Reality bites, so bite back

Life’s a bitch until you die?” came Veronica Mars’ summary of Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man.” It was the line that launched a new TV heroine — finally, a female character who had more in common with Buffy than, say, Marissa Cooper — and perhaps, a line that has become symptomatic of the kind of young person these times have sprung forth.

Whip-smart, ahead of her peers and, perhaps, more than a few adults, Veronica Mars is the girl these Internet-dependent times have created. While she’s in advance placement class, she’s underperforming, her teacher’s dismissal of her “bitch” of a line testament to this. Instead, this beautiful mind is saved for extracurricular activities — or in this TV show’s case, crime-fighting. These are the times — a new hierarchy of priorities setting the old one on fire.

A wise man recently asked me why my generation is so easy to self-diagnose as quarter-life crisis casualties when life is so charmed for most of us. This is a rite of passage that generations before us went through, he said, and no one used the tag as an excuse then.

No one said the “quarter-life crisis” is anything new. But if it’s a lot more prominent, chalk it up to glorified troubadours making the “quarter-life crisis” tag part of the casual lexicon with a radio hit or two. Chalk it up to a generation brought up on self-diagnosis that’s quick to tag themselves with any ailment that might excuse shoddy work. Chalk it up to a generation that, with a battalion of blogs and social media, suddenly have a billion ways to whine.

Perhaps it’s a feeling of displacement — a generation of young people unsure what things are important today or, because of the rapidly-changing times, in their future. We’ve seen what our parents have become and we’re unsure if that’s anywhere near what we want.

You see, if midlife crisis revolves around age and growing old — a way-above-his-means Ferrari your dad’s way of holding on to youth — the quarter-life crisis revolves around the parent — the sinking feeling that a certain path might lead to what you don’t want to become or, on the other hand, what you want to become — evidently, all depending on your parental issues or lack thereof.

And perhaps we’ve just got to chalk it up to the world being vastly different now, whether a generation or two above us knows it or not. It’s a different playing field we play on. If technology makes basic things like getting sources for research papers easy, it’s because it’s the least of our worries. Everyone’s a self-starter. Everyone’s a secret powerhouse waiting for graduation to liberate him. With the Internet comes a surprising amount of power, the kind of power more than a few bloggers have found can be wielded pretty strongly. If there’s a crisis, it’s because instead of having several paths to take to adulthood, we have a million.

Anyway, at the end of the day, it’s not a case of which crisis is more valid, or if this crisis seems invalid to some people because his or her situation is harder. A crisis is a crisis is a crisis. If it’s not something you understand, perhaps it’s because it’s not something you feel. A crisis is legitimate because you feel it.

Still, that doesn’t mean whining and getting a time-out from life is the way to go. Just like Veronica picked herself up in that first episode (after rape, mind you), we’ve just got to simmer down and deal. Whether you’re 25 or 85, life’s always going to throw you something overwhelming. So maybe we need to stop blogging, maybe we need to stop wallowing in self-pity with our friends over beer, and maybe — just maybe — we’ve just got to stop listening to John Mayer. Life’s a bitch, yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t suck it up and deal.

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Bitch back: www.twitter.com/raymondangas.