The crisis of youth – up close and personal

When I entered the university, I was very, very good. I finally broke out from under my mother’s wings, I began to manage the time myself.

I had classmates and neighbors in the hostel, ready to discuss not only study (at last – interesting!), But also the fate of the world. We all, perhaps, were in love with each other – constantly frank, willingly embraced… So the year passed and the second. And then a green existential longing fell on us.

By the time less gatherings. Studies began to seem meaningless, the future profession – disgusting, all beings of the opposite sex – suspicious.

We explained our mood solely by external circumstances, first of all by the wrong choice of the specialty. However, our idea of future work was extremely vague then.

In love failures – by the third course, some love happened to everyone – we blamed the failed partners: they say, all the girls are bastards, and all the guys are goats.

We were tormented by thoughts about earnings, about housing payments: it was already a shame to take parental money, and it was not enough to get a profitable job for couples who were free from couples. Material problems were written off to a brutal reality: oh, times! Oh, customs!

But in fact, we just realized for the first time that now we live on our own. The downside of freedom was responsibility.

Where does the third-year syndrome come from?

Symptoms that I described are typical of the so-called crisis of youth.

About him usually do not speak and do not even guess. Why? The answer is simple. Such a crisis is a new phenomenon for society.

Our grandfathers and even more great-grandfathers grew up in a much less prosperous environment.

Even if they were able to allocate several years for education (preparation for self-realization), they already felt independent on entering. It affected first the peasant upbringing, then – the war experienced.

We, fortunately, grow up not so fast. However, this happiness has its price.

Overcoming the crisis

The twenty-year-old is already able to reflect productively. He should realize: what happens to him is quite natural. There is a crisis of age, not the first and not the last.

The psychologist Anne Yomans writes:

Assignment of a name to this or that event gives sometimes some sense of control over it and even to some extent fills it with meaning.

A little bit to give in to melancholy – not weakness. You can consciously give yourself to throw emotions into diary entries, into creativity (oh, how selflessly we’ve been hammered almost by the whole group in the third year!).

It is quite normal to ask support from older friends and parents.

About finding a job and a couple…

Subworking will come in handy – will allow you to gain self-confidence, the main thing is not to overload yourself with real opportunities and not rush to declare yourself as a cool intellectual: it will be successful. Try yourself in the profession of janitor or waiter – also, by the way, an interesting experience. Do not think that it is now that you have to choose your life path once and for all.

Change fate at any age. You can become an actor, having passed for thirty (read the biography of Sylvester Stallone) or write the first popular novel after forty (like Charles Bukowski). It’s never too late to open a business. I note that the average age of a beginner in the list of Forbes according to the magazine itself is 54 years.

With the device of personal life, there is no need to rush again. Paradoxically, it is easy to find love precisely when you are not trying to find it, but simply actively living – you earn additionally, practice fitness, communicate with fellow hobbies. He will not go anywhere, the right person, will appear as a pretty one. My grandmother liked to repeat: “For all pies are their eaters,” and she was absolutely right.

In friendship, the best strategy is to accept dear people as they are, and not to alter them. All different, well, and beautiful.

No matter how useless and confused the man in his 20s seemed to be, it is useful for him to understand: this stage will still be dear to him after a few years. I remember my youth without enthusiastic aspiration, but with warmth. In it – the beginning of an adult me, the very-very beginning.