Please welcome today’s guest writer, Parker Yeo. Parker graduated from Calvin University with a B.S. in accounting in 2020 with a minor in international relations. He recently earned a Master of Accounting degree from the Ohio State University in 2021. Originally from Cairo, Egypt, he is currently residing in Columbus and soon moving to Chicago. In his free time, he likes to exercise, watch soccer highlights, and scroll aimlessly through TikTok.

The most shocking revelation I had as a child was realizing that my parents were not as omniscient as I once believed them to be. When I was younger, I was told many half-truths or flat-out lies that I discovered to be false eventually. Some were harmless and mere embellishments whereas others were more serious and existential. I don’t particularly recall the exact moment I found out that Santa Claus was not real, but I am sure it was not an occasion filled with sorrow and tears for longer than five minutes. 

On the other hand, one of the pillars buttressing my still freshly forming perspective of my environment was the fact that my parents were invincible and all-knowing. It was never explicitly stated, but I was convinced—as one is at that age—that there was nothing my parents could possibly not know. When I eventually did come to realize that my parents did not in fact hold all the knowledge in the world, it was a life-changing experience, to say the least. If we believe a mid-life crisis to be at age forty and a quarter-life crisis to be at age twenty, then we most certainly need to raise more awareness on the less often discussed eighth-life crisis at age ten. This is when your world begins to shift beneath your feet as you begin to realize that things or people are not always what they seem to be. 

The eighth-life crisis like most other crises requires some deliberate rebuilding of your life. At age ten, my peace was disturbed. During car rides back home from soccer practice or on long morning drives to church, it was a common practice for me to ask my dad questions about everything. Nothing was off the table in terms of the subject matter. I was naturally curious, which also naturally made me an annoying kid that would never stop yapping. Ceaselessly, I would direct a torrent of questions towards my poor parents about everything from politics, culture, sports, and more in my shrill, prepubescent voice. Increasingly, I began to ask tougher questions which they would counter by saying “that’s how things just are”—perhaps to shut me up but at other times genuinely just as clueless on some of the topics as I was. My conundrum then: how could I continue to live as though life was normal when I began to see anomalies—nay, cracks in a perceived reality that I fully believed in?

A few years later, in high school, I would often proofread my dad’s work-related emails or even write some of them. This set of experiences in particular probably aided the development of my assertive email tone. Rewatching kids’ films in undergrad turned my eighth-life crisis into a premature quarter-life crisis. Recognizing the nuances and the motives behind specific elements of a film changed my previous unadulterated understanding of each character and the plot. In the same fashion, revisiting and reflecting on past experiences can be quite the journey for epiphany. 

Unfortunately, I’ve come to accept that the eighth-life crisis doesn’t simply cease to exist—it only morphs and snowballs into bigger life impasses. I’m now almost twenty-two, and I continuously rebuild my life. I’m not as easily shocked by new information (although I will admit I did not expect the whole pandemic thing). It’s surprising how easy it is to see others’ ignorance and gloat in personal exceptionalism and illusory superiority (re: Dunning-Kruger effect). While my parents did not know everything, they were certainly an integral part in the development of my curiosity which I now find as one of the strongest weapons in my arsenal of character traits. Notwithstanding my pestering, they were able to nurture my curiosity and, for that, I’ll be forever grateful. There’s no concrete resolution to the eighth-life crisis—only a constant reexamination and reflection will keep the crisis at bay until it re-emerges.

Parker Yeo

Parker Yeo graduated from Calvin University with a B.S. in accounting in 2020 with a minor in international relations. He earned a master of accounting degree from the Ohio State University in 2021. Originally from Cairo, Egypt, he is currently residing in Chicago. In his free time, he likes to exercise, watch soccer highlights, and scroll aimlessly through TikTok.