This too shall pass

After getting a postgraduate degree, the happiness was pretty short lived, precisely for a period of 30 days. And then started work. One week into work I was already bored and surprisingly the world seemed to resonate my feelings. I logon to facebook and find all my friends talking about going back to college, at first I thought it was the initial period of change which we were finding difficult to cope with. Second week at work I began wondering how my parents had a career spanning 35 yrs, there were no AC offices, no business class flights but they still seemed to be happy with what they were doing. Like people say, probably it’s the problem with our generation.
Still going strong on the idea that it’s the initial phase of change I thought I should get a perspective from the people who are 2-3yrs into work life and called up a few friends who started working right after graduation. All the people who I’ve spoken to fell into three categories- those who hated their jobs and were contemplating to leave them but couldn’t do so as they didn’t know what to do after that, those who had given up on life and said this is how it is going to be so adjust with it and a few others shuttling between one job this month and another next.
All of them seemed to want a change but what change none knew. Like one of them put it “I feel purposeless doing what I’m doing but at the same time don’t know what else to do and cannot leave my job because how much ever I hate it, it gives me the salary at the end of the month”. Listening to this comforted me as I knew there were people more confused than I was.
Third week into work, a status on facebook said “Can I retire now” and there were about fifty people agreeing with the statement. Strangely those who had work complained of over working and those who didn’t, complained of wasting their time. We all seem to find comfort that none of us are happy and were competing for attention on who is more frustrated. In such mood songs like “give me some sunshine….I wanna grow up once again”, do rounds on social media. They make past look perfect, however unglamorous the reality might have been.
Next in line came the gym, guitar classes etc , somehow these seem to feature on everybody’s childhood dream category and thus the easiest way to make oneself feel good about the state one is in. This too didn’t last long, giving another reason to blame the “work pressure”
“Oh! All this is quarter life crisis.” said a know it all and went on to add “but it is true that we all lack direction”. Yeah, quarter life crisis but somehow the whole world seems to suffer from it. One thing seems to take us through the quarter, half or whatever life crisis it is, the hope that “this too shall pass”

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