Existential Crisis Anonymous

I've realized more and more lately just how elaborate of a charade we put on believing that we know what we want. People going about their classes, their jobs, their relationships like its a play and a role they were born to play while covertly trying to retrace their steps and remember when they even took that first audition. Trying to pinpoint that moment when the curtain rose and we were welcomed without any type of applause onto the stage of our own life story. Trying to remember when it stopped being enough.

While I know its nothing particularly exclusive to my generation, we are certainly lost. So. Incredibly. Lost.

Recently I've gotten a lot of friends who have come to me just wishing that they knew what they were meant to do. Earlier today, I had a talk with one of my housemates about some troubles she is having at this juncture in her life.  In trying to weigh the demands of family, school, boyfriend, and job she was breaking down. She is near the end of graduating, a truly personable, smart, talented, and beautiful girl who could easily go places. A parents dream. But instead of feeling stuck and hopeless about the future, she was instead overwhelmed with the possibilities in front of her. As we talked more about the plethora of avenues open to her, it became apparent that she just wanted someone to sit her down and choose for her. To make her responsible for a certain life path.

I've had similar existential crisis talks with friends back in Washington who are having a hard time sticking with school. Chalk full of extracurricular ambitions, they set their sights on traveling or changing majors or finally settling down with a significant other just hoping that their movement will ring synonymous with progress. And over the years we have become sound boards for one another while having the luxury of lounging in transitional identities with University, bouncing ideas off of one another like balls on the blacktop of our childhood while refusing to really sit down and follow any one of them. To accept the responsibility of adulthood. To commit to a future. To decide. Because we didn't have to yet.

But now we do.

First world problems, eh? Having too much freedom, being pulled into too many directions for the different parts of ourselves that we want to develop. And yet it's real.  The greater the options, the harder the choice. And for many of my peers: we've staved off that choice long enough.  And maybe we need to accept that's really what we've been doing this entire time: avoiding that commitment. Maybe that's what we'll always be doing: over-thinking things and feeling drowned in the illusion of ultimate freedom where we live a thousand different lives for each individual passing hobby.

Maybe we need a group, something like: Existential Crisis Anonymous where we can collectively have the space to truly explore what we want out of our lives and the support to make it happen.

Maybe.

Or maybe just communism.
At least they'd tell us what to do.

#karlmarx2016