A Guide For Those Who Feel Lost In Life

Photo by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash

The first few years of our existence are characterized by a wide range of activities, beliefs and commitments that are either inherited or thrust upon us. Rarely challenged to forge a path of our own, who we are becomes more or less the agglomeration of our environment and genetics.

Until, of course, that fateful period when the training wheels are ripped off and suddenly we’re under the pressure to find out ‘the right thing to do’ all by ourselves. Do we go to university? Do we entertain the same political beliefs as our parents? Do we flirt with other religions and gods or cast them aside altogether? Do we rebel against the things that had previously constructed our sense of self in an effort to gain autonomy? Or do we attempt to engage, on a deeper level, with the constructs that previously formed us, in an effort to develop a more meaningful sense of identity?

All of these questions, met with conflicting answers from guidance counsellors, parents, teachers, friends and internet forums, lead us into a dreadful sense of confusion and hopelessness. One twenty something year old in the psychologist Meg Jay’s “The Defining Decade” describes this feeling poetically:

Ian told me his twenty something years were like being in the middle of the ocean, like this vast…