Most of my contemporaries, age
30 +/- a few years, have had some sort of mid life crisis about the time they hit 30. It seems to me that most people I know went to school with certain aspirations and desires but upon hitting the real world quickly had to find a way to support themselves.
Ok, not a revolutionary concept I know. But all of us seem to have gotten stuck in the same rut despite having very different backgrounds and aspirations. After struggling through our early twenties we all became reasonable successful financially, and all of us were torn by the rewards of the rat race vs the knowledge we had sold out on ourselves/got stuck in a rut.
One friend quit his successful banking career in LA to move back to Colorado to pursue a job that would give him more time to write, another quit his job to become a freelance consultant, I took a really well paying job on the East Coast, etc, another friend wanders North America like Cain(when he isn't sailing on replica historical sailing vessels) etc, etc.
The question is have we just gotten into new ruts? What is the real source of dissatisfaction we have all felt? Will we ultimately liberate ourselves from desire and achive Nirvana?