High Aspirations
It seems like every time we see someone in their twenties on TV, they are one of three things:
A sports star.
A musician.
Or a hair-pulling diva, fighting over a man who promises her fifteen minutes of fame—and twenty minutes of relationship.
When we were little, we were told that we could be "anything" we wanted to be. We spent our entire lives being conditioned to reach for the stars, and we believed what we were told. We weren't stupid; we just had high hopes for life. But somewhere along the line, society took our high aspirations and turned them into unrealistic expectations.
We didn't understand that spending our lives expecting to touch the stars might ultimately leave us unhappy, even if we reached the stratosphere. How were we supposed to know that a great deal of success was not guaranteed to happen at an incredibly early age?
We know that our friends are smart and believe in doing good things like volunteering, and raising money for worthy causes. But when we turn on the television, we mostly see young millionaires, or young idiots. And it seems like those are the only depictions of young people.
We grew up idolizing musicians, movie stars, and sports figures. They told us to "be like" all of these people who typically achieve their success in their teens, or early twenties. And when we became teenagers, all of a sudden, here comes reality TV! They were literally picking people off the street and giving them everything they could want! But for every person who made it on the show, there were thousands of others who were absolutely crushed if they didn't make it! And the reason they were crushed… was because they knew that they were chasing a young dream. A dream that was not likely to be attainable past a certain age. These contestants knew that if this specific dream did not come to them right now… then, it probably never would.
When we think about our dreams being fulfilled, we imagine ourselves as being young when it happens. We try so hard to work for specific companies, or perform specific jobs, and when we don't achieve those goals, the rejections are crushing… because we have all been raised to believe that we have a decent shot at achieving many of the dreams that are so prevalent in our lives.
My generation grew up wanting things.
Toys with commercials that end with the phrases like, "collect em' all," or dream-houses that just weren't the same unless they had every accessory.
Today, we want to have access to everything that we like, whether it's having thousands of songs on our computers, or hundreds of friends linked to us via social networking. We multi-task by watching TV while chatting with five friends on our laptops and our best friend on our cell phone. We want to squeeze as many tasks as possible into our free time, because it never seems like we have enough time to do all of the things we want. We can access the world at our fingertips, but many of the answers we seek seem so far away.
When we were growing up, those answers came to us exactly when they were supposed to. If we couldn't beat a video game, we found a walkthrough. If we asked someone to a dance, they'd say "yes," "no," or "I'm already going with someone." We got the results to our exams when they were supposed to arrive… and if we failed… they'd tell us the steps we needed to take to pass.
Soon enough, our answers started coming to us on-demand.
There is a reason we get mad when our friends don't text us back within five minutes, or why so many of us get exasperated when we apply to jobs, and fail to receive a simple rejection e-mail.
It's because…
The answer "no" is better than no answer at all.
We demand instant answers—and usually get them.
But all of a sudden, the things we deem important no longer come within a set timeframe. The answers are not readily available. And when we seek out the answers, they stop coming in the forms of strategy guides and tutorials but in the forms of "top seven things you need" or "five essential steps to…" And even though it wasn't easy to learn long division in grade school, when we followed the exact steps, it always seemed to work out the way it was supposed to. The Quarter Life Crisis is the first time in our lives that it takes time to get the answers to the things that matter to us, and the crisis sets in seemingly overnight.
We are dealing with this in a mature manner. Many of us joke about it and continue about our business. Studying for an exam in our free time, or working full time while taking night classes. We don't necessarily believe that we are all going to live the dream lifestyle every day… but in the back of our minds… many of us believed that a fair amount of success would come to us very early in our lives, and when we found out what it took to even achieve the basic things we wanted, the results simply caught us off guard.
Everyone posts all of the best pictures, reveals all of the funny stories, and celebrates all the milestones. We share the "great," the "good," the "cool," the "funny," the "interesting," and the "wild," in a virtual high school reunion of profiles and status updates. We are provided with mini summaries of people's lives through social networking and we typically walk away saying… wow, they're doing pretty well. It seems like everyone around you is doing well, because most people only tell you about the good things in their life. But what happens on those days when we aren't doing so well?
We spent our entire lives going in the "right direction."
But now for the first time the path is no longer decisively clear. The quarter life crisis is about facing uncertainty in a world where so many things always seemed to make sense. A world where we spend all this time, making choices that will affect the rest of our lives, but we wonder what happens if we don't make the right ones?
We have to achieve to get what we want, but what if we don't want what we achieve?
America is the land of opportunity. The land of adventurers who would pack up all of their possessions and go West in order to stake a claim. I started writing this piece wondering how we define the modern American dream. I wanted to explain how my gene-ration was being forced to buy into this ideal of happiness that would never be delivered. But over time, I realized that I did not have the right perspective.
While I was sitting here blaming modern society for these ills, I thought of my friend's great-grandparents, who came to this country from Austria believing that the streets were paved with gold. But when they arrived, they packed into tenement houses and sacrificed in hopes of putting bread on the table. Friends of mine were complaining about applying to jobs and not getting a response, but our great grandparents were facing employers who posted signs that said… "Irish… Italians…Blacks… needs not apply."
Why was I viewing this Quarter Life Crisis like it was something new?
It sounds like those travelers who ventured West were going through the same thing we were. Those explorers did not have it easy. They traversed a very difficult path, in which many people got sick along the way, and a great number arrived to discover that all of the gold had been removed from the pay dirt. Did they give up because they didn't have their specific dream fulfilled? No. They built general stores and formed small towns, because they knew that they had made the right decision when compared with the prospect of never having ventured at all.
I wrote this because my Quarter Life Crisis stems from the struggle to understand whether I'm making the right decisions in life. It's not easy to admit that I don't know, because the goal of writing is to come up with a resolution. I should be taking the term, Quarter Life Crisis and pairing it with action words like "Mastering…" "Coping with…" or "Overcoming..." That would be the most effective way to package this idea to the reader. Make them believe that I am an authority on this topic, and that they will walk away with direct knowledge of the inner workings of every emerging adult of the millennial generation. But I do not write the words on this page as an authority. I write these words simply as a recent graduate who is struggling to figure things out. But that may be the point of all of this.
Maybe our parents were right to instill this value of the "possible" in us.
Maybe we do live a world where we can be whatever we want, or make it our reality through ingenuity. This piece was supposed to be a reflection on the promise of a dream made simple, and how it wasn't as simple as advertised, but when I look at the possible things in life, sometimes I feel like it's not so bad to dream. Perhaps that is that point of a dream. It is one of the few things left in life that can never arrive on schedule.
A dream cannot be purchased on-demand.
You can't save a dream, or replay it, or catch it next week. A dream is a story that must be experienced first-hand, with an ending that can only be ruined if left untold. We need to have dreams, because we need to have things in life that are not handed over with the expectation that one day, we will be able to obtain more. Whether you are living the dream, working to live your dream, or just daydreaming, the simple fact that you have the opportunity to dream at all makes life great.
TimRWoods.com
