What I Want to Do When I Grow Up

A few years ago my high school class held its 30th reunion. I did not go. A few weeks afterwards a friend sent me a link to a website that had pictures of the attendees, mostly couples. I knew most of these people, some of them quite well. But I only recognized one or two of them. I’m sure I have changed a lot in 30 years. Even though the change has been gradual, sometimes I am nonplussed when I look into a mirror. Nothing could prepare me, however, for the shock of seeing my classmates. They looked old. It wasn’t just a chronological age, though. They looked done: Stick a fork in them. They looked like people for whom the Early Bird Special was the highlight of the day.

Now these were people in their early fifties. I heard someone on the radio the other day say that 50 is the new 30. An exaggeration, to be sure, but still, in this day and age why should 50ish people look so over the hill? I recently discussed this with another friend of mine from the same class who doesn’t have that look. He looks quite a bit younger than these people, and so do I (to be fair he looks ten years younger than I). It doesn’t hurt that neither of us has much gray hair, a natural phenomenon (in my case, at least.)

A major difference, we observed, was that most of the people at the reunion knew what they wanted to do early, finished college and went to work at good jobs and succeeded at their goals. That is an admirable thing. For the most part they looked happy and satisfied. Good for them. What is different about my friend and I is that we are still trying to figure out what we are going to do when we grow up. We have both had some successes and live comfortable, yet unextravagant lives. But we aren’t satisfied. We’re still trying, still hungry for achievement. Neither of us have found that satisfaction, unless you consider the striving for it to be the satisfaction istelf. It is a rather existential satisfaction, like Camus’ Sisyphus rolling the stone up the hill.

I think New York has something to do with that. It is a city of strivers. Author David McCullough commented on the Brooklyn Bridge being a symbol of monumental effort, something which characterizes the essence of New York City. Some days just getting to work requires overcoming adversity: traffic, subway delays, overcrowding, bad attitudes, climbing stairs when you’re too tired… But we thrive on the struggle, the minor ones like the commute or the major ones, like 9/11. It is not uncommon to see an elderly, stooped over New Yorker struggling with a walker to get to the market and return, with the bag tied to the walker. Perhaps in the snow. I live in a walk up building, and there used to be an elderly woman on the fifth floor who went out every day to get her six pack of Meister Brau and she would come back and walk up one flight, then sit and rest, walk up the next flight, then sit and rest, and so on. And she always seemed immensely happy. She conversed with people who passed during her rest periods, and that was her social time of the day. It is my hope, and indeed my belief, that she enjoyed every drop of the cheap beer she struggled every day to get.

New York is full of dreamers (and schemers). Everybody, young and old, has some angle going that is going to make life better. Some are full of shit, and some are con artists, but many of them are actually doing something to fulfill the dream. Even if they don’t fulfill it, the dreaming itself is worth something.

I am grateful for the struggle. Every time I get smacked in the face by the harsh realities of the city, and I overcome it, I feel a rush of possibility. I can do anything. I design computer networks and challenge the organizational structure and habits of my company. I write. I make videos for YouTube. I still search for what I am going to do next and get excited by how much fun it will be. My friend makes films and is on the verge of a major success. And though the climb up the subway stairs makes my body feel each day of my 54 years, I still dream like a high school kid with his future in front of him. That’s why I don’t need to go to a high school reunion. I haven’t graduated yet.