Quarter-Life Crisis

"I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment, and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew" - Herman Hesse

Being in my twenties often feels like being trapped somewhere between a child and an adult; I am so young that I’m clueless about a lot of things but so old that I can’t just sit and do nothing.

Twenty-somethings have so much energy and enthusiasm yet such little experience and wisdom.

We are in a constant struggle to assert independence and chart a path of our own, yet still dependent to some degree.

It is this crisis of identity that makes life at this stage confusing and daunting. It is ambition towering over reality.

If in the forties comes a mid-life crisis, then the twenties must be a quarter-life crisis.

Generational Perspective

It also feels that I am caught in a larger generational crisis that defines my very identity and place in society. The older generation born in the 50s and 60s, which consists of our parents now, looms over us with authority and control. They hold the jobs and positions in the workplace. They rule in the political class. They are the people who have brought us up, bequeathing us their mindsets and values.

They set the expectations that we strive to live up to, yet they barely understand us and what the world we’ve grown up in made us into.

For the African Gen-Z, therefore, the twenties are a time for reconciling expectations. We were made to expect from a young age that every variable would be neatly organized for us once we grow up.

And then we grew up and, truth be told, it turned out to be not as rosy. The sheer complexity of the experience alone is enough to shake someone off their feet. The sense of surety and security that we we counted on as we grew up vanishes the moment we step foot outside the university campus. Even deciding what to do with my life has been a tall task.

Furthermore, there are too many eyes scrutinizing and judging our every move. The standards we are pressured to live up to are on steroids. Gen Z is a citizen of the world; unlike the previous generation whose largest social group growing up was the village or the town someone was born in, we, on the other hand, live out our lives, eke, we act them out, on the global stage. Posting every #win, every #moment, and every #tbt of our lives on socials makes Gen Z a trophy at a museum with a thousand prying eyes.

As all this goes down, it slowly but surely dawns on us that the world owes us nothing. We are not as special as we thought. As children, we aimed for the skies and dreamt of the stars. But as life unfolds, there is a pressure to be ‘realistic,’ which means trimming down our expectations and ambitions down to those of ‘normal’ people. 

As if that’s not enough, we realize that time moves faster after twenty-five and that we are growing old. And that life is, in fact, short.

Adulting knocks at the door, and someone has to answer.

Letting go

So what do we do? I have been given no choice for the last three years but to learn to let go. The child I grew up as, the young man who graduated campus, was simply not the version of me I needed to live out this reality - to become an adult.

I was not a bad person, just helplessly naïve. Most of the mistakes I have made were out of incompetence, not malice. Therefore, there were things about myself that simply had to go. I had to let go of the boy I was to become the man I wanted to be. In my mid-twenties, I still have not become that man, but at least I know what he is like.

But then perhaps the goal is not to become that man but to struggle to live up to the ideal that he represents. For that, I will have to crawl and limb along the way, chasing him.

It will require learning to love myself, with an adult kind of love. A love that asks what more I can do and why I am not doing it. A love that requires more from me. A love that says that even though I will never be perfect, I am always sufficient for the task of life. That kind of love will give me the courage to forgive myself because as an adult, I will stumble and embarrass myself sometimes. I will fail sometimes too, and I don’t tend to handle failure particularly well. It will inspire me to nurture new dreams when childhood ones die.

This love, as I see it, will be my greatest gift to myself in the years ahead. It will hold me together as I chisel out unworthy parts of myself. When I love myself, I will have the patience to change. I will be able to allow time to do its work on me. Even then, I will not sit and do nothing, because adulting requires that I want more of myself, and demand more from myself.

Okay, first I have to want better for myself. And I have to believe it. I have to truly believe that better can come to me. That someplace on the horizon, even the best is possible for me. The thing is that, by simply existing, I qualify for good - that is my lot as a human. But as for better – that I have to require of myself.

Adulting, therefore, will involve a capacity to envision and embrace newness. I do not want to be stuck in a subpar identity at this age. I want to be willing and capable to shed skin time and again, to stay learning and stay changing. I will embrace every new phase of my life and every higher version of me.

My allegiance is to the person I can be and not the person I am. When it’s time to move, I will gladly break camp. I will willingly let go of the parts of my identity that pin me down and, like Icarus, never be afraid to fly too close to the sun. If I can change, there is no destiny that is beyond my reach.

This will, however, require a higher tolerance for discomfort.

Roses and thorns

Adulting, as has been my experience for a while so far, is not about avoiding the thorns, but learning to tread them.

Even for the times that the experience seems to be a bed of roses, the roses come with their thorns. Life will always have some uncertainty, some testing, some challenge - right beneath my feet.

When I was younger, I thought that as I grew older and left school, there would come a mythical point in life when it would be kingdom come and paradise on earth. At that point, I would simply sit back and chop, stress-free. However, the heat only gets more intense as I dare to want more and rise higher.

Some things in life are worth every sacrifice – and often it is a sacrifice of ourselves or parts of ourselves. The price I pay to get to particular levels in life is not merely hard work - it is those parts of my nature that inhibit my ascendance.

My biggest source of hesitation to change was the constant worry about what ‘people’ would say.

Someone can be so immersed in this pattern that they do not even notice that before they respond to any nudge to move forward, they first confirm what other people will feel and say about it.

But my brother once reminded me that while I am worried about what people will think or say, they may instead be waiting on me to act and set the standards. You will be surprised how clueless everybody else is. You perhaps have the unique and brilliant solution that everyone has been waiting for but you are too worried about what they shall say. How sad, and wrong!

People want you to show them who you are and what you are about, and they will fall in line and believe it. It is not for them to tell you what to be; it’s you to show them. People are desperate for your version of your story. I think it’s a pretty good arrangement that I have the power to define who I am, and people have no choice but to buy it. No one can change that.

Pain Tolerance

So, perhaps it is necessary to be like the Frog thrown into a pot of heating water, who keeps adjusting his body temperature to match that of the water. Because doing life as an adult will often involve being thrust into hot environments. Whether it is a new assignment, a growth spurt, or a change of habit – every new and potentially life-changing experience will involve discomfort and even pain.

The question is whether I can tolerate the discomfort and allow the pain to do its work on me.

And oh – sometimes I have to do all this without showing any discomfort or inner turmoil. I will not be allowed to panic, break down by the roadside, and cry.

In such moments, it is not enough to be patient and resilient in the face of pain; life demands of me both patience and strength in equal measure. Should I have the opportunity to lead people in a crisis, for instance, they cannot see me crumble and break.

As it has been said before, I ought to be like a duck – paddle like mad under the water but remain calm on the surface.

Then perhaps I can make out of this quarter-life crisis a lifetime opportunity.