A mid-life crisis. We’ve all heard of them. That time in an adult’s life where, typically around the age of 40, they begin to question their entire existence and nearly every aspect in their life as well. Am I really meant to be in this job? Am I satisfied with what I’ve accomplished so far? Will I really never be able to travel the whole world like I wanted to? All these questions are running through their minds with no clear answers in sight. So, that’s when the big purchases begin.
They buy a brand new sports car to feel young again or they plan that trip they’ve always wanted to take. Maybe they even quit their jobs and go back to school. In the adult world, a mid-life crisis is looked at as something negative, something reckless and pointless that just gets in the way of the regular routine of everyday life. However, I look at it as both as a learning experience and an opportunity to grow as a person and to be more comfortable with who you are.
Why do I think that way, you might ask? Well, because I had one of those crises. Last summer. At the age of 19.
To be fair, by definition I guess it’s not technically a “mid-life” crisis. I had just finished my second year of university in the Communications program at SFU and had started my first real adult-like job working as a receptionist for the summer at a government office. Super cushy job, lots of downtime, pay was nice, but perhaps with a little bit too much time to think about my life and to Google things. I don’t really know when it started, but I was sure as hell confused when one day I found myself emailing an academic advisor about switching into a computer science and linguistics joint major. Like, hello Sarah. You’ve never even take a computer science or linguistics class in your life. Oh, and remember how much you hate math?
Spoiler alert: I didn’t end up switching. However, I did get a new perspective on my degree (still Communications) and on my life. Not only did I freak out about my degree, but I freaked out about everything.
I started thinking about the future, what I wanted to do with my life, where I wanted to live, who I wanted to be, and I had no idea. Honestly, it was scary. I felt all alone with no direction and no one to talk to. I considered dropping out and taking a year off and I even booked a two month trip to Southeast Asia in January. I was buying things left right and center to try and make myself feel better, to try and develop the identity that I thought I lost. I was going out for drinks, dinners, shopping sprees; you name it and I probably had a recent receipt. Not surprisingly though, none of that made me feel better. All I had was a maxed out credit card and clothes with the tags still attached hanging in my closet.
It wasn’t until I finally let it slip out in front of my friends that I realized something. They all felt the same way I did. Maybe not to the extent I did, but they knew what I was talking about when I said I was stressed out about life in general. They felt the pressure from their parents, their professors, even their peers, to keep pushing on even though they were running out of gas. I realize now, that questioning your direction in life is in fact just part of living. Everyone has those moments where they wonder what they are really meant to do and the sad truth is you will never really know. I realized something very important last summer and it is that if I’m not happy with what I’m doing, I need to change my point of view or I need to change my life. In my case, all I needed to do was look at things a little differently.
Three months later, I have paid off all my bills and have a new sense of self in life. While it was a messy little while, it really taught me the importance of putting your mental and emotional health first. I didn’t know when to push myself and when to let myself rest, which resulted in my catastrophic blow up of 2016 and left me feeling burnt out. I’m still taking a semester off to go on my trip, but I am almost certain I will come back refreshed and ready to get back into it again. So basically, if you take anything from this article, please just remember to listen to your body. Now, I’m not telling you to give in every time you want to watch Netflix instead of study. Instead, it’s important to get a good balance in your life in order to keep your energy going and to give yourself a good break once in a while. It’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to be totally clueless about where you want to go in life or who you want to be. As long as you keep asking these things, you’ll eventually introspectively find the answer (hopefully, without going to the extent I did).