Quarter Life Crisis

My disgustingly charming and gorgeous college boyfriend was two years older than me. By the time I turned 21 he was self-indulgently immersed in a social/spiritual hell he could only describe as a quarter-life crisis. At the time, I relegated his constant reminders to "plan my future" before being confronted head-on by the inconvenience and confusion of my mid-twenties to the back of my mind where I stored everything I filtered from his occasionally dramatic-always self-absorbed life-lesson-lectures.

I got a text message on my last birthday from one of older friends: welcome to your mid twenties. Here we are, at that tragic juncture where children of privilege have to learn to navigate their own lives for the first time since emerging from the womb. From the time we were young it was all laid out for us: from what to say and what to eat to how to dress and how to succeed. And then it happens, one early summer day we awake as graduates from whatever major University we just happened to attend, and the entire world as we know it, falls apart.

Lately I've noticed there is one very drastic measure some of us are taking to cope with the ever-increasing angst of our mid-twenties. Leaving our jobs and traveling the world? Signing over our trust funds to an international non-profit and living off the land out of a van? Forsaking the Investment banking firm to build houses in sub-saharan Africa? All of these sound like heroic and pivotal efforts for members of the upper-middle class, but alas, I'm talking about a socio-cultural phenomenon that is much more dangerous, much more terrifying, much more permanent: marriage.

That's right, the privileged class is synching up, having beautiful and elaborate weddings attended by well-dressed, attractive, white people, and laying the foundation for the next generation of suburban social chaos. Are these people kidding? Haven't they learned the harsh and damaging lessons of our parents and their friends and every other unit of upper-middle class adults that we've had exposure to since our first day at the elite elementary school?

What is it exactly that motivates young people who are highly educated, professionally ambitious and destined to inherit the world, to get married before they reach their quarter century mark? I know young women in their twenties are no longer haunted by their ticking biological clocks, after all, even our own mothers waited until they were at least 30 to have children, and are now living fit and vibrantly with their kids grown, lively as ever in their late fifties and sixties. We know young men in their twenties are hardly compelled to be "settling down" as every image and source of information they've received since birth has shaped commitment, long-term relationships and certainly marriage as the equivalent of a commercial airplane crash landing: take all measures to avoid it, waiting for every contingency plan to fail before surrendering to your imminent death and giving in as a last resort.

The only explanation I can come up with is that young, privileged twenty-somethings are feeling lost, insecure and freaking out at the intersection of growing up and making their own decisions. Apparently the idea of getting married (or the overly-indulgent modern era practice of planning a wedding) somehow soothes the anxious soul of young adults who are accustomed to having everything in their lives handed to them, choreographed by the various entities of privilege that have shaped each stage of their(our) existence. It seems as if the solution to the confusion and feelings of failure surrounding the end of the path our privilege put us on, is easily solved by choosing to pursue tradition and uphold convention. It's as if the way they measure progress is how rapidly they can replicate their parent's dysfunctional lives.

So bring it on ladies and gentleman. Pass the free champagne and that charming piece of the $5,000 cake. I'll be happy to indulge myself at the singles table as I wager with my cynical counterparts about just how long this one will last.