Better Late Than Never !!!

Phew…this busy-hectic-workaholic (I’d like to believe that) life of mine has kept me away from a lot of things I used to do just for “myself”. Things like dreaming, writing, sketching, dancing amongst others. And while I kept doing things that weren’t really the one’s I would want to see myself doing, one day I realized that I was turning 25! Oh hell yeah…I turned onto the other side of the twinkling twenties on 28^th June this year. Growing a year older is always a depressing moment for me and turning 25 surely felt the worst. Anyways so I decided that since life seems to be moving at a pace that I am unable to catch up with, it's about time I go back to doing things that give me joy – so here I come back to what I love doing most – talk CRAP!

When I graduated from SIMC in 2009, I had read this article in Mumbai Mirror titled “Unsteady Quarters” and I think that’s the topic I want to write about in my blog at this point in time.

As Wikipedia cites “The quarter-life crisis occurs shortly after a young person – usually an educated professional, in this context – enters the "real world".

I believe this so called “quarter life crisis” doesn’t leave a single soul. We all go through it in someway or the other, some with a greater intensity and some lesser. But moreover I feel that it’s not really about a job or a relationship. It doesn’t circle around friends or family. It truly is about who “You” are from the realms of your very own existence to what you or others perceive you to be. This is a phase where we struggle not to mend a poorly paying job or an unfulfilled relationship, a friendship that’s gotten bitter or a rift with our parents. We struggle and struggle really hard to put together pieces of ourselves - some which are broken over the years, some which are lost on the way, some that are newly found and those that we are yet to create.

Taking cues from my own life over the last 5 years and those of my close friends, I have come to the conclusion that we all want to find just one and I repeat just one “identity” that defines what we are and not what we or others want us to be. Yes! We do work hard and party harder. We do want a fat salary to get deposited into our accounts each month end. We do want to get rewarded for our talent and efforts. We do want to make our parents proud. We do want to gift them a world tour fully paid by us. We madly want to fall in love. We want to nurture a strong relationship. We want to be committed and we want to plan a life.

But hey! Before we accomplish all of these…we want to find “ourselves”. We want to know what makes us happy and what makes us cry. What matters and what we care a damn about.

And that is why it’s called a crisis! Because you may suddenly realize that a job paying a fat salary does not bring you as much happiness as a job where you love what you do every minute of those hours you are stuck in office. Your parents who didn’t seem to understand why you scored such low marks for all these years have now become your best friends who know and understand what exactly you want out of life. The huge circles of friends are now reduced to just a handful of close friends who you know are going to stick with you through the most difficult times. It has now dawned upon you that a high school sweetheart might not always turn out to be the one you get married to because after so many years of being in a relationship and growing together, you know that he or she is not the one. It is not that you’ve stopped loving them…you just aren’t “in love” with them.

Like I always say, “get to know your own self first…it’ll be much easier to know what you want out of your life and from others who are of part of your life!”

So dear friends, quarter life crisis to me is nothing but a phase of introspection, that of self awareness and getting to know the only person whom you haven’t spent enough time with – and that is “YOU, Yourself and Thee.” :)