Of quarters and middles-

I think there is no greater sadist oneupmanship than psychoanalysis. It gives you a big holier than thou pedestal to stand on and analyse emotion with a supreme sense of disconnected evolution. That every bit of gut tugging overwhelming angst be put into such discrete terminology like transference, defence mechanisms, learned helplessness, cognitive decentering and the like is disconcerting.I used to think that the psychoanalysis-know alls would be the most evolved beings on this planet...till my psy co-resident enlightened me that we are all the same gooey stuff 'up there'

This is a piece which has been floating around different blogs ....it was forwarded to me by my cousin some years back when I could claim membership to the twentysomething club. Now I have graduated to a twentymorethansomethings gluttonous club...well past a quarter century-but I think the ebbs and highs plague even the thirty or forty somethings just as much.

I am still to touch mid life.Which I think is a bit of a paradox- suppose I were to meet with an accident and die tomorrow- am I well past mid life then?Does a person in the developing countries with a lower life expectancy experience an earlier MLC. Huh?! It doesn't account for culture differences or the mutability of life or sensibilities.It is a lumper's theory...quite really.( Not of the likes who say " today is the first day of the rest of my life " na?)

Some choose to escape this MLC/QLC by being in perpetual college mode( Aamir Khan in RDB?),some change their paths( Arun Shourie?!),some glorify it( Scrubs, Wonder Years)...and well ...some just crumble ( Allen Ginsberg's Howl)Any one of them could be a 20, 30, 40 ...whatever you choose. The unifying concept is the crisis.The angst.Its a wasted emotion if you look at it with Freud's glasses. Productively nil.But again....thats the omniscient psychoanalyst's view. And there is no one walking on two legs by that name actually.

I tried to trace the original: can't really find out. If someone does- let me know.



They call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.” It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out...