There are plenty of ways to die. You have to find a reason to live.

I watched The Brave One this week. Everyone warned me that it was disappointing. I beg to differ. Now, not everything relates to a Quarter Life Crisis, but I can certainly see the parallels between having a breakdown of identity and losing yourself in a crisis that has been thrust upon you. No spoilers, I promise, but the basic premise is that Jodie Foster is attacked and redefines herself as a vigilante- not so much as a path to revenge, but as a means to continue on with her life. In foraging her new path, she becomes someone else.

When the pain is so horrible that it blows a hole in you, you have to fill that hole with something. It’s certainly tempting to fill that hole with dark things. Dark things allow you to further dig yourself a hole of pity. Its one more day you can say to yourself “I’m worthless, I’ll never amount to anything, I’m a failure” because saying those things is easier than feigning happiness.

I can certainly admit to having gone through some of those very dark times. What’s hard is figuring out how to dig yourself out of that place. I don’t know that there is a quick answer or formula for doing so. I tried distracting myself and eventually some of those distractions stuck, evolving into a great MBA program and, ironically enough, this website. These distractions did for me what becoming a vigilante did for Jodie Foster, both allowed for a new sense of self.

We talk at length about the quarterlife crisis being an identity crisis at its root. What better when an identity is blown apart than to create a new one? Vigilante may not have been what Foster’s character was expecting in her life just as I didn’t see business school headed my way. It’s almost a case of “fake it ‘til you make it.” Your quarterlife identity might not be what you want to be in the long run, but it will inevitably make you a stronger and more capable person in the end. Let’s just try to limit the vigilante acts.