At the age of fifty, I wish I could have the trials and tribulations of youth again. Only this time without getting shot at.
I haven’t even HAD this yet.
(does math)
I’m livin’ to 124! Woo! Time to start compounding interest, muthafuckas!
-Woo!
By your reasoning, no one should ever complain, because someone, somewhere is far worse off than him/her.
I thought about this in the shower, and realized it needed revising: Healthy, recent college grads with jobs have more choices than they ever had or ever will again. Forget about comparing them to anyone, anywhere else in the world. This is probably the last time they will be able to consider realistic change without heavy consequences. And as someone approaching mid-forties, watching many of my peers grapple with legitimate mid-life crises, (which, after all, are all about having few/no choices in the face of mortgages, retirement, elderly parents, and looming college tuition) I’m finding it harder and harder to feel anything more than amusement toward their state of anguish.
Yo, VC03, what I see is an entire generation that needs to suck it up.
Well said, Papermache Prince.
I think this is part of the Generation Gap. The older we get, the more we realize how ridiculous younger people are. Yeah, we were like that too. No, it doesn’t make it any less hilarious.
Back in aught-three, we called it “growing the fuck up.”
Every generation seems to feel that the youth don’t appreciate anything. Seems like we’re just getting old and grumpy and turning into our parents.
Each person has only his own trials and tribulations to deal with. If you’ve had 100 or 1000 stomach aches it doesn’t make my stomach ache any less painful to me. Am I not allowed to cry?
What I can handle emotionally is not the yardstick anyone else should be measured by. If the pressures are too great for some of our young people to deal with, what in the world does that have to do with your experiences?
A crisis is legitimate for the person going through it. What makes you might break me.
It seems that quite a few of us are getting old and judgemental (and cranky too).
I have a lot of sympathy, because I remember how difficult it was going through those transformations into adulthood. I know what it’s like to be 25, and your wife tells you she’s pregnant and you already have two in diapers and can not possibly afford another child, so she says she’s going to have to get an abortion, but changes her mind and you say, “Well, we’ll just find a way to afford it,” and you’re thinking, “Jesus Christ we’re going to wind up sleeping in a dumpster.” Thats’ what we’re talking about, right?
I’m awaiting this stage of my life. Anything to put off the looming midlife crisis. I just hope I’m alive and healthy long enough to reach the latter, if the former hasn’t yet arrived.
Whiny kid: I wanna be a Penthouse photographer!
Adult: Go right ahead.
Whiny kid: I wanna eat and have a bunch of shiny new toys too.
Adult: Life’s full of tradeoffs, ain’t it.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but at 25 these are the same issues I’m dealing with. You can bitch all you want about ungrateful today’s youth are but most of the people I know going through a ‘quarter-life’ crisis are dealing with mortgages, paying back student loans in addition to saving for their children’s college tuition, coping with their aging parents and figuring out how the hell we’re going to have any money left for retirement.
Tell us to suck it up all you like, but having 20+ years on someone doesn’t mean your problems are any more valid or legitimate.
Anyone at 25 that has a mortgage and is worried about saving for retirement is a leg-up on about 99% of other 25 year olds. It’s their lack of perspective that is a problem, not their plight.
This one is my favorite. It’s often said of whiny schoolteachers. Along with “I wish I got Summers off!”
It’s the mating call of the woefully ignorant.
Well, from my perspective if you wait until you’re in your 40’s to worry about those kinds of things, then you’re the one with a lack of perspective 
Nah, we’re talking about having to pay bills, and not liking your job, and only being able to hit the bars once every couple of weeks because of your student loans.
You know, hard stuff.
I’m not trying to knock people for getting stressed out about the notion that life ain’t fucking easy, but the whining is really, really lame. When I was twenty-five (and twenty-six, and twenty-seven…) I got totally wigged about the whole responsibility-life sucks-sturm und drang-etc, but then shit happened and everything got indescribably worse. Meaning, staring mortality in the face, complete life disintegrating, better just to drive off a fucking bridge -worse, and I got some perspective.
Occasionally having to eat ramen for a week (marinated in malaise) is the least-shitty shitty thing I’ve ever had to do.
Weird. I read the book The Quarterlife Crisis back in 2001 or so, and it’s not just about not having a good job or enough money, etc. It’s about disconnectedness from the world and how it does feel like you’re the only one who feels that there is nothing out there for you, you’ll never have a good enough job/significant other/life/house/dog. The book doesn’t give advice, it just gives anecdotes of other folks in your situation. It made me feel like I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with her life, which made it easier to actually do something with it.
I went through a crisis like this. I was young, had 8 million choices in front of me, and I was overwhelmed. Nothing seemed right. Nothing was appropriate and I surely wasn’t good enough to work in the real world.
I never whined, though. I’m sure lots of people go through life crises and no one but those closest to them hear a thing.
Ah…the Boo-Fucking-Hoo crisis of a generation. It’s only slightly less indulgent than the Boomers discovering menopause.
Pretty much exactly what I was trying to say, only more succint. 
What’s that smell? Oh right… its arrogance.
Just because you lack the perspective to understand someone else’s concept of life and world, does not mean its somehow comical.
Ok, time to get real esoteric and vague.
We were raised in a generation that valued material goods over most anything else. Its not what you do for a living, its how much you make doing it. People (at age 25) are just starting to realize that the pursuit of money never really stops. They feel they’ve got to compromise themselves to a point where they have nothing left to give up, in order to get ahead.
Its not right or wrong. Its just life. And for a person coming out of college all idealistic and full of hope for the future, its quite the shock. No, its really not as bad as lot of people go through. But to that person, its the worst thing they can imagine. (There’s that lack of perspective, again)
Its also the same bullshit you heard 30 years ago when the Baby Boomers first started entering the workforce. What did they do? They sold out and just laid back waiting for the American dream to come to them, instead of trying to create their own. And now what do we have? Divorce rates through the roof. Almost half of the adult population is on some sort of anti-depressants.
Kids graduating see that and say “Why does that have to be me?” But most of them are far too scared or lack the approriate skills to do anything about it. Then they start to whine about stuff they think is unfair. Bills. Relationships. Thats not really the root of their problem. Its just the only thing thats tangible to them. The real problem is that they’re faced with a ton of responsibilty for the first time and they don’t know how to handle it, all at the same time, wondering why should they handle it.
And thats the quarter-life crisis. Feel free to laugh yourself silly.
You know, having all those choices can be kind of tough, too. Ever stand in the ketchup aisle and discover you are expected to choose between 75 different kinds of ketchup. But this time that ketchup is your life…