Facing so many uncertainties, twentysomethings are at constant odds with themselves being incredibly ambitious but painfully indecisive. Being in your young twenties is a lot like hanging off the edge of a cliff. There, you can't afford to panic. You just focus on not dying and hoisting yourself up to the secure ledge. Once safe, on the ledge, you freak out and can't imagine how it was that you survived. That's what being a young-20-something is. No secure career path. No secure housing. No secure relationship. No secure ownership over much of anything worthwhile. No idea where you will be in two months, let alone two years. No secure footing. Not even a ledge in sight. When we are thirty, God willing, by thirty, we are going to look back on this time and wonder "How did I not fall to my death?”
After teenage years spent in angst over the lack of freedom that comes with living under your parents’ roof, you finally have independence. Now what? You could be plopped into a new world and met with the slightly terrifying pressures of making worthy your life. But the problem is you neither know right, left or centre of what you really ought to be doing. The deeply enticing narratives of age mates, blowing their millions inspire bloated ambitions. At the same time, they trigger feelings of unworthiness, and stir more anxiety, especially if you have nothing to write home about. When laid out like that, your twenties sound like a fragile and tumultuous time.
You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing. You realize that you are going to have to start at the bottom and you are scared. It worsens when your pay slip features three quarters deductions, HELB and loans leading, while your friends expect you to be in the latest fashion outfits, and always laugh at your C300 Nokia phone. You toy around entertaining business mentality, only to be elbowed away by the unimaginable cost of starting any serious business endeavour. This is the point when you wish you could blow off the brains of the broke cousins asking for sh. 500.
After campus, you start(ed) realizing that people are selfish and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. Talk of when the least attractive girl in campus gets a chance to explain her entrepreneurial ideas with the world’s most powerful man. What you do not realize is that they too, are not really cold or catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
The excitement you had at graduation wanes as days go by and you realize no one is calling you after dropping your CVs in 103 organizations. It will take them so long to get back to you until you get the point: they don’t make more jobs today than they churn out graduates. You will know what it means to be an adult and broke.
Matters get complicated after getting in many affairs, only to marry the wrong person, and spend half a decade of your early 30s in divorce or child maintenance suits. Worse still, the language of love (or lack of) is no longer sweet scented scintillating words, but the wads of cash in your wallet.
Around this time, for those who thought career is more important than family, start getting calls from parents detailing how their childhood friends’ kids are intelligent and beautiful. It pains when the girl you least love is your mum’s favourite. And there the question hammers, “You want me to die without seeing my grandchildren?”
Higher expectations breed more disappointments and disillusionment. Three years out of college, you do not have a job. Self-loathing and reproaching sets in. This often coincides with HELB reminding you to repay that loan, which they are fining you Ksh. 5,000 monthly, anyway. Some will have to stick with bad and unsatisfying jobs. Some will quit. Life will be harsh on you so much you will wonder why you were born bright. Your colleagues who went to tertiary colleges or joined the military are buying houses, getting married and having a life. You soon discover we don’t author our own lives.
Today, when so much social interaction among young adults is done digitally, the negative impact of the Internet is far greater, especially for younger generations. With dating, meetings, calls and even work done from bedrooms and at best, coffee shops, how could you not feel lonely and isolated?
Damian Barr, in his book, Get It Together: A Guide To Surviving your Quarter-Life Crisis describes these feelings perfectly. “You may be 25 but feel 45. You expected to be having the time of your life but all you do is stress about career prospects, scary debts and a rocky relationship.” Perhaps even as bluntly as Barr puts it “If your life was a movie it would go straight to Netflix, but nobody would rent it. Not even you.” Harsh, isn’t it? Admittedly, Barr captures his own crisis in chapter seven explaining that “There could have been a lot of red eyes at graduation, but maybe it would have managed my expectations? I'm 25 but am working in a largely unrelated field having just left university”.
While it is assuring that elsewhere worldwide, twentysomethings are wondering "is this it?" it is sad, Dr. Ruth Wanjau notes, these crises are happening earlier. “The younger generation expects more than their parents did, but it’s also harder for young people today than it was for their parents”, explains the Chemistry lecturer at Kenyatta University. Dr Wanjau observes that during their time, they didn’t have to fight for their first job in a depressed global economy and banks offered mortgages without asking for a lottery-win sized guarantee.”
Alice Mwangi, a graduate working in a local bank, mirrors this sentiment exactly, “I’m 24, I have a degree but after countless interviews I still have no luck. So, I do a job I don’t like, swim in my overdraft and live with my parents, who at my age were married with a house and kids.”
Vincent Momanyi, a 24-year old medical student says “I frequently question what I’m doing and feel trapped knowing that my career is set out for me.” It's as if everyone’s feeling the exact same way, even those who seem to have it all worked out. JKUAT’s Software Engineering student, Gordon Okello, 24, and owner of popular app, Quick Links, shares the same thoughts. “Every day I am faced with a million reasons why I am likely to fail," he admits. "In starting my own company I have made my own crisis and have set myself on a long and uncertain road, prolonging the feeling of gut-wrenching fragility.”
The confusion marring this group could be traced in high school where students are spoilt for choice on what to pursue in campus as Prof Joseph Nyasani of the University of Nairobi notes. “A large number of university students are studying what they do not like, and end up, so much later in life, making a career parallel to their training”, notes the author of 36 titles and several philosophy papers. Nyasani explains that unlike in the past where life was almost a pre written script, today, it is more about luck, which has heightened anxiety, confusion, and inability to make relevant choices. Higher education is becoming more expensive, and its degrees less distinguishing.
“Parents are expecting more than ever before. They do not want to associate with their children who do not have money. In fact, they scorn them for being dumb and lazy”, says Mohamed Hassan, a businessman. Nowadays, for you to have a voice in the family you must be ‘loaded’, or so it seems. Age, indeed, has proven to be just a number. Your younger moneyed sister can dictate you.
Comparison crisis
Former US president, Theodore Roosevelt could once note that comparison is the theft of joy. And indeed, those in their twenties lack the joy. In comparing themselves with friends and if their achievements and goals match up with theirs, it gets maddening when on Instagram that they see photos of their holiday in Dubai, or a honeymoon in San Francisco’s Robert Louis Stevenson State Park. You find yourself becoming judgmental. You might find yourself thinking snide thoughts about developments in your friends’ lives, like “What’s so great about being married at 22-years old? How boring…” You might even compare yourself with your parents and what they had achieved by the time they were your age. And finally, comparing yourself with your own expectations, which you are just 10% done!
“No one prepares us for post-university revelations such as ‘dream jobs’ don't exist (but unemployment does) and finding a ‘right one’ is virtually impossible”, says 23 year-old Julia Kivanga, a final year Sociology Student at The University of Nairobi.
Nikki Elot, 27, who runs Mwangaza Girls Educations Centre in Samburu, lived and worked in London for five years and readily admits she suffered from – and thankfully been through the quarter life crisis. “I would describe what I went through as a prolonged identity crisis," she says. "Having been defined by education up until 22, it was very difficult to find my place in the real world. Aspects of my life suddenly didn’t count in the same way.” She has now found joy educating girls and saving them from early marriages, than her first world life in Britain’s capital.
Elsewhere, Phoebe Onwong’a, 25, and currently in a ‘dead-end job’ in a supplies company , confesses she’s panicking: “I recently wrote down goals I want to achieve by the time I am 30 and it’s terrifying how little time I have left.”
The new norm of not settling down
The world is increasingly pressurizing everyone, from babies and children to adults, to achieve their personal milestones in life as early as possible. When a lady surpasses the 25 year old mark, she becomes a subject of cruel speculation if she hasn’t rang wedding bells. Men may well be accused of having dead “transformers”, something that can kill self esteem. Our parents had to deal with having babies younger which was arguably the bum deal. 29 year old Freshly Mwadeghu, agrees that three decades ago, the youth were they nested in their goldmines with real-life things like marriage, jobs and babies. Fast-forward to today, Mwadeghu asserts, at the same age, we are paying through the nose to simply exist in Nairobi and would jump at the chance of owning a kiosk in our apartments. “In fact, most people under 27, when asked, have no plans of having babies”, he opines.
Clinical psychologist Dr Lucy Ngatia warns twentysomethings not to entertain confusion but rather start planning their lives right now. “Find the right partner as soon as possible, soul search on your passion, get committed to your goals and work hard”, Dr. Ngatia advises. According to Ngatia, people in their 20s are not moving forward with their lives because they are lazy and indecisive.
However, her colleague, Rachael Lozi, a professional counselor believes there is an upside to forcibly delaying your future. “Deciding to share your life with someone should not be an arbitrary goal. Marrying and starting a family as soon as you can is no guarantee of happiness. Arguably, you are better prepared if you mature as a single adult, instead of starting a family when you are still growing up. You can't hurry love.”
Confused in jobs
It would seem that going to work Monday morning is a nightmare at daybreak. Most people, 80% according to Deloitte Kenya’s Shift Index survey, are dissatisfied with their jobs. While some unhappy employees muster up the courage to change careers, others opt to grin and bear it. What about when the career decision is not yours to make? “In the waning economy, company-downsizes have put many workers in an unexpected predicament” explains human resource expert Faith Mwendwa. Many youths who get laid off must re-evaluate their lives. And rather than pound the pavement for a new job, many are turning to entrepreneurship, with complicates their uncertainties, Mwendwa explains. As Economist Dr. Edwin Mwai observes, “With the unemployment rate apparently stuck at double digits, more people seem to be choosing a passion they are confused about or stay in jobs to survive”.
Father Dennis Ekeno, a Catholic priest advises that when you worry so much about work and money, they seem to be running further from you. “The best thing is to love what you do, put more effort. God always blesses those who give their best”.
But many Kenyans do not really love what they do, at least according to some studies. In a 2014 State of the Kenyan Workplace study by Moi University Human Resource finalists, 70 percent of the 7,000 people surveyed in various platforms described themselves as “disengaged” from their work. Those who show up but are “disengaged” made up the biggest category at 52 percent of workers. The remaining 18 percent are people actively disengaged — those who vocally express their discontent in the workplace.
The study takes a close look at the role of managers and their ability to inspire workers. Most of the discontent stemmed from “bosses from hell” who didn’t foster talents, growth, or creativity, especially for the recent graduate to join their companies. In the long run, it was estimated that between sh. 250 and sh.400 billion are wasted annually because of “bad managers” and disengaged young workers who hate their jobs. These losses arose from laziness at work, errors, truancy, conflicts and theft.
A 2013 research by Gallup International, an American Research firm, reveals findings that are striking if not surprising. The highest levels of dissatisfaction are in the Middle East and North Africa where 58% of people would be desperately unhappy at work. Algeria 63% and Tunisia 60%, had the unhappiest workers. Qatar, where many Kenyans are running to made the best showing, with 28% happy, 62% mildly unhappy and 10% hating their jobs. East Africa had 53 % unhappy workers, with Kenya leading at 56%. No wonder, Kenya has the most strict human resource regulations in workplaces as Griffins Wanjala of Peek Consultants opines.
US had 30% happy in their work, 62% mildly happy and 18% who hate their jobs. Where do the happiest workers live? Panama, where 47% love their jobs, 41% are not engaged and 12% are very unhappy.
While their issues may reinforce the suspicion that they are not formed of special clay (the power of the youth), the challenges they face, by themselves may be a sign of early mastery without mature constraint, self-discovery at a moment when each revelation seems unique. But everything notwithstanding, the crisis rages on.
SIGNS OF THE QUARTER LIFE CRISIS
You get a little scared of your new age(no wonder many people say am just 22)
You get more concerned on dating the Mr. or Mrs. Right
Your parents start asking that inevitable question: “When are you going to have children?”
The fact you’ll never be so young, helpless, and innocent again keeps disturbing you
Second-hand jealously and distancing yourself from the friends who are doing better in life
You start saying phrases like “remember five years ago, when we were in college…” and that will always trip you out
THINGS THAT CONSTANTLY WORRY TWENTY SOMETHINGS
Their looks/ figure
The clothes they have/wear
Jobs/ careers
The places they live in
Getting rich quickly
Finding the right partner
Getting a housing
Getting a car
Travelling abroad
