The Physics of Quarter-Life Crisis

August 21st, 2014

So you know how in stories, the protagonist always struggles through some terrible battle or dark valley? Then they find the light, push through, seize the day, win the game, save the world. Of course, the lesson is simple: victory is just an epiphany away, all you need is one more push.

At least, that's what I learned. But life isn't like that. Instead of doling out magic swords and great quests, the world always seems to find unexpected ways to smack you upside the head. Instead of "once upon a time" I think all stories should start with "just when I thought I had it all together…"

Several weeks ago, I got back from a month-long trip through Europe. And immediately upon arriving in the States, I felt like a deer stepping from forest onto paved road. Adventures, exotic locations, and split-second decisions that changed what country I slept in all contrasted enormously to my life back here. That shock of coming back, combined with a breakup soon after, wrought more than a few changes in my life. And I couldn't label that process until my brother - the one with a Master's in mental health - gave it a name: quarter-life crisis.

Ew. Quarter/mid-life crises are for balding guys with red convertibles. But me? I'd been through many hard phases in life before, but those were simple. In time, they went away or a solution came. This was different; for the first time in my life everything hit me at precisely the wrong angle. Suddenly distractions were gone; I'd lived a dream and travelled abroad only to find that real problems live inside you, not in your country. The sudden lack of romance - and no desire to pursue it - left an unfamiliar vacuum behind. Returning to my lonely at-home job contrasted uncomfortably to my overseas work. I was left with an internal grind, wanting to just…change something, move somewhere, start over - but why? 

Because my expectations of reality didn’t sync up with reality itself. And the worst part is, it's almost like all of past education was designed to bring me to this point. Middle school, high school - at each step we're urged to achieve so we can be better prepared for the next step. Junior year to senior, then senior to college, college to job, then happiness (so the entire purpose of education is…money)?

But college only worsened it. There I unconsciously became sure that once I graduated I'd be changing things, saving lives, doing…stuff. Whatever that meant. Now I sit at a desk, do my job, and…feel like I'm waiting for someone to come, something to change. Where's my promised big bang? The semesterly changes of courses and activities and friends made college so dynamic. Every year was so different, all expectations leading up to what you'd do after - the next grade, the next school, the next major, etc. Well, this is after. And after a long line of people telling me of all the amazing things I'd surely do, this is where I end up?

My post-grad program did this too. While I credit that program for so many good things in my life now, it did further that ideal of "you're amazing and you're going to be more amazing, then you'll make the world incredibly amazing." Even more buildup, connections, encouragement, only to meet reality where everyone is the same, no one knows what's going on, and oh hello bills.

I feel like there's parenting wisdom in here somewhere. 
Is anyone else in their twenties going through this? Has anything happened in this season of your life that doesn't match your expectations and just won't go away? Anything that suddenly uprooted or forced you to unsettlingly question old sureties?

What am I working towards? Why do I do what I do?

What should I keep living for? 

I died laughing at this.

Another one for you: why do you get up in the morning? Because the alarm went off? Because you have to? Because if you don't, the boss will be mad, the kids will go hungry, the friends will wonder where you are, or you won't get to have fun later? That's not good enough. I want a life motivated by more than a machine, potential disappointment, or a Friday night out.

I suppose under all this dissatisfaction hides some kind of healthy drive to do. But the problem is, I AM doing things, they're just nowhere near as life-changing as expected.

So hobbies become a sedative to temporarily silence this uneasiness. It's always that next new thing that will sate me again, that will set things how they used to be, it just HAS to be. And for a time that works, but never lasts. Perhaps it's also that as you get older and gain experience, pursuits don't affect you as deeply as they used to; the same stimulus has a diminishing effect. Great, so now I'm a moth chasing after the light of a fading chemical rush.

I'm starting to understand why some people drink so much on the weekend.

What drug do you use to keep this voice quiet? Work? Netflix? Romance? Cat videos?

During a trip home to the parents, I scrawled all of this out on paper to understand myself/obtain outside wisdom. Here's a bit of that below. 

Fulfillment, happiness, and purpose are blocked by the looming wall of reality, so…I push in futility. The scary part: this time spent pushing against this wall is changing me, and for one of the first times in my life it's not change I like. My aspirations are now…small. What happened to the kid who wanted to start franchises, make millions, change the world? He didn't die…but he's silent now. And that fact - that I could lose my drive, my me - actually scares me. God, what the heck?

What options do I have? I see two:

1. Throw away ideals, accept lower expectations and smaller goals, find greater fulfillment in smaller things
2. Refuse to submit to the difference between life now and my idealized expectations, and keep pushing until something too big to fix breaks

You might say all of this is a struggle to define or be defined by the normal that life is now. And despite the fact that it feels pointless, a friend recently told me: "It's funny, because from the outside it just seems so obvious that God's going to use all of the things in your life in so many awesome ways." But it doesn't feel that way. This obstinate ability to bash my head against the iron wall of reality is feeling more and more like a form of purgatory. I swear the wall is breaking, here let me show you, just one more time.

"We often remain trapped in what we call normalcy…life becomes problem-solving, fixing, explaining, and taking sides with winners and losers. It's a pretty circular and even nonsensical existence.  

Instead, we have to allow ourselves to be drawn into sacred space, into liminality…we have to move out of "business as usual" and remain on the "threshold" (limen, in Latin) where we are betwixt and between. There, the old world is left behind, but we're not sure of the new one yet. That's a good space. Get there often and stay there as long as you can by whatever means possible."

- Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Maybe…there are times when it's OK not to know where you're going. Maybe there are times when it's OK to just do your work without huge over-arching plans. Maybe, for a time, it's OK to live a small, repetitive life.

Wait, what? Who just wrote that? WHO AM I ANYMORE

September 9th, 2014

Expectation: work, achieve, get to happy place.

Assumption: that happy place exists, and I can get to it.

Reality: work, failure, then frustration.

More reality: brokenness from life, pain from brokenness, creation from pain.

My reality: I don't want to be broken. I want to be happy all the time doing awesome fulfilling dynamic things! I don't want to create from pain. I want to be happy and create more happy from that.

I grabbed lunch with two good friends from college last week, and we had a great time catching up. And perhaps unsurprisingly, we all realized that we wrestled with similar "quarter-life crisis" issues. The conversation turned to our attempts at romance, and I told of my dating escapades this past year - which closely mirrored my frustrations with life as a whole. One of my friends provided wise insight: "It's like you're running after a train that’s left the platform, and you're exhausting yourself…when what you need to do is wait for the next train."

Daaang.

You know, forget dating; how could I burden anyone with…this? To quote a good movie: "You just pointed to…all of me." "Yes!" Maybe this struggle would end if I accepted who I am now…which I will never accept. I've built myself by refusing to accept that who I was couldn't be better. So then I'm doomed to live with this rift between my ideals and reality?

Discussed this over coffee with a mentor, who asked a surprisingly hard question: in all of this, what do you think God thinks of you? After a strange internal tightening, I couldn't answer. It hurt to think about.

September 17th, 2014

Ever have an out-of-body experience? Where you feel like you're in the room separate from yourself, watching from the outside? I feel like that continually now, watching my own life with eyes narrowed and emotions tucked away.

My little bubble of existence is pathetic. I can do everything I want to in life - work, sleep, exercise, write, play piano - all without leaving my room or seeing a soul. And without outside influence, the willpower to change fades. Without an outside influence to create structure in my life, the desire to achieve erodes to a desire to just get by, to distract myself long enough until the next sleep. And why do otherwise, what's the point? I go out and do life, then come back to the same room, same self, same heavy weight. Forget the question of why get up in the morning, it's now why sleep at all. So I become a weird boogeyman haunting the halls of his own apartment in the unholy hours of the night.

Scarily, there's a suction to this life I hate. I force myself to a night out with friends…then suddenly feel a violent compulsion to leave NOW and run back to my room, huddle up in blankets, and sit in silence. Me, the extrovert, the guy who lived to be with others. Instead of figuring this "quarter-life crisis" out, it figured me out and has spiraled into a vortex of isolation and apathy.

But who am I anymore? Scariest of all: sometimes I'll wake up, sleep, and wake up the next day to realize I didn't even eat anything the day before. ME? Not eat? WHAT am I anymore?

And suddenly my apartment becomes a prison, with self-awareness as my cellmate, distraction my guard, and depression my warden.

There is one silver lining: I’m humbler. I get it now, why some are so beaten down and don’t get up, why it's not childish when an adult struggles to get out of bed. And I feel sadness, not awe, for those who act like have it all together. You either take the hard path and accept your weakness, or lie to yourself and everyone around you - and the latter option ends so badly.

Tracing the origin of this might be tricky. But I suspect it stems from my inability to live with shoulds. You should get up on time, you should get a good breakfast, you should keep working without distractions, exercise, save money, etc. People often live with shoulds for their entire life, and I'm neither stupid nor mature enough to do so. Friends always find me notoriously easy to manipulate with phrases like "Hey Josh, you shouldn't do that" or "That's impossible, you could never do that." The key here: should is a desire imposed on you by an outside source, where want is a desire that originates inside you. I'll be the first one to admit that my internal desires are often messed up. Then learning to want what is healthy is a practice that takes time, experience, and maturity. And the past few years have been a process of testing shoulds and replacing them with experienced wants.

• Do I want to work out? Yes, because I've learned that the benefits far outweigh the costs; I feel better, look better, live better.
• Do I want to cook and eat healthy? Yes, because feel better, look better, live better. Bonus: it impresses girls.
• Do I want to work? Yes, because creating value in something fills a large achievement-shaped hole in me.

I've found those wants for myself, and I'm proud of them. But the process of replacing shoulds with wants is messy, especially when the shoulds run deep.

Taking it deeper - remember that drawing of me bashing my head against the wall of reality? That was part of a bigger diagram of my current life. Upon seeing it, my dad said something poignant: "This isn't easy stuff Josh, but…where's God in all of this?" I couldn't answer then and can't answer now, but…that might just be the crux of this entire crisis.

So much of my relationship with church and the Bible feels like it's ridden by shoulds. And in this period of casting off shoulds, I flinch away from the Christianity I wore, like an old snakeskin. Anything that feels like it irritates and burns. Last week I tried to read part of a devotional, and its structured spirituality angered me. So full of shoulds and should nots.

During a long car ride, I expressed this frustration to a friend, who surprised me with affirmation. In their eyes, it was good that I can't live in fakeness and thirst for something real. Maybe you can call it that. Or you could say I'm tired of not wanting what I should and always striving to reverse that. I'm tired of forcing myself to read a book when I don't want to, go to a service with horribly boring music, listen to yet another left-brained message with all theology and no heart.

The problem is, in distance from my old spirituality, I feel my wants changing. Instead of growing in self-disgust, I think I'm starting to find comfort in this indeterminate life. I don't want the Bible like I wanted it before. To be more precise, I don't want the Bible through another's eyes or structure. I don't WANT the "read this chapter, read this verse, say this prayer, go to this service, get to heaven" …I want it for myself. Tear away the scaffolding, let me see the ancient ruins.

Like Chesterton said, I have to rediscover home. To paraphrase part of his Orthodoxy: a man sets out boldly from his homeland, and after much adventure at sea, discovers a new shore, sets foot on it and proudly plants his flag…only to find out that he's landed at the precisely same beach from which he left. And yet, the beach is different, as he sees it with eyes different than before. "…so I did try to found a little heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy."

Maybe I need to found a little heresy of my own.

Another quote from Chesterton: "Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair." Let your relationship with God be want, not should.

Sounds nice. Sounds…dangerous.

September 30th, 2014

I read the Bible for the first time in a long time last week.

As they feel like the most real part of the book to me, I flipped through a few Psalms. And in my restless grazing, one particular verse stuck out. To paraphrase 25:8, "…God is good, therefore he teaches us." The order of that sticks out to me - it's not because God teaches that he's good. It's because he's good, that he teaches us. Not because we are quick at learning, or deserve the lessons. Because God is good. That the reason things happen is simply because of who. God. is.

If I hold that idea up to the way I actually live, that's crazy. That's a perspective change. That's a change in physics - the whys, hows, and whats of how the world works. So am I relearning the physics of our world?

Keeping with the metaphor, physics vary by bubbles. There are seasons of life that float; they seemingly disobey the laws of gravity. Rich brats get free cars for nothing; Ugandan farmers inevitably have their crops stolen. Remember high school? It's easy to admit that was a bubble, with so many forces, pressures, and laws that don't apply in the outside world. All of us lived or live in bubbles, and inside them we learn much that doesn't work anywhere else.

Thus far my bubbles reinforced one consistent idea: that I push, I get, I achieve - the harder, the faster, the better. College was one example of this with the GPA, extracurricular, and social pressures. And does dating count? Romance last year distracted my mind and kept me from dealing with the hidden forces in my life, preoccupied me enough so that rotten realities didn't seep through. And once I realized I pursued romance to fix or fill something - loneliness, purposelessness, impatience, etc - my drive for dating died. Yes, dating was also a bubble. Accepting that meant a change in my physics. "Push, and it moves” became "push, and it hurts".

So this is my definition of quarter-life crisis: when the physics of your bubble desynchronize with the physics of reality.

This isn't only about different laws of physics, we're talking about different rhythms. Life becomes less staccato, has less short phrases, is lived more through long movements. As you get older, dissonant chords don't impact you as deeply, and musical suspense doesn't prompt sweat like it used to. What does that mean?

My music told me I could sing, and my physics told me I could fly. But the bubble's popped, and I find that I can't. Struggling to lift myself off the floor, my mind finds itself chained by the gravity of reality. The kid whose hand flew up with the "right" answer to every question now silently reflects in the corner.

I'm becoming…something other than expected. Other than what I smugly always thought I would be.

October 8th, 2014

Sometimes the radio just hits you right between the eyes. Caught in typical DC traffic, I flip through the stations to hear a booming “…and they were depressed!” My ears perked up. David Jeremiah was delivering a fantastic sermon, riveting me. He examined the lives of Moses, Elijah, and David, and drew out one common factor. If you look at words and actions of these men from a mental health standpoint, they were all legitimately DEPRESSED! These were men who called down columns of fire from the sky, heard God speak, who saw God. And they still wrestled with depression! Crazy! Why have I never heard this before? That these cornerstones of the Bible wrestled with real crap? Why does it feel like the Christianity that surrounded me for most of my life seemed afraid of failure, when failure is the mortar between the bricks of the Bible?

As a whole, how is this nauseating "just believe in Jesus and it'll all be ok" idea still around? It’s not practically sensical nor even biblical. Yes, one day it will be OK – but not yet, and right now things suck. But they won’t forever. That right there is the whole stinking message of Christianity! That’s what distinguishes Christianity from all other religions – an unyielding grip on the gritty reality of this world with one hand while holding shining hope in the other! Why does it seem like this is news?

A better question: why am I blaming others for their silence, instead of just assuming I was deaf in the first place?

After all this tormented living and running and thinking and journaling these past months, I think…I’ve found the question. The question that pierces through all the symptoms and shoots straight to the heart issue. 

Do I believe…that God is good? That the being who put me in those bubbles and created their “physics”…is making something from these frustrations and struggles? 

To say yes to that takes trust. Trust toward God, toward who he is, in a way deeper than I’ve had to trust before. And nothing feels more absurd than that trust, because all I have right now is this bloody resentment. Why? Because I'm stuck here in this stupid crisis, where everything is a perfectly-engineered Josh-trap, and if God’s all-powerful why didn't he pull me out already? I throw the question at heaven: WHY?

And another question shoots back:

Do you lack anything? 

Um…n-no. I’m completely provided for. On all material levels.  Furniture, food, entertainment, everything is at my fingertips and only awaits effort on my part. Upon the realization of that, all I get is the sense of a heavenly smirk.

Then what’s wrong?

 …all I have is silence. I can’t answer logically, so all I can do is sit here and watch myself. It’s kind of pathetic, this kid pouting in the corner, refusing to accept that recess is over. Ironic how I can verbalize, understand, and mentally grasp my humorous childishness. But this “should” is not yet a “want.” Something deeper in me doesn't move with the momentum of mental recognition; my heart remains and doesn't beat.

October 21st, 2014

Click for music. Written the same week I wrote this entry. 

Having read what I wrote above, I think you’ll understand what the following passages meant for me. I won’t insert commentary, just let these words speak for themselves to your life. Read them out loud and marvel at their piercing edge.

“My soul is bereft of peace; 
I have forgotten what happiness is, 
so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; 
so has my hope from the Lord.’ 
Remember my affliction and my wanderings…
my soul continually remembers it, 
and is bowed down within me.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;

his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,

‘therefore I will hope in him.’

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.

It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.”

- Lamentations 3:17-27, ESV

“Waiting as we see it in people on the first pages of the Gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise. ‘Zechariah, your wife Elizabeth is to bear you son.’ ‘Mary, listen! You are to conceive and bear a son’ (Luke 1). People who wait have received a promise that allow them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting us never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more.”

- Henri Nowen, A Spirituality of Waiting

"I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

- Psalm 73: 21-26

There’s something in here that makes my heart feel like crying. It’s all almost…too poignant (like that “it’s good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth” bit). The crux of both passages is the same: a complete trust in who God is. A reliance on his goodness and on the overflowing love that IS God, so of course you’ll be fine if you just let him have control.

It’s funny – in theory I believe all of that and in practicality know I’m utterly pathetic and stuck on my own – but my heart isn’t ready to accept the implications.

But I think…I’m OK with that. Sometimes it’s ok not to push. Sometimes feeling unsure is part of the path. Sometimes you can listen for the movement, not the motif. Sometimes it’s ok to be pathetic. Maybe the trick is just…hope.

Click for ending music. A favorite of mine.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases...