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.

5 Things about Chicago

When I was eight I asked my dad which city was the most polluted. He told me that it was probably LA. I didn't believe him--"What about Chicago," I said, "that places seems dirty." My dad told me about the Chicago winds and how they blow pollution out of the city, but I remained skeptical.

I never had high expectations for Chicago, which is probably a good thing. As has been the case with all John Krasinski movies, high expectations often lead to disappointment. But low expectations can lead to surprises (see Grape Nuts, they seem gross but are, in truth, amazing).

I have been in Chicago for two days, headed back tonight, and being here has not been like my first bowl of Grape Nuts, but it has been pretty good. Here are five surprising/interesting/nice things about Chicago:

1. Mid-west hospitality. Cold and confused, I walked off the train and onto the streets of downtown Chicago at 9 pm Thursday night. Within two minutes of looking confused two beautiful people (a guy and girl) stopped to ask me if I needed help. I said yes, and they spent a few minutes standing in the cold explaining how transit works in Chicago. And they seemed genuinely happy to do it. I have had a number of interactions like this over the past few days. It seems like Chicago people are nice.

2. Transit. I didn't get the whole taxi/train/bus thing at first, but I have gotten the hang of it and have discovered that one could live in Chicago without a car. Praise the Lord.

3. The Neighborhoods. Chicago has interesting neighborhoods. Like LA neighborhoods they have serious problems (racial/economic segregation, poor schools, aging infrastructure), and like LA neighborhoods they have history and culture and (some) sense of community. I like Hyde Park in particular, home to the University of Chicago and this guy named Barry Obama.

4. Food and tea. From what I can tell its cheaper than in LA--better Italian, worse Mexican. And there's this great chain called Argo Tea. If you're from Portland, think Coffee People but with tea and before they got bought out by Starbucks. If you're from LA, think Starbucks, but a little bit better in every way.

5. Friendly homeless people. I have no idea why--if I were homeless in Chicago, I would be miserable because of the cold. But I have had some great interactions with homeless people while here in Chicago. They have been friendly, talkative, and understanding--not overly aggressive. Lord, what are you doing in Chicago?

That said, it hasn't gotten above 30 degrees since I've been here, and some of the architecture is really ugly. But I like Chicago. If Pasadena and Portland are 9's, Las Vegas is a 1, and LA is a 6, then I would give Chicago a 7 (an 8 if the weather was better).

This week's Economist cartoon

I'm not usually struck by political cartoons, but this week Kevin Kallaugher did a really thoughtful sketch for The Economist. Obama is extending his hand to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a bunch of Ayatollahs--and in response the Iranian leaders shrink back in fear.

Our president has proposed greater diplomacy to counter the terrorist threat--particularly in regard to Iran. Diplomacy sounds nice because it does not directly involve guns or tanks, but maybe it's more than nice. Maybe diplomacy has a power that violence does not, maybe diplomacy will restore peace to our world by disarming our enemies and softening their hearts.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God." But I remember that King David also lamented, "I am a man of peace; but when I speak, they are for war."

I follow Jesus, so I want to be a peacemaker. But it seems that being a peacemaker doesn't necessarily mean that there will be peace.

See the full cartoon here.

Why is Malcolm Gladwell so brilliant?

I worked the best overtime of my life last Wednesday. My boss needed someone to go to a nonprofit event in order to count cash receipts and make sure money was transported properly--typically a boring task. But when I read the description of the event, I almost peed my pants. Kai Ryssdal (you know, the guy with the awesome voice and biting questions that hosts Marketplace on NPR) was going to be interviewing some guy named Malcolm Gladwell. Apparently he has written some books.

The night was fantastic in two ways. First, I got to talk (albeit briefly) with Kai. I ended up counting cash in his dressing room, so we had this awkward moment after the event where my hands were full of dollar bills and he just wanted to go home. But that didn't prevent us from shooting the breeze. Apparently, his biting questions had gotten the better of him, leaving him with laryngitis. His voice is so rad that it didn't make any difference.

(okay, some of this is overstatement, but really, Marketplace is the best show on radio. 6:30, 89.3, KPCC)

The second reason the night was so fantastic is a bit more thoughtful. This guy Malcolm Gladwell is quick and had biting answers to match Kai's questions. He writes for The New Yorker most of the time (which I don't read. the articles are too long, like this blog post), and when he's tired of writing for magazines, he writes books. His most recent book is called Outliers, and it's about how exceptionally talented people become exceptionally talented. He writes about Bill Gates and Michael Jordan and people like that. I haven't read his book, but I'm going to write about his ideas anyway. :P

What struck me was his emphasis on luck and chance in the development of an exceptional talent (or exceptional success. how many times do you think I can use the word exceptional (5) in this post?). He spoke about how a disproportionate number of tech/dot.com billionaires were born in the year 1955. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Paul Allen. The guys at Sun Microsystems. Some other folks I don't remember. He explains that it is not coincidence that each of these outliers was born in 1955. You see, being born in 1955 means that a person was 21 years old in 1976, which was the year that Popular Mechanics made it clear that the home personal computer was a real possibility. Each of these future savants was deeply inspired by this article, and since they were 21 (as opposed to being 24 and working at IBM, the old evil empire, or 17 and still screwing around with Legos) they were the perfect age to decide to build their own tech empires. The random-ness of the universe blessed these 1955 billionaires with being the right age at the right time.

Basically Malcolm was saying that a person can be exceptionally (6) talented, but without a bit of luck fostering the right circumstances, this person will never reach the top of their field. Barack Obama is a perfect example. He has lived his entire professional life in post-civil rights America in which African Americans have relatively more social mobility than in the past (praise the Lord). Had Barack been born 100 or even 15 years earlier, he would not have been able to become president. He probably would not have even been able to attend Harvard Law School. (It's sad to think about all the excellent leaders, thinkers, and artists that the world has missed because chance was not on their side, particularly when this lack of chance was a direct result of human sinfulness.)

Apparently Malcolm is also successful, so Kai asked, "So, why is Malcolm Gladwell so brilliant?" Great question and Malcolm gave a good answer. He described his childhood and the love and enjoyment of hard intellectual work that his parents instilled in him. He talked about being a kid and having two friends who were also savants--and how they recreated Monopoly with their own rules (like selling options on properties and starting with $1; these kids were hardcore). These friendships created an atmosphere of competitive intellectualism that pushed Malcolm to a higher level of intelligence that catapulted him into his current position as a writer. Malcolm was very clear that his childhood upbringing was the impetus of his success, and he was clear that he was grateful for it.

I have another thought on the source of Malcolm's exceptional (7) talent, but I will save it for another post as this one is too long already. In the meantime let me know what you think of Malcolm's idea. Do you agree about the role of luck or chance in the development of exceptional talent?

YouTube Democracy

I mentioned my recent love affair with YouTube in my last post. Truly, I have become a YouTube addict. For me, YouTube completes the holy trinity of online convenience (joining Google and the numerous sites that offer me great online shopping deals the week before Christmas so that I don't have to go to the mall).

YouTube is so much more than the Numa Numa Guy. I use YouTube everyday and for a great variety of things. I take Japanese lessons on YouTube for free at my own convenience. I learn how to do cool Excel tricks for free at my own convenience. I enjoy the newest Kelly Clarkson video, watch news shows from around the world, and learn about the history of video games on YouTube--all for free, all at my own convenience.

You may think I am overstating my point, and I have a tendency to do that. But I think I'm right on this one.

This past election cycle I was not excited about Barack Obama. It's not that I disagreed with him (well, I did disagree with him a lot, but I agreed with him more than with John McCain), it was the Obamamania. People in my demographic (young, college educated, urban) went freaking crazy for the guy six months before he said more than two sentences about any actual policies.

It wasn't until later that I realized why. will.i.am. That's why. He put together the "Yes We Can" video that got tons of play on YouTube but that completely missed my radar for about two months (I had a brief dalliance with YouTube last spring). When I watched it, I almost began to cry. I was inspired. There were so many beautiful people supporting Obama, and they believed that yes, we can. Can what? It didn't particularly matter; they were beautiful, and subconsciously I thought that if I believed that yes, in fact, we can, then maybe one of these beautiful people would go on a date with me.

I apologize. I'm being a bit cynical, but I really do want you guys to watch the will.i.am video one more time and tell me that you don't believe in the power of YouTube.



And for the record, I am proud to have Barack Obama as our president. He's an intelligent and resourceful dude--we'll see how he does.