My Transition-Into-Adulthood-Existential-Crisis

Monday, January 5, 2009

So. I’m leaving.

Where to? …well, actually, that’s sort of the problem… I’m lost.

Stagnant. Motionless.

So I’ve just been listening to this song on repeat.

And isn’t that ironic? Don’t know where to go, so nothing changes, and eventually that becomes normal.

Can being lost become your normal state of being? Are we ever found?

I think that this is going to be a long one…


So. I’m leaving.

Well, not actually leaving, I’ll be coming back – at least at this point of time, I’m planning on coming back – but I’m going away for awhile. I’ve (almost) made it through three semesters at Harvard, but it’s time to go. Get away. So I’m taking a leave of absence this spring.

I’ll be home working for the first few months, not entirely sure what I’ll be doing yet… waitressing? Internship with a social justice organization? Internship at a law firm? It’ll figure itself out… During this time I plan on doing extensive yoga and meditation, going on many hikes, backpacking trips and nature adventures, and beginning training for the San Francisco Marathon at the end of July. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I will do a good deal of gardening with my parents and I will create more art pieces for the garden. I will begin pursuing photography. I also have a pretty long booklist to begin tackling…

In May (hopefully) my adventures begin… I want to work a few weeks at the Mosaic Project (www.mosaicproject.org), go down to UCLA for jazz/reggae; in June I either head off to work on an ecological education schooner in Puget Sound (www.soundexp.org) or do Humanity in Action in Europe (www.humanityinaction.org). Home for 4th of July and then off to WWOOF in Hawaii for a couple of weeks (www.wwoof.org) and back to run the SF Marathon on July 26th. Here’s where shit gets tricky… If I study abroad in Buenos Aires this fall I might be leaving at the end of July, pretty much right after running the marathon, and I sort of want to have August because…. The first weekend of August is Reggae Rising, a meditation retreat the 10th through the 16th with a week-long backpacking trip either the week before or after.

Ok, and why?

Well, several reasons… My own demons, my continued discontent with Harvard, but I think mostly I just can’t be in school right now… I can’t focus. And I don’t care. I’m not motivated, I’m not making any effort. Going through my classes this half-heartedly is a waste of everyone’s time, LOTS of money, and a great opportunity. I love to learn and I love to be challenged and I love to be engaged, but I’m not excited about school right now. Instead I just feel stifled. And more than that I’m just questioning, and I don’t see the value in structured education. At least not for me, not right now.

My grades will certainly be the lowest this semester than they have been ever before. I keep thinking how furious my dad would be with me right now (will soon be) – it’s 3:30 in the morning, I have a 10-page paper due tomorrow at 5 p.m. that I have written 0 pages for thus far, and instead I’m writing a blog… I am not fulfilling my potential. My grades will not at all reflect what I am capable of, but rather my disinterest with school. By following a simple formula I can write an A-paper: well in advance of the due date read the instructions, gather the necessary resources, read them and take notes, begin formulating ideas, write a draft, send it to the teacher one or two weeks before it’s due, revise according to the feedback received, and chances are I’m good to go… Much of the work that is approved of is either regurgitation or bullshit. Very rarely am I given license to harness my imagination and creative abilities and make something that is my own (although according to Schutz and various other phenomenologists, what is really my own when everything around me is socially constructed… see, I’m learning something…). So if I wanted to put in that effort, I could – the thing is, I don’t see the point, I don’t feel that I gain anything from it. It might solidify my understanding of a certain topic, but for how long… how much will it really impact my life ten years from now? And I just don’t want to write this paper! It does not excite me at all, I don’t care about what I’m writing about, I’m just doing it because I have to! The only thing that writing this A-paper will teach me is how to follow those rules, how to think within a certain box, to how produce the desired results within the desired framework. Fuck that.

And then what?

I asked if we’re ever really found – we spend all of this time traveling or being lost, but how often in life are we ever really found? Ok, so I know that this whole rat race thing is a little cliché, but what is the point of it all? To get a good job I need a college degree in order to prove that… I can sit down, shut up, and follow directions. I should write a whole bunch of A-papers at Harvard so that I can get a good job so that… I can work. And I work so that I can have the resources to enjoy life, but then I’ll be too busy working to have the time to enjoy. And I’d rather spend more of my time enjoying than working. So you get a job that you enjoy, and to get the good jobs you need a college degree…

But I have no idea what I want to do.

There are so many ways to learn outside of the classroom that we don’t take advantage of. And no, I don’t mean engaging in tons of extra-curriculars (to boost your résumé). I think that I actually mean learning how to be human and learning how to be alive. We have become so cut off from our bodies and the earth. Many of us don’t really use our bodies – we spend so much time sitting at a desk, driving a car, running on the treadmill, all very static and artificial. We are afraid to fall, we are afraid to get dirty, we are afraid to touch. We have all of these boundaries, these buffer zones, up around us.

What does it mean to be found? What are we working towards?


As many issues as I have with this whole game of structured education and, I guess, life, I still can’t help but feeling like a failure. Or at least that I’m failing. I am unable to buy into this, but it has been so institutionalized and normalized that I feel like by straying from it even while disagreeing with it I am somehow messing up. Perhaps because if everyone believes it to be true and accepts it then it must be right. Right?

More than that, I’ve always been guided. There’s always been a path to follow. By following that A-paper formula I know what I’m doing, I know what I’m working towards. By being in school I know that my goal is to graduate and then get a job and then… By straying from that I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Perhaps I will end up at the same place as everyone else – there are many roads to Rome, whatever Rome may be? I sure hope not though…