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-----Original Message-----
For those in their twenty-something's...
This puts it all into words perfectly. They call it the
"Quarter-life Crisis."
It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start
realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you
didn't know and may or may not like.
You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year
or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are
now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those
friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest
people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some
of the most important ones.
What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not
really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you
would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are
going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.
You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with
the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe
they weren't so great after all.
You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and
do not want.
Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are
doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you
realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things
to your list of what is acceptable and what is not.
You are insecure and then secure.
You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life.
You feel alone and scared and confused.
Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past
with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and
further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move
forward.
You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved
could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you
can't meet anyone decent enough to get to know better.
You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot
figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person.
One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and
getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.
You go through the same emotions and questions over and over
and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot
seem to make a decision.
You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life
for yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now
you'd just like to be a contender!
What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to
it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as
we can to figure this whole thing out.
Send this to your twenty-something friends...Maybe it will help some
one feel like they are not alone in the state of confusion that is our post
grad. years!!!
-----A Reply-----
Problem is well defined and I can surely relate to it.. but what about the solution?
If you're going to mail it to 20 something friends... I think u better mail
the solution too!
Probably one solution would be in keeping in touch with spiritualism in some form
or the other.
It dosent mean u have to give up whatever ur doing and renounce the world.
In fact u can continue doing whatever ure doing now, in a better way.
To further explain this... in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna dosent feel like
fighting and wants to give up everything and renounce the world and go to
some forest. Krishna tells him to stand up and fight. Fighting is a metaphor
for our daily activities, in our case probably software development. In fact
a lot of things in the Gita made sense after reading the commentry and not
just the translation... the five horses drawn by Krishna are our five senses...
sight, smell etc. And Arjuna is the body, and Krishna is the Self i.e. the soul.
Im telling all this because until I actually started reading the book, I had
thought the Gita was just a lot of religious stuff to be read if one considers a
career in becoming a pujari or maybe some time after retiring. It turned out to
be a very practical guide to daily life!
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