The roaring twenties

Do you know what you want to do with your life? Do you agonise over decisions that may affect your entire future? Are you unhappy with your chosen career (assuming you have a chosen career?) If you’re in your twenties, you just might be experiencing (drum roll please) your ‘Quarterlife Crisis’.

It’s a notion hatched by two go-getting twentysomethings, journalist Alexandra Robbins, and psychology graduate and website administrator Abby Wilner. Their book Quarterlife Crisis – The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties, is aimed at graduates and gives a name to the feelings of doubt and confusion that, they maintain, afflict many people in their twenties.

Not being a fan of any sort of popular self-help psychobabble, I would be the first to scoff at the idea. At twenty-five, I have no fixed idea of what I want to do with my life, but I’d say I’m enjoying the freedom of not having a set career path, and find rather liberating the feeling that I can do whatever the hell I want (well, within reason).

Now, however, I’m suddenly faced with the possibility that I have been, and perhaps still am, in the midst of my quarterlife crisis.

The authors’ contention is that, unlike the much-talked about midlife crisis, the quarterlife crisis is something that exists but goes unrecognised. This, they say, is because twentysomethings suffering from doubt and confusion are likely to keep their personal misgivings to themselves, and so don’t realise that many of their peers are going through the same thing. According to Robbins and Wilner, this crisis has never been documented by psychologists because twentysomethings tend not to seek therapy for their problems, either due to financial constraints or because of the stigma attached.

But the book offers anecdotal evidence from more than a hundred young people who’ve experienced self-doubt, anxiety or depression, concerning issues of identity, careers and relationships. Take Sandra, a 1997 graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University who broke off an engagement after realising that her goal of marriage and kids shouldn’t mean settling for someone who wasn’t right for her. She says, “If I’m not married at 30, I’ll buy a cat. If I’m single at 35, I’ll by another cat and so on, which means my goal in life is that, at the age of 40, I’ll either be married or have five cats.”

But they’re not all mad. 26-year old Frank left a lucrative, but “disgusting”, job in a car dealership to travel the world, and is now happy as Larry and free to go back into education. Although he’s not quite sure what course he wants to take.

There’s no question that this time of life is fraught with uncertainty. Upon leaving college and stepping out into the big wide world, most young adults are faced with the same major issues – getting a job, finding a place to live, coping with finances, dealing with relationships – issues that can be heavy going for anyone, no matter how experienced and well-adjusted.

For many, there’s a tendency to go for the trial-and-error approach with varying success, trying different things and job-hopping, until, by a process of hit or miss, you stumble onto something that works. There’s also the fear of failure, of making decisions that could affect your future, resulting in paralysing indecisiveness. And it can be hard to take guidance from parents who have a totally different set of experiences. Things are changing – I have more and very different opportunities than my mother had, with different means of expression and ways of making money, some of which didn’t even exist thirty years ago.

The authors have talked to people who are terrified to stop being a kid, viewing it as “the end of fun.” Your twenties might be your last chance to take risks and do “wild and outrageous” things, without the responsibility of kids, partners or mortgages.

I admit I went through a definite crisis period just after I left college. I didn’t have a clue who I wanted to be, I was on the dole for almost a year, living at home, and extremely depressed. I felt I was the only one in the world going through it, while everyone else was merrily getting on with their lives. Finally, with the nebulous idea that I wanted to write and had an interest in music and arts, I pulled myself out of the doldrums and went back to college to study media. My life, although full of ups and downs, has generally been grooving along quite nicely ever since. Then again, I’m not out of my twenties yet, and I’m expecting a lot more transition over the next few years.

Most people will identify with some of the topics raised in the book. Does that mean that an actual crisis at this time of life is endemic or particularly widespread? I don’t know, but surely there are very few lucky people who just breeze through their twenties without any significant worries about whether the choices they’re making are the right ones.

To be honest, I was probably better off before I had any concept of a bloody quarterlife crisis, but for some it might be comforting to know that they’re not the only ones who feel a bit lost.

The issues dealt with in the book are, rather smugly, applied only to graduates and it would have been nice if they canvassed the opinions of people who didn’t go to college, exploring whether they had a similar experience.

But the book does give the sobering views of a 90 year old man, who reckons people probably go through some sort of crisis in every decade. As for problems faced at his age, he cites difficulties in finding interesting activities, and dealing with the fact that many of his friends are gone. When you think about it from that perspective, being young and confused ain’t such a bad place to be.

Quarterlife Crisis by Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner is published by Tarcher/Putnam