Last night I had dinner with an old and close friend, someone who has shared with me many of the same and many of the similar experiences that shape a general attitude on life.
And because of the way we often relate, the topic of the future came up.
She’s staying here and I am going there. She is trying to decide between going to school and applying for jobs and I have already set my path. In the space between these differences, however, lives uncertainty.
I tried to tell her that it’s easiest to cut losses and make a decision. Decision brings purpose, purpose brings goals, and goals imply that you are a legitimate person with a reasonable life strategy. Attribute a fancy job title, school affiliation or 5-year plan to your name and all of a sudden, you achieve “status.”
Then I tried to make myself believe that. I realized that I really have no idea what the next year or two will bring.
By cutting my losses, am I cutting myself off from the “other” person I could be?
I hate to think “what if,” which is why I’ve become a firm believer in going on the feeling, whether it’s in life, career, and most of all, love.
We sipped on her father’s homemade wine and took solace in the fact that because nothing had yet begun for either of us, we could still live like we had infinite choices.
But perhaps because of how my life has been shaped over the course of the past year and 5 months, I have started to develop the stubborn outlook that life is indeed all too finite.
A recent post on the New York Times’ “Happy Days” blog refers to this feeling of having to look back and wonder what it would be like if you had chosen a different path. Though the writer attributes this phenom, which he calls the “Referendum,” more to a middle-aged sect, he acknowledges the beginnings are in your 20s.
Young adulthood is an anomalous time in people’s lives; they’re as unlike themselves as they’re ever going to be, experimenting with substances and sex, ideology and religion, trying on different identities before their personalities immutably set. Some people flirt briefly with being freethinking bohemians before becoming their parents. Friends who seemed pretty much indistinguishable from you in your 20s make different choices about family or career, and after a decade or two these initial differences yield such radically divergent trajectories that when you get together again you can only regard each other’s lives with bemused incomprehension.
I’ve blogged about similar feelings before. Whether it’s the choice to go to school, live at home, choose a career, strap on a backpack, date someone new or simply grow up, the 20-something world is scary and uncertain. How are we supposed to act when the rules of propriety differ for everyone?
I am about to embark on a small adventure that could permanently alter my life. What if I had chosen to stay in Philadelphia and work? What if I had moved to New York City? What if I am ignoring a sign that I should be pushing to the forefront?
Though I have become more cynical as life has thrown its share of curveballs, I still believe in fate and attributing significance to coincidence. Not all the time, but most of it.
Should I have settled for something different? Should I be in a committed relationship or should I have been in one in college? Much to the chagrin of some family members and family friends, perhaps. That’s just never been me.
All of us have lain awake at night wondering “what if.” Where does that wondering stop and when does true satisfaction set in?
Sidenote: This feeling is explored in depth throughout the movie “500 Days of Summer,” which is an awesome movie. And it was a huge hit at Sundance 2009. I’ll include the trailer, just because I probably need to insert some interaction into this post to keep you from snoring off.
I don’t mean to make it seem as if my life is unrewarding, because I have shared in countless occasions, events and daily experiences that have made me wish that not only my choices but I too were infinite.
Simply, the end of traditional education brings the impending notion that time does exist and it moves faster than youth. I sometimes still feel like I am blowing out the candles on my 16th birthday cake in the basement of my house, surrounded by 20 of my Merion friends.
I think the Referendum can be applied to any age, in fact.
Yes: the Referendum gets unattractively self-righteous and judgmental. Quite a lot of what passes itself off as a dialogue about our society consists of people trying to justify their own choices as the only right or natural ones by denouncing others’ as selfish or pathological or wrong. So it’s easy to overlook that hidden beneath all this smug certainty is a poignant insecurity, and the naked 3 A.M. terror of regret.
The problem is, we only get one chance at this, with no do-overs. Life is, in effect, a non-repeatable experiment with no control.
As we all embark on this journey together, I think it’s okay to look at the person next to you and wonder if you too could be like him or her. But then look at your own life and realize how powerful you are when it comes to making the choice to be not only good, but awesomely infinite, in the figurative sense.
