My biggest existential crises always strike in the aisles of the grocery store. It seems like the perfect location for a silent mental meltdown: People walking either hinderingly slow or so quickly it’s stressful, hundreds of tiny paper signs flapping in the artificial breeze of the refrigerated section begging for attention, vegetables staring at me silently asking why I haven’t eaten one since probably the last time I visited my parents. It’s both a convoluted environment and one that offers plenty of time to reflect on the nature of life whilst trying to read the smeared pen on my palm where I wrote my ultra important list of “Things I Cannot Forget!!!!” just this morning, like real adults do.
One second I’m pondering the implication of each different shape of chicken nugget for my daily routine, and the next I’m covered in a light sheen of sweat that defies the temperature of the frozen-foods section. The crisis starts out small—to dinosaur nugg or not to dinosaur nugg? Definitely dinosaur nugg, OK, phew, see, I am a functioning adult who can make rational decisions—and grows exponentially bigger as more time elapses since the moment I opened the freezer to grab said nuggets and the moment I actually reach my hand inside.
I ask myself: Will I remember this bag of chicken nuggets in 10 years, 20 years? Am I going to define my college experience by the groceries I bought? Oh no, what if my soul is actually just a frozen pizza? Oh my God, time is moving so fast; what am I doing with my life? What are any of us doing with our lives? Why am I on this floating ball of rock in space, assigning meaning to shapeless lumps of sort-of chicken when we should be doing things like… I don’t know, reading Sartre and chain-smoking on top of the Eiffel Tower?
Subtract the sweat and that’s the cute version of how crisis-ing feels, unfortunately. Sometimes it doesn’t feel cute at all to have absolutely no idea what you’re supposed to be doing at any given time. After a childhood and adolescence of thinking there will be some magical point when you’re initiated into adulthood, possibly in some Masonic-like ritual that involves candles and stuff, it’s actually terrifying to look around and realize some people consider you the adult in a situation.
Over the past few years, I’ve talked to more and more people who liken themselves to satellites floating around aimlessly in space, or else confused cave dwellers who are shocked to find themselves suddenly flooded in light. The secret’s out: most of us don’t know what we’re doing at this point. Sometimes it feels so weird and misfit to be a human that you find yourself six whiskey-and-Cokes into the night, weeping against the comforting shoulder of a stranger who has assured you he’s the next big up and coming hip-hop-slash-R&B-slash-reggae act coming straight out of Madison on a bench outside of the Stop & Shop telling him how you’ve changed your major three times in the last year and how it’s like, really bothering you to not be able to concretely picture the nothingness that existed before the universe.
I’m trying to tell you that (I think) it’s OK to not know what the heck is happening. This isn’t an episode of “Girls”; there are no writers running around behind you helping to neatly package up the loose ends of your story into a sweet collection of tangible beginnings and endings. Nope, a lot of time they’re going to tangle up in each other, unravel—possibly trip you while you’re walking up Bascom. At the very least, rest assured there’s one other person on this campus who’s in the midst of a crisis at any given moment. If you see me on the street, feel free to approach me about it. You can cry on my shoulder if you need to, and I promise I won’t try to hand you my CD before you leave.
And all this from a bag of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.
How do your groceries make you feel? Share your frozen-food-induced anxieties with Marina by emailing her at mkoliver@wisc.edu.
