The Quarterlife Crisis: Then and Now

Right. Though I hoped to avoid it I feel I was bound to post of the quarterlife crisis. I'm sure you've heard too much of it, particularly if you are quarterlife crisis-ing currently. So forgive me, but I have a point that I would like to make.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term "quarterlife crisis", here is a link to the wikipedia entry)

Without meaning to, I read a couple of novels this spring that dealt with the crisis indirectly (these books have been great catharsis as I've emerged from my own quarterlife crisis). What follows is a brief review the books.

Dave Eggers wrote a great novel a few years ago that is quintessential quarterlife crisis. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is strange and hilarious. The main character/narrator is in his early twenties; he grew up white in a privileged, white suburb, but was struck by tragedy when both of his parents died of cancer within a few months of each other. He is sympathetic, but he's also arrogant and narcissistic with a major victim complex. He vehemently believes that his generation (generation X...) will save the world from all that is white collar and cruel, and with that conviction he and his friends start a magazine. The magazine holds his interest for a couple of hundred pages, but eventually he decides to pursue something else...but we never find out what. Women come and go; he cannot commit. Most of his relationships are unhealthy, and he admits as much. Sadly (or artistically?), he is static. In the end he has no revelation, no breakthrough.

To me, the quarterlife crisis seems a natural fit for Generation X, the same for Generation Y. But I have seemed to think the Baby Boomers never had quarterlife crises. They were busy either becoming white collar workers or protesting society in a way that had impact--I thought. But John Updike proved me wrong.

Updike wrote a series of novels around a character named Rabbit Angstrom. It's an interesting series: as Updike aged, Rabbit aged, so each book found Rabbit experiencing the problems and pressures that Updike was presently experiencing. Rabbit (Updike?) is 26 in the first novel, Rabbit, Run; it's 1960 and Rabbit is having a quarterlife crisis.

Rabbit was a high school basketball star, but his star came crashing down with graduation. He joins the army, then settled down with a wife and a son and a daughter on the way. He works as a kitchen appliance demonstrator at a local market. And he is miserable--dissatisfied with being an adult. Rabbit spends the novel looking for a way back to the freedom and the glory of being 18. He begins by schooling a bunch of middle schoolers at basketball; for the moment he is satisfied. But when he returns home to find his wife drunk in front of the TV, he freaks and decides to run. He gets in his car and drives as far away as he can think to drive. In a moment of irony Rabbit does not feel adult enough to embrace his freedom, so he returns to his home town--but instead of going back to his wife, he moves in with a prostitute who is everything that his wife is not. The book proceeds, tragically, with little change to Rabbit's character.

(As an aside, Rabbit, Run is an excellent novel--anyone interested in American fiction should read it)

Okay, earlier I promised that I had a point, and I do. Rabbit's life is very different than mine and than most of my friends. He is settled: he has a growing family and he's working on getting a mortgage. Generation Y is not so settled: many of my friends and I are still trying to discover what we want to do, and starting a family is still on the horizon. However, I think Rabbit's choice to run and Gen Y's continual search for a calling are two sides of the same crisis. We grew up with big dreams, but the reality of adult life is not like our dreams--and so it takes us a few years to sort through the professional, relational, and emotional letdowns. It doesn't really matter what generation we're a part of, at some point our childhood dreams have to be altered to fit with reality.

"You cynic!" you say, "Don't you remember Yes We Can!"

I am certainly a realist, but I don't think I'm cynical. CS Lewis has taught me to love the romance of childhood. But more, I love seeing the redemption and the transformation of our world. Such work is our task as adults and requires blood, sweat, and tears as much as it requires inspiration.