Jackassalope

The Quarter Life Crisis

The quarter life crisis happens when twenty-somethings realize life isn’t as rosy as they were led to believe. We grew up in an era where our parents told us to follow our dreams, athletes preached that if we worked hard every day, it would pay off, and movie stars touted that if it could happen to them, it could happen to us. So we believed. We studied hard, kept our noses clean, and cherished our dreams. We graduated high school, then college, and stepped wide-eyed and curious into the real world. But the real world looked the other way.

We stand on the threshold of reality armed with our hopes. But reality uses bullets. One by one, we get cut down and left behind. We beat around the bush of indifference trying to find our reasons. But our world is different from our parents. Our president is laughed at, our war is an occupation, and NASA’s budget continually gets cut. We don’t stare at the moon and imagine when. We ignore Mars when we’re already there.

We are the twenty-somethings that weren’t forgotten about but ignored. We are our parent’s sounding board; talked to and inflated so they could go to bed and say that they made a difference, that they inspired us to be better. We are no longer inspired. We are middle class and homeless. We are social security numbers, Nielson ratings, and car salesmen. We have more than our parents because VISA gave it to us. We have less than our parents because MasterCard took it back.

The quarter-life crisis is laughed at by those who created it. They coaxed us up the mountain and pushed us off. Now they wonder why we are licking our wounds at such a young age. But we are not angry, we’re disappointed.