In case you are unfamiliar with the stereotypical mid-life crisis, the narrative is basic. The 45-year-old dad becomes bored and frustrated with his static life, and one day becomes so overwhelmed that he divorces his wife, grows his hair long, buys a new car, and finds a young girlfriend. 

Then, after a while, he, for the fourth time, realizes that he will not be a professional baseball player, and that his home life was not just better than the alternative, but was actually loving and fulfilling. These revelations cause him to beg for forgiveness and return to Roscoe, his Golden Retriever, and the rest of his family.   

I believe philosopher Soren Kierkegaard gives us a good context for which to understand this impulsive behavior. Kierkegaard explains that adults engage in a self-conscious process where we frame, interpret and analyze our past to give context to the present, causing us to project our future. This process requires us to be both self-aware and self-reflective. We understand that we exist separately and independently from others, and that we can compare that independent party to the person we wish to be. If we are content with that comparison, we can be happy, or to Kierkegaard, “free.”  

With this definition in mind, I believe the dad in his mid-life crisis tries to restore this loss of freedom. The dad compares his current state to what he had wished for himself. He finds a disconnect between the two and seeks to rescue himself from his current self. 

I have noticed a trend of recent graduates of Ivy League schools struggling to find this freedom. Their failure to find harmony produces what I consider the quarter-life crisis.  

I believe this happens for a few reasons. First, it is much easier to measure your own production in college or in high school through grades. As a young adult in the real world, the ability to inwardly compare can weaken. The ability to self-assess is thus destroyed.  

The real world is freer than high school and college. This freedom can produce anxieties in that we are forced to produce and provide for ourselves in a larger, unmapped landscape. If it is difficult to find a job, or if that job is not rewarding enough, we worry about our future.  

I am sure many of us believe the onset of freedom will relieve anxieties, but actually Kierkegaard believed the opposite, and I agree. As we move from high school to college to the real world, the more free we are to make independent decisions, the more difficult objective self-reflection becomes. This reflection becomes doubly difficult in a world that is random.

The growing-up process can provide a difference in what we had wanted the world to look like as opposed to how it currently looks. As we age, if these two become farther apart, we might blame ourselves even if our external environment is more to blame. It may simply be that we never knew what our life would look like out of college. 

This constant self-conscious comparison can cause paranoia and anxiety, and maybe even productive paralysis. Furthermore, our Ivy League egos and extreme self-efficacy can prevent us from discussing these issues, causing our worries to irritate. 

This habit of self-reflection can cause impulsive decisions by undergraduates in an immediate need to self-correct. 

Some, at the immediate loss of identity, attempt to become entrepreneurs without understanding that this decision can be uglier and more rigorous than the average corporate job. The students’ limited understanding of entrepreneurship can lead to unsuccessful ventures, causing them to live on their friends’ couches for too long.

Others choose to become temporary “snow bums,” moving to Colorado for two years to teach skiing. This group tries to avoid the uncomfortable post-graduate life. But is this just a way to escape post-grad anxiety?

The truth is, both of these groups, and most individuals who seek post-graduate refuge, just may not have done their homework.  Maybe learning what early post-graduate life can entail is just as important as finding a job. 

Interestingly, the quarter-life crisis has existed for decades. I would like to point to Benjamin Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s character in the 1967 film The Graduate. Benjamin graduates from college to find himself in the same state of uncertainty. Benjamin has not made post-graduate plans. The onset of the real world seems indefinable and scary to Benjamin, and his reaction involves a summer of romantic confusion and eventual catharsis. 

I find it noteworthy that this crisis has transpired in America for decades, and I admire Benjamin’s reaction. If you have seen the movie, interpret it as you wish.

My question is, if everyone is suffering from the same shortcomings, then why worry? I find that the people who handle this situation best are the one’s able to diagnose their problem as a universal one, rather than a personal one. Take solace in the fact that the responsibility to solve this issue is decentralized. 

I am not claiming that your school loans will vanish. Additionally, it really stinks that your first job utilizes very little of the skills you gained. But if the problem is universal, than it is not just your personal responsibility to fix it, it is everyone’s. As is the case with any problem, its alleviation will only come through open dialogue — not just between peers, but even with our elders, our employers and our younger siblings.

Maybe at this point in our lives it is best to discontinue the necessity of self-conscious comparison.

Mathew Sevin is a senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He may be contacted at msevin@cornellsun.com. You Wanted a Hit appears alternate Wednesdays this semester.