Painful rituals arm us against the panic of real, coming-of-age crisis situations.
“Quarter-life crisis” is a convenient term for glossing over a more subtle problem. I’m 27, about to move to Chicago from a city of some 50,000 people. I’ve got an MA and good deal of teaching and non-profit experience under my belt—and not a clue what I’ll be doing when my wife and I get to Chicago. I’m married too, I should mention—and happily, I can honestly say. My point is, I’ve got all these markers of adulthood about me—education, a “real” job, the legally binding state of matrimony (I think entering into contracts is a pretty grown-up thing, right?). Despite all of these good things, I would definitely say what I’m experiencing is my quarter-life crisis.
Crisis is normally used to mean the decisive point in a situation. Usually a negative situation. Like feeling aimless and anxious and worried about how in the hell you’re going to land on your feet and why you aren’t way more successful than you actually are. For a lot of guys, perhaps what’s missing, what causes these crises, is not being sure we’re doing anything that men do correctly. This is that more urgent problem I see. We’ve taken the ritual out of growing up.
Rituals are fascinating things. They can be the most completely superficial things, and still they carry a weight of significance that impresses something deep and subconscious in us. By superficial, I mean that the motions can be simple, and time-worn, and repetitive—like actually walking across a stage to receive your diploma. We wear funny clothes, and worse hats (which have their own special part to play), we listen to some version of the same speech, and whoa Black Betty! You’re one step closer to being an adult. The problem is that we’ve taken out the important parts of our rituals, or we’ve stopped viewing the ritual as important in itself. Most schools don’t actually give you your diploma at commencement—it’ s an empty leather folder or a rolled up piece of paper with a ribbon.
These things are about coming of age. They’re supposed to clue you into what is expected of you, what you’re supposed to be doing. More importantly, rituals like these assure us that we’re done with one stage of life, and on to the next. I mean simple stuff, too. Tying your shoes by yourself. Learning how to shave. Your first date. Your first part-time job and that first pitiful paycheck that’s all yours. Without the substance of rites of passage, and without the assurance of elders who’ve been there, we end up stuck as children playing at being adults, and we end up simply trying to recreate the feeling of grown-up-ness these sort of events had the first time around. You get to participate simply by virtue of the passage of time, and not because you’ve proven that you’re ready.
A lot of the writing on this site is about capturing or re-capturing a powerful sense of manhood. As young men we do a lot of the things we think we’re supposed to—work, get married, shape wood and metal, procreate, or what have you—without being able to really internalize why. This is why we get into a lot of the problems we do with gender roles. This is why it’s often so easy to categorize guys by behavior; frat boy, jock, hippie, upwardly-mobile no-bullshit indie business guy. All of these guys think they’ve figured out what a man is supposed to do and to be like.
I’m saying, I have no friggin’ idea what I’m supposed to be like. I’m in the process of shifting my entire career focus. I’m wrestling with the fact that I’ve committed myself to a career which promises to make me barely a living wage for most of my life. Thankfully, my wife recently had a panic moment and decided she isn’t ready for kids, so that’s one off my plate. But what does she think of me, of my choices, of my commitment to making our life together better? Men provide, right? They protect and bring security and take care of their families? By what possible stretch of the imagination is a man working adjunct for less than minimum wage at two colleges any woman’s ideal relationship? Boys in the Satere-Mawe tribe in Brazil wear gloves stuffed with gigantic neuro-toxic bullet ants and dance around for ten minutes without passing out in order to become a warrior. They do this up to twenty times over a period months before it’s official. Where is my torrid glove of agony and manliness to show that I’m ready to take my place as a man in society?
Somewhere between a semi-traumatic undergraduate graduation and now, about five years later, I can’t help but feel like I’m still just playing around. Things haven’t been serious, I haven’t been serious enough for this really be adulthood. I also haven’t failed. That’s a rite of passage, too. As a society we suck at coping with failure and coming out on the other side, and we’ve done everything we can to make sure our kids never experience failure. My crisis now is, what if I’m doing this all wrong? What if I fail and can’t move on?
Still image from video by geckochasin/YouTube
Those are helpful clarifications–and no, I didn’t think you were hostile, but thank you all the same. I hope I’m not sounding that way either. I find this to be such an interesting topic, and I so rarely get to discuss it with anyone. I think maybe we can agree that the word “ritual” is too loaded with (what I think are negative) connotations to be entirely fair in what I’m trying to describe. I’ll think about what might be a better way to describe my ideas. Thinking about your first point, on existential crises. You’re likely correct about the… Read more »
Maybe I haven’t done enough to clarify that I absolutely don’t want restriction–on anybody. I’m certainly not suggesting that every first date need be done in the same way, for every person, every time. I would say that The Good Men Project is about affirming what masculinity means for the individual. And we all do take on roles in our lives, but it need not be a bad thing. A ritual, in my understanding , can be almost anything in a person’s life. That some cultures have very strictly defined rituals doesn’t at all affect my ability to invest personal… Read more »
I probably came off as too hostile during my self-righteous rant above. But I think I need to re-iterate my points. 1. Existential crisis is an inevitable part of a life with minimal restrictions on a person. You give people choices, and they’re going to have to stop and think and DECIDE. Unfortunately that process is not going to always be easy, and even if you do make a decision, you might be haunted by the possibilities you abandoned, or even just the possibility you chose wrong. Which seems to be what you are talking about at the beginning. 2.… Read more »
In “Feminism is For Everybody” Bell Hooks actually defines “feminism” as the fight against sexism, then surprisingly she actually defines two substantially different forms of sexism. The First is the kind one would typically think of when they hear the word “sexism” this idea that women are inferior. You can see this is how our grandmother’s had fewer options than our grandfathers, and were a lot less likely to ever be the most powerful person in a mixed gender group. Being the “man of the house” meant something. Bell Hooks called this “Traditional Sexism” and second wave feminism focused on… Read more »
The problem is that a lot of the things that Trevor Sprague is pining for here are completely arbitrary. We assigned 18 years as the point one becomes an adult, but that’s clearly long after the human body makes that transition. Why he mentioned recently getting an MA, current trends that one finishes education long after the 18 year mark, so if education is a childish or adolescent thing, the 18 year mark fails again. I would say there it’s a fine line between child and adult, except it’s not, it’s a gradual transition. One side is white, and other… Read more »
Thanks for your comment. I think we’re in more agreement than you seem to think. One of my main concerns is that there is a degree of arbitrariness to growing up right now. But it’s not in what we rituals we choose to invest value in, rather, I’d suggest that it’s in the 18-year age, which you cite. If I’m reading you correctly, you think we just have a slow accumulation of experience–i.e. being alive–and when we hit 18, we’re ready to roll. My point is exactly that: simply turning 18 doesn’t cut it, there are things we learn to… Read more »