My cure for a Quarter Life Crisis... A little bit of Alchemy

The hard part about having the majority your friends younger than you is having to watch them play thru some of the same hazards, same emotions, same mistakes, and same confusion.  There isn't much you can do to stop it, much like parents can't always stop their children.  As I so bravely (ehem - stupidly) told Mom when I was a teenager "I can't learn from your mistakes if I don't live them out myself."  I think what I meant at the time was the I couldn't learn from her mistakes just because she was saying no and not sharing why and what she learned from her own experiences - but at the same time, sometimes a person just has to live life and figure things out.  It's their life.

I have a few friends that have reached that quarter life crisis.  Call it that if you want. Or, as I think of it, reality just set in.  Life has smacked them right between the eyes.

For those of you who are not familiar with the quarter life crisis, or that its been a while since you've experienced it, its easily identifiable in and felt by most mid-to-late twenty-somethings at one point of time of their life (if not multiple times).  Trademark thoughts running amuck in the head of a person  suffering from the typical quarter life crisis:

• I'm not in college any more.    
• It appears that life is the same, day in and day out. 
• There are bills I'm responsible for and all I can get offered are crappy jobs that I have no real interest in.  So I can't quit, and I can't move forward.
• There are pressures, percieved and real. 
• Life isn't easy and I can't just coast thru it.  In fact, its very hard work.
• I don't have many choices, and the choices I do have to make aren't making that much of an impact.
• I'm trapped, and I'm the one who trapped myself.
• I don't really know who I am or really, who I want to be.  But I know I want to be seen as someone different than I am being seen as right now.

Luckily for the friends that I'm referring to, we live in Colorado and everything is automatically better on a mountain.  I went thru mine in Omaha... Nebraska.... there weren't any mountains to distract me there. 

I'm not sure how I found my way to reading The Alchemist during my own quarter life crisis, but reading that book shortened my anxiety considerably.  The nuggets of wisdom in this beautifully crafted novel made me realize that I was more in control than I thought.  I had the power to make decisions.  Every day.  Even not making a decision was a decision itself. 

This book totes some powerful stuff.  Only pick up if you are ready to change your life. 

I'm not kidding when I say that.

I'd like to share a few of my favorite quotes from The Alchemist for you, in hopes to give you a better understanding. (And I promise that my next blog will not rely so heavily on quotes...two blogs in a row is enough).

From The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo

"What's the world's greatest lie?' the boy asked, completely surprised. 'It is this: that at a certain point in our lives, we loose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.  That is the world's greatest lie."

"...every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."

"...This wasn't a strange place.  It was a new one."

"...that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy used throughout the time...it was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired."

"he still had some doubts about the decision  he made.  But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision as only the beginning of things.  When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision."

"...people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want."

"Because I don't live in either my past or my future.  I'm interested only in the present.  If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man."

"You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend.  If he abondons that pursuit, its because it wasn't true love."

"One is loved because one is loved.  No reason is needed for loving."

 

As an avid reader, there are few books that I routinely re-read.  This is one of them.  There are also few books that I am passionate about having my friends read.  Actually, there are only two that I recommend.  Two that I know have been influencial in helping develop my own personal philosophy of how I look and interpret the world.  The two books:  Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - which no one ever reads because its 1,000 some pages long.  The other is The Alchemist.  Which everyone should read - no excuses.  Its only 163 pages. 

I look at these quotes and think "I should be able to have a favorite."  But I can't.  They all touch my heart and inspire me.  Equally right now as I type them, with each having been more impactful at different crossroads.

I gave my copy of The Alchemist to a friend last night.  We had just held a lengthy discussion about being in a place of comfort and our perceptions of where we were compared to where we thought we would be.  Thoughts that I recognize as the beginning rumblings of that quarter life crisis.  I told her to come over, that I had something for her to read.  As I gave my paperback copy to her, I wondered how often I will send this book out in the world. 

I hope often.  Not because I wish that my friends need to seek the motivation the words provide, but because the book represents my belief in that answers to prayers and questions come in many different forms, in many different ways.  You just have to keep your eyes open for them.