AIT SAID Azzedine Idir

Just another believer that sky is not the limit.

If you graduated recently or will be graduating shortly, you’ve for sure asked yourself the wonderful question in the title, without having an answer. Or maybe you have an answer, but you’re still doubting it. Is this the best thing I can do? What if I do this instead? What if I don’t find a job? What if I stay unemployed for a year?

Post-college depression is a very common problem, triggered by the stress of transition, the loss of academic structure, and the challenges of “adulting.” (This is especially true if you’re an international student in a new country, pressured to find something good, and fast.) We were so comfortable when we knew tomorrow’s course topic, the project we’d be working on, and exactly what to do to get what we wanted: work hard, study, and everything would go smoothly. Until you graduate… and that comfortable state of structure and supervision disappears, replaced by a fog of an unclear future mixed with a human self that is complex, easily biased, and manipulated.

This bad feeling can be both a cause and a consequence of the quarter-life crisis that happens to almost everyone in their 20s and 30s. It’s the time when we’re supposed to create a solid definition of who we are, what we want in life, what values we’ll fight for, and what our deep goals are. What are the next steps to achieve them? Are these goals even worth fighting for? Or are we just following what everyone else is doing? Am I doing okay compared to my friends? Compared to everyone else? Where is my Bugatti? Why don’t I live like that 20-year-old influencer in Bali selling bullshit coaching online?

When humans are dealing with internal stress, our first instinct is to look outward. In this context, we try to mimic our elders and high school alumni. It feels comfortable, it’s socially endorsed, and it promises stability in the face of uncertainty. But this is a pure fallacy, a critical error in thinking.

Appeal to Tradition: This is a logical fallacy that assumes a path is better or correct simply because it’s old or has been followed by many. The factors that govern our destiny and psyche are so complex and variable that it’s almost impossible to get the same outcome as our elders. Of course, it can happen, but we need to understand it has a very small probability. This is the opposite of what many people believe, especially parents creating life scripts for their children.

We need to acknowledge that the life scripts people feel pressured to follow (e.g., “college -> job -> marriage”) are culturally and historically specific, not inevitable or universally optimal. Studying medicine or computer science won’t automatically make you rich or successful. A PhD won’t give you the honorable status you think it will. Quitting your studies won’t make you a failure, and becoming an entrepreneur won’t guarantee you’ll make a lot of money.

And of course, the exact opposite of everything I just said could also be true. We never know. No one has the certainty they will succeed or fail until it happens, until they try…

The authority bias

Most of us, when we’re lost, seek balance from people who were once in our shoes. We assume they’ve passed the test and will give us the perfect advice so we can get through it smoothly, with butterflies flying happily from flower to flower…

The reality is, people who’ve been through it tend to offer advice that reflects their own personal highlight reel, their successes, failures, and perceptions. Their advice is colored by their history, their biases, their cultural context, their values, and most importantly, their ego.

There’s research showing that many elders exhibit a kind of psychological defensiveness when advising youngsters. They might even make up facts (straight-up lie) for the pure purpose of self-validation, keeping their self-esteem intact even at the cost of bending reality. The danger here is that it’s not just “bad people” who do this. It’s everyone. Maybe you, maybe me. Your parents, your big cousins, your older brother or sister, that one friend who’s a few years ahead. No one is safe from their ego. Someone will always tell you a path is too hard or impossible, and laugh at you, instead of just admitting their own mistakes.

Many of them just followed the old script from their own elders without question. They’ll hit you with the classic authority arguments: “I know what I’m talking about, I’ve been there, believe me,” and then throw an unjustifiable, non-exhaustive claim in your face, waiting for you to believe it. And worse, they might get angry if you don’t.

If you make the choice to believe them, you’re automatically following a script. And there are a lot of bad things about that.

The act of blindly following someone else’s path will eat up your motivation and lead, for sure, to a feeling of emptiness, dissatisfaction, regret, and identity conflict. Why? Because external stability and fitting in don’t guarantee internal well-being. I think there’s a small voice inside all of us that knows we were meant for more than just following the sheep. This voice is us telling us that we are following a path that we did not chose, that “this is not us!”

Who are you?

The path we follow, whether we forge it ourselves or it’s a script handed to us, is tied to the incredible, messy concept of the “self.” I’m often asked for advice myself, and I truly don’t like it. I have this fear of biasing other people with my own subjectivity. I’ve lived through my own unique set of experiences, and my ideas are affected by a trillion factors, one of them being how tired I was that day. I always try to delay my answer, to think deeply about what’s behind it. Is this coming from my heart or my brain? Is it justified, or could it be unhelpful and maybe even destroy a life? It absolutely can.

Because I am very different from the “other” and vice-versa. We are all unique. No one has lived the exact same life, not even twins. So how am I qualified to say “this is the truth”? Instead, I always state that this is my opinion, forged over years, or maybe just yesterday. An opinion that could change tomorrow, generated by a subconscious I can’t control. I am a product of a trillion factors, most of them random (or as I call it, destiny). We can share common ground, of course, that’s why we ask for advice in the first place. But even on that common ground, applying my pattern to another person’s unique set of factors can lead to a thousand different outcomes, some of them critically negative. And I have no way of knowing which it will be.

I follow this path because this is me. This is who I am. The choices we make are what define us. In a different chain of choices, we could become a completely different person. It’s a complicated loop: Did I do this because I’m like this, or am I like this because I did this? Both sentences are correct.

This is why philosophical theories, from Hume’s “bundle of perceptions” to modern Narrative Identity, argue that the “self” is not a fixed entity but an evolving story. This whole universe is built to be dynamic and ever-changing. Trying to copy a static life from the past ignores the fundamental nature of personhood and of reality itself.

Forging our own path

So, if you and I agree up until now, we’ve reached a couple of conclusions:

  • You don’t need to listen to anyone’s blueprint.
  • The choices you make are affected by your psyche and, in turn, will affect it.

The next logical step is the realization that we must forge our own path. This means taking the risk of failure, which is a concept that only really exists in our heads. Every “failure” has a lesson behind it and will push us forward, as long as we keep an open mind. We need to demolish this fear of failure. It’s what drove us in the first place to ask for advice from people who would just subjectively throw shit at us. If we didn’t fear failure, we would jump into the void every single time.

This is where a bunch of dead philosophers: Sartre and Camus came to deal with Existentialism, which was built on the idea of radical freedom and responsibility. They argued that “existence precedes essence,” which is a fancy way of saying you’re not born with a pre-written purpose; you have to create it. Following a pre-written script isn’t just lazy; it’s an act of “bad faith”, a denial of the one thing that makes you human: your freedom to choose. You are, as Sartre put it, “condemned and obliged to be free.”

This leads directly to the idea of authenticity. The goal isn’t to live someone else’s “good life,” but to live a life that’s true to yourself, as said by Heidegger. Copying is, by its very nature, inauthentic. It’s why Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, concluded that the central human motivator is the search for meaning, a meaning that must be discovered in one’s own unique context. You can’t inherit it, and you certainly can’t find it by mimicking someone else’s past. Even Aristotle, thousands of years ago, knew that the human purpose was eudaimonia (flourishing), which is achieved by realizing your own unique potential, alone and with the very limitted resources you have, but never by imitation.

All the shit I’m talking about is about self-creation, intentionally building a life that feels good on the inside, not just one that looks good on paper, good for others, good for flexing, good for Instagram stories. It means accepting that a personally meaningful purpose is a far better predictor of mental health and resilience than a stable job you hate. It’s about reframing this entire post-graduation crisis. It’s not anymore a sign that you’re lost; but an opportunity for “post-crisis growth”, for the biggest comeback of your history as a human, a necessary catalyst for becoming who you’re supposed to be, and who you really are.

We always meet ourselves by chance in the middle of hard times. Strive toward the difficult, pursue failure, love it, and embrace the tempest fully … for it is in the very center of the storm that our truest selves reside.

🌱 Sources and further reading