As midterm season ends and the semester is coming to a close, you may be experiencing extreme confusion. Have you thought “What on earth am I doing with my life? Do I really like this? Am I doing this for me?”
Maybe that summer internship you applied for no longer gives you the same sense of excitement. Maybe you were on a certain career path, and the interest is no longer there. Now your entire future is uncertain, and you feel like the world is crashing down around you.
Steadily, naps and Netflix become your two new best friends because you hope to have some answers when you wake up. You are not the only one who feels this way, and you might have heard the term “existential crisis” used in situations like this one.
What exactly is an existential crisis? It’s a person facing a stage or turning point in their life where they have to find their meaning or purpose, or a psychological or moral dilemma that causes a person to ask questions about the human existence.
This experience can be quite debilitating, causing you to leave everything you once found satisfying in your life behind. I often feel like I am in an existential crisis. I wonder what I will do with my life after graduation. I wonder what would make me happy, or if being truly happy even exists. Everyone wants to be purposeful and feel fulfilled, but to figure out what this is while taking a full load of classes and working, is hard to do. Sometimes the feeling of wanting to quit, run away, and restart my current life to find a better one, seems like great idea.
The sad truth is, I can’t expect to find that thing right now. In these moments it’s easy to forget how much I love learning, or how lucky I am to be on a college campus where I am surrounded by goal-oriented people. The uncertainty of the future is hard to deal with, but we all have to remember that if we keep doing the grind, we will eventually make it to where we want to be. We can’t expect it to be all sunshine and rainbows 24/7, as much as I can’t expect to understand my full-self at the age of 19.
These fears reflect how much humans hate living in the gray area. We fail to remember that the gray area can offer us so many things. When we are open to opportunities or people, we might just be met with the inspiration that puts us on the right path.
In the past year, I have grown to love the gray area. I find that I grow the most because I am being challenged. I am learning to go with the flow and take things in life as they come. We never know what life will throw at us, and It is the most satisfying feeling to know you navigated a new situation and made it out OK.
I would like to give some comfort to my fellow existential crisis-er’s out there and say that it’s okay to be uncertain about the future and who you are. Each piece will be revealed in due time. Just have faith that you are exactly where you need to be.
