really become independent from them, from him. And so, like I said, it was for me, ended up being a blessing in disguise. And then right now, when I look back on it, it's kind of like, you know, I'm trying. I guess I've already gotten to the point, but I guess when I wrote this essay, I was trying to see it from his point of view. Because you want your parents to be perfect, and then they aren't, and then you are really mad about it. And then you realize, well, I'm not perfect either. And maybe, you know, he was feeling similar feelings to what I was feeling. And like I said, the idea of the crisis just, you know, kind of looking at your life and seeing, is this what I wanted my life to be? And how we maybe were both feeling that same thing. So let's see, I'll just start in the middle of the essay and then read maybe about five to 10 minutes. And then I guess after that we can just kind of have a conversation. If people have questions or thoughts, naturally. After I discovered the reason for my father's strange behavior, I wanted to talk about it with my therapist. I felt so angry and disgusted at first. And even though she didn't talk me out of those feelings, she encouraged me to see my dad, both my parents, as human. What happened? I asked one bleak February afternoon. He's a good person. He always did as much as he could for us. Why did he stop caring about us? Of course he still cares about you, she said. Maybe we were slowly draining him with all of our intense needs, financial, emotional, whatever else. Then I reconsidered. But why couldn't he have just said no for years and years? He never said no. Come to think of it, he still really hasn't. He just started saying one thing and doing another. Do you think, she began. You and your father are possibly experiencing something similar right now in terms of your fears. You don't have to forgive him. I won't. I broke in. And you don't have to make excuses for him, because after all, what he did was wrong. But I able to see any of this from his point of view. Father woke up very early on Christmas to a near empty home in the twin bed next to him. His wife was still asleep. He quietly got out of bed and went downstairs. Yesterday his daughter had brought inside the small potted evergreen tree they had brought the Christmas before, but no one had bothered to decorate it after he spent a good part of the previous afternoon wrapping presents. He displayed the shiny gifts beneath the small bare tree. Father, now past 50 with a receding hairline and bags under his eyes to prove it, sat down on the white trimmed blue couch and looked out at the still dark street. He could see the high school where his son and daughter had attended, the baseball field where his son had played the track his daughter had run, on the same street they drove on day after day, so familiar now, the same street on which they'd found the crumpled body of their missing family cat. The the sky began to turn pink from the rising sun, which was hidden from view behind the walls of the house. The townhouse had become somewhat reminiscent of the home he'd imagined for himself as an architecture student. He, of course, didn't design it himself. Indeed, he now specialized in designing prisons. But it was located at the base of the foothills, had a courtyard in front filled with trees and flowers, and a red tiled entryway that he'd put in place himself when he was younger. He had imagined himself living in Europe. Now that seemed impossible. He had recently bought the new Peter Mayo book at the local bookstore. He got up off the couch and walked over to the dining room table where he'd left the book the night before. Then he sat back down on the couch and started reading. Soon he heard his wife's footsteps on the carpeted stairs. Hi, Dennis. Hello. It's Christmas. He coughed. Should we get Bess up? She she asked. She'll come upstairs when she gets up. I don't like Den being gone, his wife said. She walked into the kitchen and started to make coffee. His son had a master's degree in aerospace engineering, but recently had decided he didn't want to be an engineer. At 26, he still didn't know what he wanted to be. An English professor? A doctor? A political activist. Me neither, he said. He only had a few weeks off from school, I mean. Anyway, she continued, I don't see why he had to give himself all these extra things to do. No. Well, at least he can spend Christmas with Uncle Louie. I'd rather he was spending Christmas with us. I'm sure he'd be happier here than there. After a moment he started reading again. With her cup of coffee. His wife sat down on the oversized chair that matched the couch. The view from that seat was straight out. She looked a bit like a queen there, drinking her coffee and hearty gulp. She watched the cars pass, though there weren't many that morning. Maybe it was the smell of coffee or the sound of voices or footsteps that brought his daughter up the stairs and into the deflated Christmas celebration. Merry Christmas, honey, his wife said. Merry Christmas, his daughter's tired voice responded. No one seemed all that excited when they took a seat around the little evergreen tree to open presents. And that year after presents, there were no blueberry pancakes on Christmas Day. After the requisite tearing open of and staring at glaring gifts, the house got pretty quiet. I had been downstairs sorting through some of the thoughts I had running through my mind. Not much sorting occurred. More running, actually. I walked into the living room. I sat down on the couch. I got up again. I walked into the kitchen. Then I went upstairs. I found mom sitting on her bed, her short dark hair contrasting against the white walls of her bedroom. Italian American. She had pretty olive skin and liquid brown eyes. Mom, I still can't relax, I fairly whined as I climbed into her bed and curled into a ball like a cat. I don't know what's wrong with me. Oh, honey, I hate to see you like this. What's wrong with me? I repeated. Nothing. Mom began patting my head, something I realized was infantilizing but in which I also found something relief. You've been through so much these past few weeks. Yeah, I said, somewhat dubiously. You have. The end of the semester. No one likes the holidays, Peter. I guess it's over between Peter and me. Weren't you just saying that you were going to try to be less demanding of your boyfriends this time? I said quickly. Mom, he never calls when he says he's going to call or does what he says he's going to do. He drinks too much. He's always either drunk or hungover. I'm not being too picky this time. No, no, you're right. I'm sorry. I was wrong. It's just way too stressful. Well, then just break up with him. I'll just get it over with when he gets back from Christmas vacation. If he ever calls me again, I said, good. I still feel really tense, Mom. You'll feel better when all of this is over. Maybe. Why don't you go for a walk with your father? The word father had an aura around it. Just by it being said out loud, my mother, my mother and I seemed to relax a little, like some force greater than ourselves would now take over. And it was all going to be okay, right Father was gazing steadily ahead as he and his daughter pulled off the state highway into the parking lot at the bottom of Bluebird Trail. He ventured a glance in her direction. She was staring out the window, her hands folded in her lap. He carefully pulled into a parking spot, beginning to sense that something wasn't in order. I wish den were, she said offhandedly, climbing out of the car. I do, too, he replied quickly, with a little more vehemence than was customary for him. I don't know why he had to leave now at Christmas. The two of them began walking along the muddy trail. It passed through a field where cows often grazed. A few cows blocked the path, and they walked off the path and around the cows, just like the day before. The sky overhead was blue. The only sigh of snow was the wet ground between them, wet because the sun melted last week's snow. They were approaching the gate. Father lifted the latch and they walked through once again. Once they were on the other side of the gate, he secured the latch again. At that point the trail had started to climb, slowly rising up out of the meadow and into the foothills. They hadn't encountered any other walkers yet. So I guess mom probably told you about. She swallowed her words A little. About how I've been feeling. No. He was solemn now. What's the matter? I don't know. I've just been feeling really anxious the past few days and I can't relax. Oh. Is there anything in particular bothering you? No. I mean, I think I was probably just so busy at the end of the semester and now that I don't have anything to do, you know, like I have all this energy and nothing to do. Well, you should use the break to take a break. I wish I could, but it's like I don't have any control over it, you know?

Sure.

He coughed, looking ahead. Dad, when you were upset for a while, you know, after you fell and broke your hip, what did you do to make yourself feel better? Let's see. I tried not to think too much about anything. I read a lot. I watched movies, that sort of thing. Yeah. Maybe I'll just read a lot over break. Well, I have a lot of those travel books on the bookshelves downstairs. I always like reading those. Yeah. Father had been staring straight ahead now. He looked quickly out of the daughter. Her face was flushed from the exercise, her sneakered feet thudded against the trail. He could remember what she looked like as a little girl. She looked so much the same, he thought. Brown skin, wide eyes, skinny arms and legs. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. Someone was calling. That's my essay actually. Maybe I'll just take this opportunity to tell you some of the themes of the the other essays. One of the contributors wrote about again, living back at home again because his parents had left the state and asked him to take care of the house while they were gone. So and he and the house was a big suburban house that he'd always, especially in high school, come to hate and kind of took pleasure in destroying the golf course next to the house. And here he was in his early 20s having to actually protect the place property and protected from the teenagers driving by and throwing hangers and starting to have a respect for, you know, for the love of a house, I guess, or respecting a house. One of the other contributors, he dropped out of college because he started to realize, or not realize, but in his particular case, I guess that a liberal arts degree wasn't going to do anything for him. Why was he here, etc. He came from a family of military men and I'm thinking that they were all men. And so he decided to drop out and join the Army. And when he wrote the essay, he was stationed in Afghanistan. So he was kind of writing about the juxtaposition between when he decided to drop out of college and then his current life as a soldier in Afghanistan. One of the writers is she her mother's family is Native American and her father's family is Caucasian and she grew up, in her words, working class. And her parents worked really hard for her to go to college. So her battle during that time period was to prove to them that she could get a creative writing degree as opposed to something practical like accounting, because why would they send her to college so she could get a creative writing degree if she's not going to make any money with that? Let's see. One of the contributors wrote about when she and her long term boyfriend, who was her high school sweetheart finally broke up because after 10 years he still hadn't engaged, waiting, you know, every Christmas and a birthday for three years. When's it going to happen? It never did. Another on the other side of that contributor wrote about she just couldn't commit to somebody because she came from what she called an abusive childhood. And so when she was proposed to and eventually married, when she eventually got married, she was cheating on her fiance and that husband the whole time. That was her way, I guess, of keeping herself at a distance. And of course her marriage ended just a few months after it started. Trying to think if there's any other essays. One contributor wrote about 2004 elections and how she was completely disillusioned after that and what kind of effect that had on her. Some people wrote kind of light essays. One of the contributors wrote about how she had suddenly realized that she'd been making her bed every day and she could distinctly remember when she was in college. College. And that just didn't ever happen. So that was really depressing. Like what? Responsible citizen at Viper. So that's kind of a range in course of 17. So there's other ones. I'm not thinking about them. Anyway. I guess now is a good time to kind of just open it up. Questions? Anything? Do you think everybody goes through the.

Quarter life crisis or do you think it's a certain subset of people?

Well, I don't think everyone goes through a quarter life crisis, but I do think everyone in, say, United States, probably Canada, not everyone, but a large percentage of people, except for maybe the most disempowered of the population. You know, in Germany, it's a little. Well, probably in other developed countries like France and Spain, England. But the book that I was reading kind of focused on more Germanic cultures just because there's a different expectation for adolescents. And Latin cultures, for example. When I was in France, it was not unusual for people to be living with their families well into their 20s. And that didn't cause any kind of guilt or anything like that. But I would say what people are all experiencing is what some sociologists are calling a prolonged adolescence. So that it's not like, you know, at 18, you automatically know what's in store for you. Just picture your parents or your parents parents getting married at that age and just completely automatically assuming adult Personas. So mom is taking care of the house and about to have a baby. Dad's going to work every day, comes home, has dinner. Of course there were crises, and of course there were anxieties and depression and everything, but that path was a lot clearer and it was a lot more direct. And now, you know, it just isn't.

I think some of that is due to the way people have been raised. So since now, like a lot of our parents have been divorced or things like that. I think that's some of the reasons why we have that prolonged adolescence is.

We kind of go back into.

We kind of miss out into our childhood because we took upon ourselves because the responsibility of the parent.

I think that it is true that some of it is how we were raised, and probably some of it has to do with baby boomers. And new generation and then instilling those values in their children. Because I think if you're around my age, then you probably heard a lot of. Again, like I was saying, you can be anything you want to be. All Americans and all people are created equally and that kind of thing. One thing I was going to say earlier when I had my blank was that one of the reasons why one of the things that people don't think about when they think about the quarterly crisis is that some of it is just is not that you can't decide what you want to do. That's part of it. But part of it is that you can't do what you think you're supposed to be doing. So again, you are told you can do anything you want. And then there is a point, and I remember it with me when you realize, wait a second, I can't really do. I'm not going to be a writer at the New Yorker. Sorry. But I wish. But that's not. That's not within my realm, you know, my reality. And it's true. I mean, I honestly believe, not to be disheartening, but I honestly believe that a lot of the options that you have in life are, you know, connections, family, money, and also, of course, your own genetics, you know, intelligence and confidence and whatever. But there's a lot of things that go into what kind of reality. You can create this yourself. So it's not like you can just go out and do anything you want to do. So a lot of what people are experiencing when they experience a quarter life crisis is like, holy crud, I can't. I can't do that. I'm not going to be a doctor. You know, I'm not going to go to law school. I mean, I remember people, a lot of people I knew taking the LSAT again and again and again and just not getting the scores that they knew that they needed to get into law school. So, anyway, to go back to your question, those kind of values were definitely instilled in us and not just from our parents, but from the media and also to other places. So that now we're kind of contending with that perception of what we're supposed to be doing at this point in our lives.

Do you also think that the way that. So back in our parents generation or grandparents generation, you had one career, and that was kind of it. These days, it's very likely to be able to have five or six different careers throughout the course of a lifetime, and that the effect that has on the changing perception of where you are and what you're doing with your life because you end up in this point where you could be thinking, oh, this is what I've been doing. Then five years later you go, hang on, that's actually, I'm going to hold it in space. So I have to rethink those perceptions. And I don't know if it's a cord white person, but it's almost, it's that reevaluation that needs to happen as.

Part of that process. I think that's definitely true. And again, it goes back to the options thing. It's like, would you rather be that, you know, say, you know, you live in a town where they make cars and everybody works at the factory. You know, you know what you're gonna do when you finish high school, you're gonna go work at that factory. And there's no question about it, there's no feeling of confusion or what's my life going to be? But there is a certain kind of simplicity to that that's kind of nice to where now, you know, you have so many, not so many, but you have a greater number of options. So not only is it that you don't necessarily know exactly what you're going to do when you leave high school or college, but you also don't know what you mean to be doing five years from that point you get the first job. And you know, throughout your whole life you might be switching completely switching your career sometimes. And actually, I mean, this is just totally a random thought that I was talking about it with somebody yesterday. And it's certainly that maybe some of it has to do with like the shift from an industrial society to like a post industrial society. And so the jobs are a lot different. You know, it's not like there's the infrastructure that pretty much everyone goes into it in some level, like they're working to create something that's an actual tangible good or managing those institutions. But now we're this communication centered society. And also there's a lot of service industry jobs probably because there's so much more wealth. So people are buying that thing. So there's more people who can actually make a really good living working as a server their whole lives. So I think that part of it might be due to just the shift in how money is made and what kinds of jobs people have to work in order to make money.

So I had a thought. Do you think that in our parents generation and grandparents, just like what you were saying, most people kind of have their lives spread out in front of them, they know what they're going to do and they either go to college or not. But as soon as they're done with college, they start their careers and that's pretty much it. And then they have a lot of these midlife crises in the 50s or 60s where different kinds of things happen. And you can imagine that maybe it's because they never really had that opportunity to be somewhat driftless and to kind of make their own decisions and to kind of figure out what they really wanted to do, not what expect of them. And I know a lot of people, I'm past the quarter life era, but I know a lot of younger people who are kind of in that don't know what they want to do and going from job to job or career to career. And I think that's great. It seems like nowadays people have a lot more choices and have a lot more options and opportunities to kind of do what they want. So I wonder if 50 years from now or 40 years from now, these people who, who had the opportunity to kind of figure it out, I wonder if they'll still have those sort of crises when they're in their 50s because they've had the opportunity to do it now.

Yeah, I want to know that too. I mean, exactly what are you really going to have your midlife crisis about when you've spent up until that point, you know, So I don't know. I guess we'll have to see you.

Start making the bed.

That taking the time at your formative age like now is going to give you the opportunity to work through whatever you would be working through at 35 in your midlife crisis or 45.

Oh, I don't know if that's true. I just.

Was that what you'd expect though? Because that would make sense that it would be.

I mean, all life is a crisis. I think part of the quarter life crisis is that you can only handle so much instability. I mean, humans are like dogs in that get a walk in the morning, get fed in the morning, you do your thing, then you get a walk in the evening. And you like that because it's just comforting. I think when you're younger, you can handle a lot more of that kind of flux and then you find yourself kind of craving something stable. And that's why when it's hard to get a first job or it's hard to figure out what do to do in order to settle down, that can create such a strong sense of anxiety. So I think eventually, yeah, you do want to settle down. And so maybe if you take those, like you're saying, those formative years to explore, then when you do settle into your life, then you have a certain level of comfort with that. But I guess it remains to be seen. It'd be pretty depressing if we spend our whole lives in one crisis life that way.

I didn't want to go. I didn't want to be married at 21 years old. I knew I didn't want to do that. So I went and had a good job and I traveled around the world and did sought my oaths and things like that.

And it became.

I got my midlife crisis, my quarter life crisis out of the way and now I'm married, I have kids, and now I have the American dream of wife, biggest fans and all these things.

Two dogs.

In south north that I'm. I think it really benefited me to get those things out of the way. When I was in my 20s.

I feel like that I didn't have.

As many issues with that.

I can't say my partner may not.

I had an opposite experience where right out of high school I was in a very structured, not college place. I think there was a time that people were being encouraged to go do Teach for America or do Peace Corps before they go into college. And having that very structured lifestyle for a couple years before I actually had to think about my own life gave me really good perspective. When I finally went to college, I saw all these poor kids that had no idea what they wanted to do in life. And I actually had a sense of what I wanted to do in life because I had so much structure, I didn't have to think about myself and what I needed to do. I was focusing on certain other people. I don't think that stopped me from having a quarter life crisis, but it.

Certainly gave me a little bit more.

Direction when I got there.

One thing I was thinking about is, I mean, I don't really know culturally how much this happens anymore, but you know, you can think that in some certain cultures there's some kind of ritual to mark adulthood. And it used to be probably graduation, but I for one, I don't even think I went to my college graduation. I didn't go to my college graduation. And I don't think that college graduation holds that significance anymore. Probably because college doesn't mean what it used to mean. And so I would just, I think, like you're saying, like, well, you know, on the one hand it'd be nice if there was some kind of structure for young people that they could kind of fit into somehow some kind of training. I don't know, I mean, who knows what that would look like? But on the other hand, it would be nice if there was some sort of ritual marker, you know, okay, now you're an adult. And so there's no like, am I kid, I'm an adult, what are my responsibilities? Suddenly it's like. And some parents actually probably do do that, you know, hey, you're 18, bye.

Get out of the house.

But yeah, something like that where you're like, oh. Because if you just think of yourself as an adult, then you are, as long as you're reproductive.

I think part of the problem is.

That as a 20 year old, you know that you will have a crisis at 35 or 45.

And so trying to figure out the.

Path to avoid that brings on all this anxiety.

And I know for me personally, like, it's not a straight shot and there's.

Like five or 10 different paths that lead you to that point. And so it's not just choosing one thing, it's choosing all those five.

When you're 24 years old, get to.

Where you want to be, Right? Yeah.

Making sure you can balance through them.

All and you get what you want. You're anxious about a crisis. That's totally what it is.

And because that thing that when you actually get some choice, you kind of go, well, okay, well, let's go this way. As you said, it's the thing of having too much choice. And you go, well, they're both pretty good options. Which one do I do?

Yeah. Oh, same with a relationship, you know, I mean, I think a lot of people have a hard time thinking, is she the one? Is he the one? Is there someone else? Like again, the true career path or the true soulmate. And then, you know, drag yourself crazy trying to make sure that the relationship that you're in is the right one. And then probably what you end up figuring out is it could have been or another one could have been, you know, and that all that racking your brain about it was kind of a waste of time. But I don't know, I mean, I suppose in some cases that does need to be figured out. I think the problem is balancing between what's good in the long term, what's good in the short term, and whether you're resting with what feels good right now and not thinking about what's in the future. That's similar to quarter life crisis. I think that's like a lifetime crisis. Making sure that you're preparing yourself for your future, but not holding back from what you can have in the present.

I kind of agree. I think I'm going through a quarter life crisis. Like everything you say. I mean, last weekend I watched a couple Disney movies, but I think like, so much change. I know. Actually the first week of no, last year my parents moved out of the country for potentially a year, got a new boyfriend, one of my friends, left the country for Afghanistan and I started this job, left another job. So all happened in one week. And so I think that's when I started like having anxiety and I don't know what I want to do. And I think it was just before that I was just working at an architecture firm. I had applied for graduate school, got accepted what I was going to do, and then all these curve balls kind of got thrown at me. So they just like opened up a lot of doors and kind of showed me other options and gave me a lot more choices. And so that I think having too many choices made me feel a lot more anxious about the future. Whereas before I was like, oh, I'm just going to go to architecture school and do that and get done with that. So I think I was more content with just knowing what's gonna happen, whether or not it's the best option. Just having the option made worked for me. And so I think I'm dealing with kind of trying to figure out what's gonna work now.

Yeah, I mean, that reminds me of like, like I said, I mean, it's not a self help book, but people have been asking like, oh, you know, what kind of things can you do to make yourself get out of it? And I mean, one of the things I'm thinking of too is that just lowering or re evaluating our expectations. Expectations for ourselves, you know, so where are we getting these ideas that we have to do X, Y and Z or all five of them all at the same time and somehow have the time to do them all and just kind of saying, well, what really works for me? Because what you may end up deciding is that you're really devoted to your career and you just don't have time to be in a relationship or a serious one. And you know, that's totally fine. And in fact, it's more realistic than, you know, I see like women in their 30s trying to have a career and a family at the same time, thinking that they can have it all, which is another one of those values that we Learned in the 80s. But I don't know if you really can have it all. You know, I Think that if you want, it's almost like do one thing and do, do it well, or do a lot of things but don't do them that well. So if you want.

But I suppose as long as you're.

Clear about that, as long as you.

Understand, you're honest with yourself, if that's what you're doing.

I don't want to be, you know, the mate partner in my law firm. I don't care if I get that, you know, so I'm gonna put, I'm gonna leave work at this time every day and I'm gonna spend that time with my family or whatever.

There's a big element of like not having control and kind of accepting that you might have a great job that you really want to focus on. And then you meet somebody or the person that you're really focusing on, but then you have this opportunity for a job where sometimes you can't just go out and say, I'm going to get this perfect job and I'm going to go find this perfect person or I'm going to move to this perfect place. Or if something comes along you just can't grasp at the time, you need to just, okay, so I'm just going to let this go. Or if some, you know, you can't go find your future soulmate or whatever. Letting go when you're at our age seems more important than people give credit for.

Yeah, I think that's probably true.

Should there be like a companion book to this for like, okay, age, like a 55ish person? Both my parents lost their jobs. I was a freshman in college same week and they're like, good luck with school because we're all screwed.

Go get a loan.

It was the same thing. My dad had done the same thing for three years. My mom had done the same thing. All of a sudden at the time it was bad, but obviously it was bad. And my brother just graduated high school and I'm going to college. But my dad has actually talked about how it was a really good opportunity for him to kind of say, you know, I was selling construction equipment. That's what he is. He's a salesman. And I'm 55 years old and you can't. It's not a great career. Someone who's getting up their age and now he does something different. Still involved in sales, way less work. Still in the same industry though, and less discord. So it turned out to be kind of a blessing in disguise. But he was saying that the lack of control that he had was really Scary for him. So it seems like maybe you could write a book about this for the same for the people on the other side who are like, well, I'm over my midlife crisis that way.

It's almost a case of the rules that apply to us now about how things change are suddenly being applied to the older generation as they're sort of reaching the end of their work period. I suppose I was going to say.

Into their life period.

But that's rude. I think you ought to be.

That's true.

It's not that everybody doesn't retire at 16.

Yeah. And job security is an issue both for us and for our parents.

That's interesting because my mom went and got an MBA like at 50 and then had the hardest time finding a job because what's, you know, a 50 plus woman like who's trying to take her career to the next step after having raised three kids and you know, working as a consultant for most of her career, you know, is really hard. So it's very, it's interesting. Again, there's all these options out there.

But.

What'S really going to be realistic.

I think it would be interesting to go to a country like Israel or Germany where there's mandatory service. So a friend of mine who's German had the choice of working in a hospital. He was sort of an orderly. He changed bedpans and carted people around. Or he could have been a military. Those were like his choices. He could go. It was two years, he had to do one or the other. And it seemed like sort of what we're talking about.

Right.

It's like an entirely structured thing. You have a two way choice. Are you, do you want to work in hospital or do you want to go hold a gun? Clearly everybody sort of fits in those two camps.

Definitely know where I fit.

And then after that it was actually quite clear. I think everyone else knows nowhere.

And.

Sort of that mandatory service. So it would be interesting too if you have friends in those places or friends with friends in those places, sort of solicit essays from people who've been through that experience and find out if there is this kind of crisis or does giving people that kind of structured environment for a while. There's also some people go on missions for a couple years and that kind of thing. I wonder if that, that cures it.

Yeah, well, the thing in Germany is it's institutionalized. Where in America. All those options that we're kind of throwing out, they're not institutionalized. So you have to know about them.

And it's another choice. I mean, that's a stress, right? Peace Corps, college. Crap.

What do I do?

Travel the world for three.

So what do you think the difference is between the institutionalized and the choice?

No, I mean. Well, actually, just to talk about Germany, I mean, that's a country where you do know really what you're going to be doing. And you. And is it good or bad? I mean, you're put into a school where you are either going to be in a certain trade or a certain profession. And then there's not really. A lot of. You might switch around a little bit. But if you're going to be a lawyer, you pretty much know when you're 14. And so is that good or is that bad? Same with the institutional education of, like the mandatory service. Because in America, we're so much about not giving up freedom that it's really hard to imagine that someone would tell us, you know, based on, I don't know, what they do, aptitude tests or whatever, what we're going to be doing with our lives. I'm sure it's not that structured and I don't know the ins and outs of it, but I actually kind of think of it, thinking of letting go. I don't know anything about. About Buddhism, but I do know that part of it is that you're no different than individuality is something that you eventually get rid of. That's kind of like your. I don't know how. Like I said, I don't think about Buddhism, but my understanding is like your ego, and you're getting rid of that. But as an American raised a certain way, when I first heard that, I thought, I don't want to lose my individuality. That's what makes me special. It's what makes me different. But it just could be partly a value thing or a perception thing, that we have to be these great individuals constantly expressing our individual stuff by buying things like cell phone cases with whatever on them.

By buying generic things.

Yeah, or a MySpace page.

That was the shocker. My brother's talking about his MySpace picture. She's 28.

I'm like.

And I'd never been to MySpace or anything. I'm only 31, you know, so it's not like I'm old or young. I'm sort of. You're old here. But I thought MySpace, like, whenever you hear about MySpace on the news, which old people like me watch, they're talking about how if you let your kid on MySpace, they're going to be molested. That's Just what it is. So I'm like, okay, MySpace is your better teen year olds. And then my brother's talking about how he doesn't know where he's at with his girlfriend because she changed her status on her MySpace. She's 28. You know, like from, you know, looking to whatever that's. There is nothing. It's gone from, you know, in person, to letter, to telephone, to text, to just changing your status on your.

Something is up.

Like, something is. This is ridiculous. There's a shift.

Yeah. Well, I remember when I grew. I am on MySpace and I remember when my boyfriend and I a few years ago broke up because I probably joined when I was like 24. And I think I actually joined under like a secret name when I was 22. But I officially made a profile like 24. And then so my boyfriend and I broke up and I immediately went on.

MySpace and featured status table.

Because there's this message like, you know, but no, not to that, but just to him. Like, you know, I'm okay with this. But he hadn't changed it from in a relationship to single. And I kept checking, like, what's he gonna. What's he gonna accept this? It was the opposite. I mean, it was really like, I was the one who wasn't okay with this. He was driving me crazy. Like, does he want to get back together? I guess that's some level of, like.

Official, right? It's literally binary. It's yes or no, that's it, and there's nothing else.

Or just getting broken up with via text message message, which, thank God, it's never happened to me. But I mean, I can't imagine how horrible that would be to just like, look at this.

I've been watching on Facebook two friends of mine who are kind of in and out of a relationship at the moment, changing their status for the last two months, just watching what one does.

And what the other one does all the time.

And I've just refused to talk to them until they figure it out.

But it's exactly like that.

No, right?

Do you like me? Check yes or no.

Right?

And you sort of pass it when you're eight. I mean, it's exactly the same thing. We're kind of demanding this binary decision, which is comforting for us because there is nothing like that.

It's unambiguous.

But what's interesting about it is that, you know, people aren't on MySpace just in their early 20s, you know, anymore. That I do know a lot of people in their mid-30s on my face and I don't know, I never go on it, but I don't know at what point I'll be like, oh, I have to get off. Once you're on, are you just on forever?

Yeah.

And the photo of you is when you were 22.