Hopefully this works again
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
You know, one of the things that happens a lot of times with people who are just graduating college,
entering the workforce, anywhere between that twenty to thirty year range
is this thing, it's kind of a relatively new phenomenon, called a quarter life crisis.
Now we know the midlife crisis. Midlife crisis is where typically that man has this, you know,
panic of like, Where am I going with my life because what have I done with my life so far?
We find that there's this whole new generation of people who are experiencing something similar called the quarter life crisis
You get to your twenties, and into your thirties and asking that question: what is my life all about?
it's not just necessarily a crisis as much as it is a transition, quarter life transition
and this recognition I think for anybody, regardless of your age,
is transitions are always difficult. Now you might not be in your twenties,
your thirties may have been a distant memory but the reality is all of us face transitions.
The question is this: How do we face transitions?
What do we see as the opportunity within a transition?
I don't know if you've ever heard this but I know back in—back a number of years ago,
I stumbled upon something that said that the word "crisis" in, I think, in Chinese, in Chinese characters
came from two words: the word "danger" and "opportunity",
that the word crisis is when you have an opportunity but there's also some danger involved.
I'm not sure if that's accurate but I do think that it is an accurate reflection of what a crisis is.
It's when we find ourselves facing something we've never faced before
a new danger potentially but also we find ourselves with new opportunities.
I don't know if you've ever thought about this when it came to education,
when it came to ... if you ever went to college ... or if you found yourself after schooling,
entering into the workforce but you realize that you've been institutionalized.
I mean if you went through the whole like school process, you've been institutionalized.
If you're familiar with the movie Shawshank Redemption,
you know what happens if a prisoner is in prison for too long, they become, as what they said, institutionalized,
where you don't know how to live when you get free. You don't know how to live
when you're not living according to someone else's schedule.
This happens a lot of times to young adults who have been, in their whole life,
they've been dictated, you know, their schedules been dictated to them,
according to the institution, the university, the high school.
Then they find themselves in this place of freedom and it's a dangerous place
because all I've ever done is what someone else has told me to do and so here I am
institutionalized but now free and I have this danger but I also have this opportunity: that's this crisis.
But one of the things people are afraid of doing is, they're afraid of failing.
Now again, your twenties may be a distant memory, your thirties may have been a while ago,
but all of us face transitions, whether that's a transition into retirement,
whether that's a transition of having the kids leave the home,
where the transition, even looking
down the—in the face of death, knowing that that's a transition
and to have the recognition of, it's OK to be afraid, it's OK to not know what's going on
because of this very clear fact, a very obvious fact that we sometimes ignore:
You've never done this before, it makes sense that you don't know what to do
because the truth is you've never had to do this before and so here's the thing:
You don't have to be an expert and the great freedom about not being an expert, is that you're free to fail.
You know, newbies, new beginners,
they're always free to fail. Freedom to fail is how you learn and so
if you're facing a transition, maybe you're in the middle of a transition right now,
I just want to say, "Take heart, take courage."
Here's the apostles. Jesus calls them, he calls them to follow him and they're in a time of crisis,
they're in a time of transition. In fact, after He dies and ascends to heaven, they're in a place
of danger and opportunity that they've never faced before and they are not experts,
even though they've been training for the last, you know, three years under the tutelage of God himself,
they don't necessarily know what to do and they are in a time of crisis.
But they also had this great strength because they knew they had the freedom to fail,
but also they had a God with them who would not fail.
If you're facing a transition, you're in the middle of a crisis right now, remember those two things:
You've never been here before and so you have the freedom to fail—you're not an expert;
but also, with you is the God who will never fail.