Livin' and Lovin' in A-town

Interesting Story

A good friend of mine recently sent me the following story. While it doesn't completely follow my life or the lives of all of my friends, I still find some truth in the words written by this seeker of a perfect life. Whether or not it speaks to you or portrays the path you are headed down, we've all had similar thoughts or know people who have struggled with the same dreams of grandeur and dignity.


For the most part, my women friends and I were kids of
upper-middle-class privilege, raised to believe that, with hard work
and a little courage, the world was ours. We climbed mountains at
summer camp, went to Europe on high-school class trips and took family
vacations to New York City and the Grand Canyon. Our parents, like
theirs before them, told their kids they could go anywhere and do
anything. We took them at their word.

By the time we hit adulthood, technology and globalization had brought
the world to our doorstep. Now in our mid-20s, we're unsteadily
navigating a barrage of choices our mothers never had the chance to
make. No one can complain about parents who started sentences with
"When you're president..." But we are now discovering the difficulty
of deciding just what makes us happy in a world of innumerable
options.

Three years ago my friends and I barreled out of the University of
Wisconsin ready to make our mark on the world. Julia headed to France
to teach English. I started law school in Minneapolis. Marie and
Alexis searched for work in San Francisco. Bridget started an
internship in D.C. Kristina landed a job in Ireland. The list goes on.
Scattering to our respective destinations, we were young enough to
follow our crazy dreams but old enough to fend for ourselves in the
real world. At a time when our lives were undergoing dramatic changes,
so was America. Three months after receiving our diplomas, the Twin
Towers came crashing down. We realized that, in more ways than one,
the world was scarier and more complex than we'd ever imagined.

Since graduation, we've struggled to make our own happiness. It seems
that having so many choices has sometimes overwhelmed us. In the seven
years since I left home for college, I've had 13 addresses and lived
in six cities. How can I stay with one person, at one job, in one
city, when I have the world at my fingertips?

Moving from one place to the next, bouncing from job to job, my
friends and I have experienced the world, but also gotten lost in it.
There have been moments of self-doubt, frantic calls cross-country.
("I don't know a soul here!" "Do I really want to be a __?")
Frustrated by studying law, I joined friends in San Francisco to
waitress for a summer and contemplate whether to return to school in
Minnesota. Unhappy and out of work in Portland, Molly moved to
Chicago. Loni broke up with a boyfriend and packed her tiny Brooklyn
apartment into a U-Haul, heading for Seattle. Others took jobs or
entered grad school anywhere from Italy to L.A. Some romances and
friendships succumbed to distance, career ambition or simply growing
up. We all lost some sleep at one point or another, at times feeling
utterly consumed by cities of thousands, even millions, knowing that
even local friends were just as transient as we were.

Like so many women my age, I remain unmarried at an age when my mother
already had children. She may have had the opportunity to go to
college, but she was expected to marry soon after. While my friends
and I still feel the pressure to marry and have children, we've gained
a few postcollege years of socially accepted freedom that our mothers
never had.

The years between college and marriage are in many ways far more
self-defining than any others. They're filled with the simplest, yet
most complex, decisions in life: choosing a city, picking a career,
finding friends and a mate--in sum, building a happy and satisfying
life. For me and for my group of friends, these years have been
eye-opening, confusing and fabulous at the same time.

The more choices you have, the more decisions you must make--and the
more you have yourself to blame if you wind up unhappy. There is a
kind of perverted contentedness in certainty born of a lack of
alternatives. At my age, my mother, whether she liked it or not, had
fewer tough decisions to make. I don't envy the pressure she endured
to follow a traditional career path and marry early. But sometimes I
envy the stability she had.

Once again I've been unable to resist the lure of a new city. So, as I
start my legal career in Chicago, I'm again building friendships from
scratch, learning my way around a strange new place. Yes, my friends
and I could have avoided the loneliness and uncertainty inherent in
our journeys, and gone back to our hometowns or stayed in the college
town where we had each other. But I doubt any one of us would trade
our adventures for that life. I have a sense of identity and
self-assurance now that I didn't have, couldn't have had, when I
graduated from college. And I know someday I'll look back on this
time--before I had a spouse, a home and children to care for--and be
thankful for the years that just belonged to me.