I think, therefore I freak out

Lately I've been wrestling with a lot of serious thoughts about life and meaning. I took a trip to Mumbai in August for work, just for a week, and came back feeling like something had shaken loose in me -- I didn't want to come back to my life as usual, and the thought of "back to normal" induced some serious panic and depression. In the couple months since returning, I've continued to feel really off-balance, and have spent a lot of time thinking about what it is I want, what I value, and where I might be headed. Yeah, so I've been incredibly self-absorbed.

What I've been finding, though, as I talk to other people who are in the 30-give-or-take-a-few-years crowd, is that many of us are experiencing this sort of crisis of meaning. It seems that in the course of our early lives, up through our early 20s, we are propelled almost involuntarily through a charted course with clear next steps. There was always something to look forward to that we didn't really have to discern ourselves -- going to school, proceeding to college and/or a job, dating, marriage, kids. But now that we're finding ourselves at a point in which these things, or most of them, are in our hands or imminent, and the rest our lives are looking both monotonous and unsettlingly open-ended. For some reason, we didn't realize this would happen, even though it seems obvious to me when I look at it now that it was always going to. Maybe we're set up early to believe in a tidy version of the future, in which we have everything on this sort of checklist of life and are content with exactly that. But in fact, we all want more than what's on the list, and we're now responsible for our own happiness. All of the beginnings and endings of things are decisions we make, not things that are structured for us. Newness and progress are not things thrust upon us automatically, and the routine of life can weigh upon us. I'm struggling to find the ingenuity to find a good answer to "what's next?" -- as well as to a host of other questions, like "why?" and "seriously, this is it?" I think I'll make it through okay eventually, but it's difficult to continue with day-to-day life in the meantime while wrestling with these bigger questions.