Third-life crisis

 This is a new term that I heard from my friend the other day. I was thinking that I'm going through mid-life crisis, but it's apparently now termed third-life crisis for people in their early to mid-30's (thanks to the medical peeps for increasing our life expectancy). But regardless of age or the correct terminology, the fact is we are in a crisis. 

If you speak to people who are not going through it themselves (yet), chances are they'd laugh it off or say "Just chillll. You'll be fine". Thanks for the sound advice buddy, but that's not really helping. They may not understand what arguments and thoughts are constantly going on in your head every day. It wouldn’t matter to others but those thoughts matter to YOU. These thoughts could be anything from the fact that you are aging, to what you have achieved in your career to even existential questions like "Why am I here?" 

I'm going through it myself (yes, right now) for all the reasons I have mentioned above, and so are hundreds of thousands of other people. And all of us are just going through the motions, trying to take it one day at a time. In a sense, that's all we can do till we figure out what we want to do next or how to find happiness with what we have. There is nothing externally wrong with us that would make people pause and ask us about what's wrong. There are just these arbitrary and infrequent moments when the what's, what ifs, and why's creep up in our heads. 

It is absolutely natural to compare ourselves with others and their supposed perfect lives. Social media has driven us to believe that whatever people post about themselves online is the sum of their life experiences. That is absolutely not true and any endeavour to believe so, is calling for a pity-party. A better use of our time might be to assess what we can be grateful for, what we have achieved and where we see ourselves in the future. 

Of course, if you are worried about getting older, there is no time travel or a Benjamin Button clock yet, so you'll just have to accept that you are getting older. But that thought can be accompanied by some positive reinforcement that, as you get older, many more opportunities will open for you just by virtue of your life experiences. They will be different for everyone, and we just have to figure out what they are. If you are disappointed by what you have achieved, it's time for self-reflection, where you give yourself a pat on the back for the simplest of achievements, perhaps how you made a person smile ten days ago. 

This third-life crisis a big pain in the ass for sure, but like my dear friend pointed out to me, this is a good thing in a way. It means we are reflecting on our life and looking out for our future. By going through this crisis, we have unintentionally decided that we will not let life pass us by.  Instead, we will contemplate our lives and guide our paths in a way that we want to. It's a lot better to worry about it now than to regret not worrying about it later. While I don’t claim to have solved this crisis situation in any way, the main takeaway from this post is that you are not alone in this. We will get out of it or at least journey together.