“I want it all” (Grown up edition)
In the course of a life, can we really have it all?
The YouTube video above — featuring a song from the 1980s Broadway show “Baby” — captures our wishful thinking, especially when we’re younger. In this scene, three women of different ages and life circumstances — but all on the south side of 40 — meet by chance in a doctor’s office. In a sweet and clever number performed by Liz Calloway, Catherine Cox, and Beth Fowler at the 1984 Tony Awards, they share how they want it all.
Getting real
Way back in 1985, Norman Redlich, the dean of NYU Law School, referenced those Broadway lyrics in his remarks at our graduation convocation. His message: It sounds great, but most of us can’t have it all. There are choices to make and realities to navigate in a life that moves all too quickly.
So there we were, sitting among family and friends in beautiful Carnegie Hall, feeling a bit heady about ourselves, while thinking that the world was ours to conquer — and here’s our dean throwing cold water on us and suggesting that it’s probably not going to happen in the way we’re imagining it.
Among the sea of forgettable graduation speeches that I’ve heard over the years, I guess it means something that I remember this one.
Instead…how about a meaningful life?
Rather than chasing such an elusive goal, let’s focus on what makes for a good and meaningful life, while respecting the fact that we’re not able to control everything.
For some, that meaningful life may be grounded in raising a family, caring for a loved one, or pursuing an avocation. For others, it may mean devotion to a career or a cause, or perhaps creating something artistic or delicious. And still others may find meaning in overcoming significant personal or family challenges.
A lucky few may achieve a zen-like blend that allows them to check all the boxes. But for most of us, it will involve some juggling, choosing, compromising, and hopefully succeeding more than failing.
And if we are fortunate and play our cards well, we will get to do a lot of good things during the time we’re here.
Sorting through clutter
For some, sorting and tossing clutter — objects, emotions, experiences, what have you — may be a key to that meaningful life, especially when we reach a certain age. (Fill in number here.)
Okay, I’m the last person in the world who should be talking about reducing clutter. I’ve been a saver and collector all my life. (I’m a classic Cancerian in that sense.)
But that’s what I’m doing now, tossing a lot of stuff. You wouldn’t know it from the current look of my office or condo, but believe me, this year I’ve been offloading!
And you know something, it feels good. I have a pretty clear sense of what brings meaning to my life, and I am jettisoning or recycling the stuff that doesn’t connect with who I am and where I want to go.
Generation Jones
These thoughts are especially pertinent to many Gen Jonesers. As I’ve written before, for our generation, it’s game time. As a group, we’ve still got a lot of fuel left in the tank, but we need to be open to how we can create really great years ahead and define our personal legacies.
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This is a considerably reworked and augmented version of a 2011 post from my professional blog Minding the Workplace.
Holiday reflections: The end of limitless possibilities (and that’s good)
Rockefeller Center during NYC’s post-Christmas blizzard, 2010 (Photo: DY)
Like birthdays, end-of-year holidays can be a time for taking stock. However externally provided, these recurring milestones give us opportunities to look back, assess the present, and peer into the future.
Some four years ago, writer Judith Warner blogged for the New York Times about listening to her daughter sing the title song of the musical Fame:
…I heard Julia’s voice, stronger and more confident than mine: “I’m gonna live forever. I’m gonna learn how to fly. (High.)”
And one of those all-too-frequent choke-in-the-throat feelings came over me.
This was her song now. Not mine.
The sense of limitless possibility: hers. Vaulting ambition: hers. Anticipation, excitement, discovery, intensity: all hers.
Later in the piece, she laments, “This is the cruelty of middle age, I find: just when things have gotten good — really, really, consistently good — I have become aware that they will end.”
I hope that, for Warner’s sake, she was writing her blog post at a time when she was briefly caught in a down mood. But even her attempt to locate the silver lining sounded a bit sad:
There are trade-offs: intensity versus contentment, exaltation versus peace. And perhaps the best exchange of all: you trade in an idea of yourself for a reality that, if nothing else, can make you laugh.
Ack. Even the top benefit of her “really, consistently good” life today is the ability to chuckle at her current self.
I’m not quite sure why I’m using Warner’s piece as the foil in a holiday reflection (of all things), but obviously it has stuck with me. Although I won’t claim immunity from all of Warner’s lamentations about getting older, I now feel ready to write my response.
For me, among the genuine blessings of the passing of time have been authenticity and self-definition. I have been afforded the extraordinary privilege of being able to make choices — hundreds of millions of people in this world are not so fortunate. I have squandered some of that privilege, but thankfully a kernel of inner wisdom has helped me to narrow down the limitless possibilities, rather than struggling to keep them open.
As I see it, in making the right choices we find the “(a)nticipation, excitement, discovery, [and] intensity” that Warner has now reserved for her young daughter. When that happens, the would’ve beens and could’ve beens — i.e., the roads not taken — simply don’t matter as much.
I do know of those youthful feelings that Warner writes about. That sense of the world being your oyster, wrapped in a seemingly boundless optimism of things to come. I remember those days well, and sometimes I get nostalgic for them.
However, if I’m being honest with myself, I also must acknowledge piles of anxiety, insecurity, immaturity, and posturing (a kinder way of saying inauthenticity) that were very much a part of my twentysomething self and, umm, beyond. By no means do I assume that everyone of this age range is similarly afflicted, but those qualities were very much a part of me.
Okay, so today I’ve got a lot less hair, more paunch, and my knees creak, but I have a sense of what I’m supposed to be doing and that feels good. I now understand Joseph Campbell’s sage advice, follow your bliss. Campbell (1904-87), whose writings and lectures on mythology, faith traditions, and the world’s societies made him a singular authority on the human experience, suggested that following our bliss will lead us to the life paths that have been awaiting us. When we reach this point, opportunities and connections seem to materialize.
In a popular PBS series of interviews with Bill Moyers, Campbell replied to a Moyers question about whether “hidden hands” guide and facilitate our work once we’ve found our path:
All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time — namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors to you. . . .
As I suggested above, many people are not afforded this opportunity. If life is largely a fight to obtain food, clothing, and shelter, then it’s awfully hard to pursue one’s higher level aspirations.
But I’m guessing that most folks with the ability to read this have a degree of choice. Some may be struggling to find their purpose in life, or to recover from setbacks. For those dear readers, especially, here is what I wish for you at this holiday season: Opportunities to discover and follow your bliss, and the wisdom to do so.
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Cross-posted with my professional blog, Minding the Workplace.
Bookmarking middle age
Recently I showed how I’ve accepted the identity of “middle aged” when I bookmarked the Next Avenue website on my computer.
Click & add. Call it a form of Digital Age self-therapy.
Hosted by PBS, Next Avenue is a content-rich source of articles and blog posts containing information and advice especially for folks who have reached the age 50 threshold. Its main menu includes categories such as “Health & Well Being,” “Money & Security,” “Work & Purpose,” “Living & Learning,” and “Caregiving.”
I first clicked to the site with the grudging ‘tude of every 50+ guy who thinks of himself as being 25 at heart. Once I discovered what was there, however, I kept going back.
Finally, after repeated visits, I realized it was time to make the ultimate digital commitment: I bookmarked it, on multiple devices, no less.
Now and tomorrow
Next Avenue maintains a healthy focus on the present and the future. Its contents are immediately relevant to me. I can’t say that I follow all the sage advice provided — witness the cinnamon roll I polished off for breakfast the other day — but it’s there for the taking.
In addition, as someone on the younger end of Next Avenue‘s intended base audience (an increasingly unusual situation), it provides me with a preview of the years to come. We Americans, especially, are socially programmed to resist, even dread, anything to do with aging. But one welcomed aspect of my creeping emotional maturity is the realization that the experiences, insights, and stories of folks a generation ahead of us can yield a lot of helpful lessons.
Musings of a Gen Joneser 
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