The "What If's"

I think your 20's are about knocking out the "what if's" in your life.

What if I:
- went into teaching?
- went to med/business/law/grad school?
- joined the Peace Corps?
- took time off from my career path to travel?
- tried to write a novel?
- started up a business?
- dated [insert name of every person you've seriously liked in your 20's]?
- acted irresponsibly?
- tried smoking/drinking/drugs?
- lived abroad?
- quit my job to: join a rockband? become a yoga instructor? live in an ashram or kibbutz?
- discarded the religion I was raised in and became: Christian/Buddhist/Hindu/Muslim...or agnostic/atheist?
- stopped trying to make my parents happy?

And so on. It's funny because when you're in college you think that once you graduate, you'll figure out what you want to do with your life and do it. But you soon realize that you have no frikking clue what you want to do with your life because that is a really heavy question and how the hell are you supposed to know that at 21? or 25? or 29? I think most people in their 20's are in various stages of a quarter-life crisis.

In their teens, most people go through an existentialist crisis: what is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Why are we here? Where do we go when we die? Some find answers to these questions in religion. Others conclude that we can never really know so the best we can do is to try to live a happy life (which does not necessarily have to be "good" or "meaningful" - what makes people happy is very personal).

In college we think that a happy life can be achieved by becoming whatever it is we want to become and finding love.

Then we graduate and the quarter-life crisis begins. You can delay the quarter-life crisis a bit if you go to grad school because as long as you are in school you believe you're in the process of becoming whatever it is you want to become and the opportunity to find love is plentiful. Also, if you are in a relationship while in school, the relationship exists in a bubble - especially if you are both in school, because you're not dealing with "real life" - such as differences in income, mortgages, differences in life goals, etc. You're still bright-eyed and idealistic, because frankly, that's what the higher education environment fosters - hope, idealism, the notion that you can be whatever you want to be.

Then you graduate. And you realize that they tricked you. They told you you could be whatever you wanted to be. But they didn't say you could only be one thing. For some reason, you thought you could be the president, an astronaut, a teacher, a doctor, a human rights worker, an artist, a poet and a lawyer, all at once. You didn't know you had to choose just one. And so the quarter-life crisis begins, this time the question being: what should I do with my life?

The 20's also presents tough questions for relationships because you start feeling the pressure from society, community and family to commit to one person. Which is a pretty crazy notion when you think about it because there will always be other people you are attracted to and you're supposed to promise never to act on those desires, ever ever ever? The quarter-life crisis deepens.

And I think that's ok. That's what your 20's are for - to figure it out: what do you want to do with your life - what is a career you think you can be satisfied with [for life]? What do you want out of a job - power, financial security, to help people, etc.? And who could you see yourself spending the rest of your life with (or do you even want to spend the rest of your life with someone)?

I feel like I've kind of reached a satisfactory answer for the first question. I'm relatively happy being a lawyer. I tried out a dream of mine (opening the bakery), thinking it would be more fulfilling, but realized that while it is indeed very fulfilling to achieve a dream of yours, the daily grind is still the daily grind. And turning your hobby into a job...makes it a job. A job is a job is a job is a job. And I like my job, most of the time. That being said, I still haven't decided whether I want to be a law firm lawyer forever. But I feel like I've resolved any "crisis" over what I want to do with my life - for now I'm a lawyer and I'm happy being a lawyer.

The love/relationship part, I'm still figuring out.