After I graduated from the University of Victoria, I was so excited: I was moving to Slovenia to work for AIESEC, the organisation I had given five years of my life and all of my spare time in university. I had an amazing time and I learned so much that I could not possibly squeeze it into one blog post–more like a five day conference. But when I got back to Canada, something changed. I was suddenly not as qualified for the jobs that I wanted as I thought. I was not as desirable to women as I had hoped. I had strong opinions and a desire to show them off, which clashed hard with working in an office. And I didn’t know where I was going, short term or long. I had reached my quarterlife crisis.
A quarterlife crisis is the son and daughter of the midlife crisis. It generally occurs in your twenties–in my case, at 24. It struck when my girlfriend broke up with me, but to say it is her fault would be unfair. For someone like me, it was a train driving a broken track, bound to crash some time. I didn’t have many long term plans, though I had some vague ones, but it meant that I didn’t know what I wanted to do then and there. I worked at a job I didn’t particularly like, under rules that I thought were wrong, with people I loved except for a manager that was practically my antithesis. I was working for money, when all the smart people I knew told me to work to learn, work for experience, even if it doesn’t pay anything. I got fired.
Something changed again. About three hours after the initial shock, I told my friend Mo I got fired and he said he was moving to Beijing for a couple of months, and that I should go with him. I went. I went partly for lack of a better idea, but mainly because I had wanted to move to Asia–anywhere in Asia–for years, and this was clearly my best opportunity. If I waited any longer I would have another job and fall into the same patterns and not go anywhere. This was my chance to learn Chinese, Chinese culture and politics, and maybe grab a piece of that ever growing Chinese pie going around.
Now, when I go somewhere, I do not have any expectations. It is hard not to have expectations when you have friends from the place you are going to, you have written essays about it and have been reading books about it every day before you go there, but I didn’t have any expectations. And China met them all. About a month after I arrived, my work, teaching English to children at New Channel (a good school and a good place to work, by the way), got harder, as I got more frustrated with the kids. I clung desperately to the advice my boss and friend, Stephen from New Zealand, gave me: don’t take it personally, just take it easy. But it got harder after I slipped into culture shock.
It was strange having culture shock, because though I had had it very slightly before, I didn’t recognise it. I thought it was just that China went against all my strongest values. In some ways it did, but my problem was that I was seeing things that made me angry when I could have just accepted them and let them flow over me as if was lying at the bottom of a river, looking up at the sky. I had a few friends in Beijing, which helped, but I would probably have left had it not been for my darling Joy.
Joy was the first woman I met in China and the one I fell in love with. She made me feel good all the time, and comforted me during the time I wanted to drop it all, July and August 2007. It was not the biggest challenge of my life (because that time was when I moved across Canada when I was 12) but perhaps the second. I lived in an apartment with cockroaches (and was afraid to set foot in the kitchen), I had classes with 12 year old boys that I could barely stand, I didn’t have internet access or movies, which would have made me much happier, and I was beginning to see how angry Chinese people get when you say bad things about China (”中国人太紧张“）. But Joy was always there with her hugs and smiles and songs, making me feel like it was worth being anywhere as long as I was with her.
That was the height of my culture shock. It faded as I learned more about the culture and language, made new friends, got much better classes and extra hours, so I was making more money. We moved into a better apartment (in Wudaokou–my favourite apartment in China) and got an internet connection again. The hard times ended when, in October 2007, Joy and I got engaged and announced it at my birthday. I realised that, no matter how I felt about China, none of it would have been a waste because I met the most important person in my life there. From then on, the culture shock faded away and my quarterlife crisis with it.
The quarterlife crisis did not fade because of my engagement, however. It faded because I improved the conditions I was living in, stopped focusing on what I didn’t like about my surroundings and started thinking about my (now our) life in the future. I love planning my career, setting goals and budgeting. I love learning about things that may or may not be useful for the future, to add to my store of knowledge and gradually round out my wisdom. It’s investing. I’m still doing it: why else would I be learning Arabic and starting a Toastmasters group?
I am pretty sure that my quarterlife slump is over. Other features of it could arise but I am covering my bases. I am building my career in several directions, and building my future with it. Joy and I are planning all the great things we want for our life together–and even if less than 100% of your wishes come true, wishing them is worth every minute. I no longer feel the insecurity and confusion one feels during one’s quarterlife crisis and, because of everything I have learned and will learn from it, I am thankful.
