We have had the “Golden Age”, the “Swinging 20s”, the “Hippies Craze”, and now we have the era where everything in your life has to have a label. It used to be children were children until they became a teenager and now we have the label of Tween and Pre-Teen. There are labels for everything in our lives. If people aren’t happy with their lives when they hit 40 then they are going through a mid-life crisis. If spouses who have been married for a period of time and have an affair it is blamed on the seven year itch. The quarter-life crisis is another label that people can use to make an excuse for their behavior, instead of owning up to their responsibility they can say they are dealing with a quarter-life crisis.
People will say that when adults reach the age of 21 until 29 they have difficulties adjusting to the responsibilities that they have to assume. This isn’t a quarter-life crisis this is called growing up. By putting a label on everything it is a way to not take responsibility for your actions. If you are dealing with difficulties in your life it isn’t because of anything you have done it is because you are going through a “quarter-life crisis”. By teaching our youngsters to put labels on things, we are teaching them that it doesn’t matter what they do because they are dealing with something. This isn’t the type of attitude that will help our society improve. It is the type of attitude that will continue to help people do anything they want and when it doesn’t turn out the way they want it to, it is because of something else not because of them.
Many people will blame this type of phenomenon on the advances in our society. We now can access information at the click of a button, we don’t have to wait to go buy something because we can download it from online, and we don’t have to save up money to buy anything because we have credit cards. For most people during the ages of 21 to 29 is a learning period. It is a time when most adults have difficulties in their life and make mistakes that are hard lessons to learn. You are fresh out of college or high school and think that you are invincible. You haven’t learned the wisdom yet to think through your problems because you don’t think you have any. Unfortunately, by allowing eras of our life to be labeled people in the age frame will have a harder time learning the lessons they need to learn to be able to make better decisions later on and to be able to grow into responsible adults. There isn’t such thing as a quarter-life crisis, it is just an era of our life that we have to make it through to become a responsible member of society and if we continue to allow our lives to be broken down into labels we won’t take responsibility for our actions and therefore end up going through the same difficulties in our 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, etc. And what will we call it then? Third-life crisis?
