Post quarter-life crisis (and also Happy New Year)

Most common things keep happening to most of us. After all, we are commoners and no special beings. We have a great set of friends, a reliable family and a job no matter how it is; well most of us do have these things. Yet if you are over 25 by a good margin, there is a strong sense of loneliness that could possibly grip you. It is a scary time because the decisions that one needs to take at this age are life changing (life threatening?) and bound to stay for long.

Most articles will talk about how at 25, there is a difference between an adult and a non-adult and there is a confusion within the self to counter and contain these two personas. There is always a denial mode, and there are certainly friends and cousins getting promoted or getting married all over. Then there are parents who think you are so ambitious that marriage is never on your mind. Little do they know about your struggle to discover yourself, your likes and dislikes, your wants and desires; which have evolved, changed or vanished altogether??!  For a person who probably doesn’t know to handle tax returns well, ambition can be far fetched and possibly, overrated.

I bet most of us who –

1.       Don’t have a girlfriend/ boyfriend or a fiancé, and/ or

2.       Don’t like our jobs, and/ or

3.       Don’t seem to have the same metabolism that we did a couple of years ago,

Don’t even have a resume!

By this age we have lost many of our hobbies, probably forgotten what our passions were like, had numerous fights with our boss for no tangible outcomes, arguments with our mom on general generation gap issues, disillusionment over the entire purpose of post grad education, one super serious break up, have been thoroughly used by so called friends, learnt the hard way the true value of real friends, probably lost faith in God, killed the effervescent child within, lost our innocence, our original killer looks and hearsay is that we have probably lost the drinking capacity as well. Not the best age to be in, is it?

Has it happened that you signed up for too much work so that you can prove a point at work or more often than not, you wanted to be constantly occupied? It is another way of running away from taking decisions and avoiding thinking. Eventually you would burn out and think that you don’t have a life! Don’t be the craftsman of your own dead routine!

Do you frequently have to apply for leaves to attend marriages of friends or cousins? Mere yaar ki shaadi is always an easier option as you can ogle at random people but in a family wedding you are under the radar for potential alliances. At such Hum aapke hain kaun shaadis, question is – To look good or not to?!

It so happens that arrange marriage tops this list of processes (or necessary occurrences) that seem to unknowingly disrupt your peace of mind. You know of friends who dated for a lifetime and then suddenly realized they do not know each other enough and parted ways. The floor slips beneath your feet when you realize your online profile is making claims about your love for kids and career and traveling blended perfectly with impeccable homeliness! You would probably be making a decision to move cities, probably leave your job to marry someone with whom your astrological match is more than perfect. Such a crazy idea, but seems to have worked for generations together. Then you wonder whether why aren’t you convinced that it will work for you as well, applying the same commoners’ logic. Many a times you find yourself staring at the laptop screen, figuring out what caused your only break up (or the most serious break up), wondering when you will post honeymoon hashtags and dinner date pictures; probably unconsciously crying and not knowing why this is happening to you. Then there is always this regret of ‘I did everything right!’ and look how people who never did the ‘right’ things are so happy and have everything in their life! What was indeed the point of being ‘right’ all the time! Who defines the ‘right’ is a separate epic altogether!

You are almost on the verge of being jealous of happy people, not out of hatred but out of self-pity and more than that, out of a high degree of disturbance caused by uncertainty in one or more or all of the aforementioned 3 key areas of life viz. partner, career and metabolism. Amid this turbulence, if a dear friend asks you to share your concerns, you say “I am ok”. You probably aren’t lying, you may be perfectly ok but you keep having this feeling that something is amiss and don’t even know what exactly you need to share! Such an incredible being you are! Such inexplicable things keep happening to you!

You do have one friend each (minimum) of both the sexes with whom you discuss the matrimony thing in detail and feel amazed at how exactly you know and understand the deepest fears mutually. You catch up with these folks regularly and discuss the ‘pipeline’ created by your parents and crib about not feeling the ‘click’ when you meet a matrimony prospect. These are probably your companions to go to Himalayas post renunciation or in the case when nothing else works out for you. You possibly tried Tinder or Floh and resigned on taking the onus of finding your own partner. Delegation is always easy, be it work or life!

Like the solitary cloud with a silver lining, there is a brighter side to this age too! On the pretext of getting married and responsible soon, you can make more than most of the time at hand. Chill with friends over weekends, go to endless road trips, spend money a little frivolously on shopping and binge eating, go on a solo trip (preferably international) and explore places, people and yourself! Try to revive the most engaging hobby you once possessed, learn to dance, experiment with jobs and do at least one thing that is dangerous. The next best dangerous thing to that should be getting married!

All said and done, a day from now the calendar will turn the page and a new year will present itself to us. A year with new possibilities, new hopes and new aspirations! Let new dreams be formed as we infuse a new lease of life into our daily routines, yet again! Hope each one of us sleeps with starry eyes tonight!

Wishing everyone a super Happy New Year!!