What quarter-life crisis?

One day I came across a TED talk on "quarter-life" crisis. Of course I've heard about mid-life crisis, but quarter-life crisis was a bit of novelty, so I listened with interest, and then I went off to do some more research, as you do, watching Youtube videos, reading blogs and articles, you name it. By the way, when you search quarter-life crisis on YouTube, it comes up with over 250,000 results, ranging from TEDtalks (yep, more than one on the topic), through vlogs, semi-educational videos to musicals (!). 

To put some definition onto this concept, a quarter-life crisis is apparently what hits twenty-somethings when they need to figure things out and "have it all together". 

I wonder where you find all these twenty somethings with everything figured out? Let me meet them! I have a couple of friends who are or will shortly be getting married, friends who do have jobs, but mostly don't plan long term careers in those professions. Many go through break up after break up and simply move on. It's life!

There is something deeply worrying about deeming ordinary life occurrences as a crises. Life is undoubtedly confusing and I think almost everybody is simply winging it 97% of the time, so saying that I'm in crisis simply because I'm looking for a job or not sure where I'll be moving to or where my relationship is going is an overstatement.

Gosh, I find life incredibly difficult, there is so much to think about, I forgot to pay council tax the other day and got a rather passive aggressive reminder in snail mail; and you need to budget and think about what to cook in the evening, I stress out about staying on the top of my housework (this never-disappearing pile of dirty dishes!) and even about making time for myself. How ridiculous is that! The thing is, life is like that and has always been. But in the grand scheme of things, all these worried don't matter that much.

I think that if you want to deal with "quarter-life crisis", or rather with normal occurrences in life of a young adult (which sometimes can be daunting) you need to things: perspective and good relationships. As to perspective, it is so easy to get caught up in all the problems that come up every day, but it is important to remember that at the end of the day many of those things will not be of any significance. A couple of years down the line the rubbish boyfriend will be almost forgotten and changing careers will be a normal course of things in your professional development. As to relationships, when you have somebody who you can talk to about everything that bothers you, that makes such a difference to your quality of life. Mr Magic is my emotional vent and I can cope with all the life events so much better knowing that he is on the other side of the wireless connection. It's an immense comfort to have the other half who is always ready to listen. But it can also be a friend or a parent, the premise is the same.

I don't think we should overindulge in naming ordinary life occurrences as crises. It appears to be a feature of modern times to over diagnose, over name and over react. Maybe instead we should embrace life as it is and just take it one day at the time as well as we can. Because most of us can deal with it all just fine.