I’m suddenly calm after my lockdown epiphany

Around week five of lockdown, something weird happened. I started feeling calm. It took me a while to realise this was what was happening. Partly because, like a lot of people, I’ve been battling an unprecedented period of thorny lockdown-related problems that have left little room for self-reflection. But largely because I’d actually forgotten what calm felt like.

At first I thought I was just sleepy. I woke up feeling all smooth and settled inside, like my blood had been replaced with hot chocolate, and a restorative, sweet heat was seeping through me.

God, it was weird. I immediately got up and made a coffee, just so I could feel the familiar, throbbing adrenaline press against my ribs again.

Christ, I thought as I jammed a shot in the cup, is this how people who do yoga feel? All happy and floppy inside? It was a strange feeling for someone who, for the last three years or so, has been in the spiral of a quarter-life crisis. Nice, but terrifying.

For those of you lucky enough to be unacquainted with the exhausting process, a quarter-life crisis is kind of like a midlife crisis. Except we can’t afford Porsches, so we buy inspirational wall art from Kmart instead.

You live with a sense of constantly bubbling, mildly acidic panic in your guts that you don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Whatever it is that you are supposed to be doing, rest assured you haven’t done it. And even if you did know what it was, which you don’t, you know everyone else is doing it better than you.

This period of wrestling with the directionlessness of your life was typically found in your 40s. But now it’s been brought forward 20 years, because it’s no longer cool to waste your youth falling out of clubs in spandex. Instead, the everefficient millennials and Zs need to optimise their youth for maximum productivity, and that means knowing what they’re doing – now.

For the last few years I’ve been permanently exhausted and increasingly manic, sprinting from activity to activity in the relentless pursuit of an ever-illusive sense of achievement. And while physically and emotionally I’m still as tired as ever from battling lockdown-related problems, on a deeper level I’m feeling calmer than I have in years.

So if there’s one good thing to come out of lockdown, it’s that it may have calmed my quarterlife crisis. At least temporarily.

For a start, I’m not making many everyday choices right now. Except do I need to shower, or can I go another day smelling faintly of toast? That’s comforting for people who often feel overwhelmed by too many decisions and the fear of making the wrong one.

Even our ability to make big, long-term decisions is up in the air. And as terrifying as that is, there’s also an almost inevitable calm to it. You can’t make any plans about your life when everything may change tomorrow and the world may be run by mutant rats.

Secondly, lockdown has undoubtedly killed FOMO (fear of missing out). That’s the paralytic panic you always get when you open your Instagram feeds and see that everyone else is living a far more successful life than you are. (Why aren’t you an 18-year-old CEO of a supplement company who’s forever wearing a pink suit?!)

A quarterlife crisis is kind of like a midlife crisis. Except we can’t afford Porsches ...

If you’ve got any hint of self-doubt or confusion over your direction in life, FOMO turns this up and amplifies it 10,000 per cent. But it’s far easier now to feel comfortable with your life when you know that all anyone else is doing is trying on new bed socks.

But crucially, the thing that underpins almost every quarter-life crisis, and I imagine midlife crisis, is the lack of certainty about what it is that you actually want.

Despite having spent three years chasing ‘‘success’’, I still had no idea what that actually was. I’d never stopped running long enough to ask myself what made me happy.

But crises have a great way of toppling normal life, and replacing it with short periods of intense panic and long periods of boredom. And that means there’s a lot of time to look at the ceiling and ask yourself questions. For the first time in what feels like ages, I actually know what’s important.

And that’s not just from self-reflection, but because the threat to your normal life means that things you care about become very clear and the irrelevant ones melt away.

The only question now is can this new feeling of Buddha-zen-chocolate-fountain-flow last after lockdown? I hope so, otherwise I might have to take up yoga.