There are times in our lives when we want different things. In the functional world it’s ideal to have a job, a child, a husband, a reasonable home and, of course, if you’re up to it, a dog. Of course, being humans connected by cell phones, social media networking and some sort of magnificent device that encourages sheer laziness in human interactions and the death of ambition, there are those polemic in-betweens.
In the dysfunctional land of the “I want, I want” generation, having it all is just the tip of the iceberg. Whereas the controversial mid-life crisis has almost been embraced by society as a regularized taboo, “the I want, I want” movement has created a steady series of mental breakdowns throughout our lives. Suddenly you don’t want to have a child, you want a Birkin. You don’t care for a husband, you want an affair with a power man or a minor celebrity (depending on one’s taste). You don’t want a tiny flat, you want a penthouse with a view and a garden. You don’t just want a career, you want 10,000 friends on Twitter and Instagram (and that’s aiming low).
Depression is a reasonable and expected culprit for this misguided behavior. Like those depressed bees that simply stop making honey because they think the world sucks, we just stop responding to the repressive, dogmatic ways that we are expected to. Are these breakdowns a good thing that can lead to catharsis and enlightenment, or are they convenient excuses to be a sporadic alcoholic?
Here is how we rage against the machine:
• The College Breakdown. In high school we have all the predictable nuances any adolescent must face. There’s acne, the first kiss, the uncomfortable advent of puberty, the exodus of Santa Claus and, of course, what will happen after the pom-poms droop. College shopping is one of the most vexing decisions a near adult could ever make. The questions of whether they can afford the school they want is primary. The predicament of how they must say goodbye to their comfortable high school sweethearts in favor of uncomfortable professors serves as a disappointing second. There’s the mental wiggling of going Ivy League. Possessing enough temerity to become graphic designers instead of the parental mandated course of becoming a doctor. Then the Hamlet in all of us asks whether college really matters.
And here is the rub. As the high schooler once hated curfews the collegiate will now face the fear of a blinding independence that is so intense it will want to make you pee on the spot. Thoughts of whether you really want to study law when you really feel like being an actor is a painful and common conflict. Becoming a model comes into play very easily around this period. The people who choose this path are exempt from this first breakdown. It’s more likely to happen in the second phase, when they are brainwashed into thinking they are old at the age of 30.
Kids at this age start taking Ritalin to memorize textbooks that will have no great use, really, in the real world. They listen to Fiona Apple and watch Grey’s Anatomy to inspire them to go towards a medical career that will be financially solvent and prove them dignified on paper. Dreams of being a writer, poet, stand-up comedian and the like are squashed. Dreams become hobbies to look forward to in the future.
Being the fresh-faced college graduate is not enough. You need to have at least interned for three multi-national companies simultaneously and have an MBA by the time you’re 27. Without these it’s easy to feel inadequate in firms with Jewish last names branding the walls. Happy hour and half-witted relationships seem to be the cure. You believe it and use it as a salve until you’re hooked on this seemingly purgatorial state.
• The Yuppie Breakdown.
So you have a job, but you don’t have a career. You have a paycheck, but you don’t have savings. Welcome to the yuppie nightmare where the watercooler is always ready for you as you cry silently while nibbling on a limp tuna sandwich.
With the deft hand of Google (you Google information on something and forget it in five minutes flat) and smart phones to encourage you to waste your time doing dumb activities, inspiration comes in small bits or nothing at all. At 32 I still believe I belong to the yuppie bracket. I have the memory of a sand mite and rely on my Notes app on my iPhone to remind me to do things like take deep breaths. I meditate using an app (download Mindful Healing).
I still don’t know whether I’m doing well or if I’m just getting by. It’s easy to be totally insecure during this period. It’s the era of failed relationships, career hopping and premature sabbaticals (I took mine when I turned 28). It suddenly feels like a prolonged adolescence. Kim Kardasian thought she would have kids and all at 30. She stated that she would be old by then.
In the past, by the time of his death at age 32, Alexander the Great had conquered almost the entire known world. Gregory Pincus achieved in-vitro fertilization of rabbits. Later he invented the birth control pill at the age of 31. At age 30, Donald Trump persuaded bankers to lend him $80 million so he could buy the Commodore Hotel.
Pressure.
Here we are barely getting by paying our credit card bills, student loans, all kinds of loans and, sadly, asking for a little parental support with our tails between our legs. I even see this kind of thing with a lot of over-educated and over-experienced people. They know too much about things that seem a little insignificant in the real world. Did you take Underwater Basket Weaving in UC San Diego? Or perhaps you aced the course on “Philosophy and Star Trek” in Georgetown University? Then there’s the must-have “Magic, Witchcraft and the Spirit World” at MIT? Yes, MIT.
We no longer have courses — especially in our childhood — about practical things like building, cooking or growing food. Instead kids take orchestra class and French lessons (um, yeah… whatever). So yes, we can’t boil water but we can sure make baskets underwater.
There’s enough material here for a sitcom but not enough for a romcom. What used to be embarrassing is now just downright tragic. The starry-eyed optimism in the first day in the office has become a battleground of frenemies, unreached quotas, forgotten deadlines and a potential minefield of sexual harassment.
Oh, and yeah: you’re still not yet married.
• The Mid-Life.
The cliché that leads any full-grown adult to partake in anserine activity is to blame in the 40s. Just how we’re instantly in a bad mood when dealing with customer service, turning 40 seems like a free pass. It also seems like a death sentence.
It is a time when you’re just don’t own your life anymore. You either devote it to your children or career. You settle into a routine and each day the only thing that changes is the color of your shirts. You can’t do that Patagonia thing anymore because you have a recital to attend or a con call to be had. Then you have that whole “who am I” thing and think about divorce and going to South America on a daily basis.
Alternately, it can also be the time where you feel you have underachieved big time. Your yuppie loans are now Chapter 11 material. Your job is a step higher from an intern. Still. You still date inappropriate people. If you’re single.
I once dated an older man and asked him if I was his yellow Porsche. True enough, we would go to dinners with his friends, I would be that dangling carrot reminding their well-kept wives that if they didn’t please their husbands well, a little Asian dimsum will soon be their replacement. I hated that. I was going through my own yuppie breakdown, after all.
You find yourself wearing something inappropriate (Coldplay’s Every Teardrop is a Waterfall styling comes to mind), dating someone inappropriate (Ashton Kutcher and me!) and buying something inappropriate (skinny jeans… this goes for both genders).
Loads of vampiric behavior comes into play here. Suddenly a woman befriends the 20-somethings in her yoga class and goes to corporate-sponsored raves with them. Men in suits start saying “Yo” when they answer their phones.
It’s a race against time. It is a lonely moment for grace.
• Mortality Crisis.
I won’t expound on this too much just because it’s too sad. We live in an age where we delay death to an unnatural length. Friends die, your kids are busy having kids and the world seems small.
Your knees are too weak for you to see the Great Wall of China and you read National Geographic and porn to remind you of a life that has passed by.
There are people who want to live. There are people who are only scared to die. This crisis makes you think what kind of person you will be amongst the two choices.
What we need to learn from these breakdowns is that they do happen when you don’t listen to the world. When you’re too busy accomplishing instead of creating. You don’t just get a job, you create a career. You don’t just have kids, you raise little men and women. You don’t just live, you create a home.
A lot of this has to do with self-respect. Having a clear vision of the kind of life you want. I subscribe to the belief that you live the kind of life that you deserve. You’re mindful of your decisions. You learn from mistakes. You cherish good things.
I’m halfway out from my Yuppie Breakdown. I just paid all my credit debt last week! Thirty percent in the clear.
What will happen when I turn 40? I don’t know, but I feel like I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve learned to care and to give a shit. You can always look at these meltdowns like melting gold: it’s hot and challenging but at the end you decide what you make out of it.
And that is what Jerry Maguire calls “Breakdown, Breakthrough.”