What I Think and Feel at 28 - Part One

"If you believe in anything very strongly--including yourself--and if you go after that thing alone, you end up in jail, in heaven, in the headlines, or in the largest house in the block, according to what you started after. If you don’t believe in anything very strongly--including yourself--you go along, and enough money is made out of you to buy an automobile for some other fellow’s son, and you marry if you’ve got time, and if you do you have a lot of children, whether you have time or not, and finally you get tired and you die."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, "What I Think and Feel at 25"

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While reading F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography, I came across an essay Fitzgerald penned just a few years into his writing career. Aptly entitled “What I Think and Feel at 25,” the essay catalogues the young author’s views on growing older, the exchange of one’s callowness for vulnerability, and the consequences of ignoring the self in favor of following what’s expected. The joy in reading this essay is difficult to put into words, but the enterprise of exploring one’s thoughts on the world at a particular age is quite fascinating. As we grow older, Fitzgerald says, our notion of who we were at certain times is increasingly skewed, until the persona we’re left with would be almost unrecognizable to those who knew us then. By putting his views onto paper, at least part of him can be free from time’s revisions.

So I thought I’d do the same. And because the breadth I’m looking at is rather large, I’m hoping to make this a series of three or four blogs (of course, with the rate at which I post blogs, this could take me until sometime in 2016. Only time will tell). Hopefully, the following vignettes can find some kind of cohesion over such a span; if they don’t…well, perhaps that’s accurate to how I feel at 28, as well.

The Expected: “Adulthood”

As I near thirty, I’m beginning to hear the same two questions over and over, from friends, family, coworkers, and even students: 1) When are you and Jenna going to buy a house? and 2) When are you going to have kids? Depending on the audience, the responses will vary dramatically. In truth, neither my wife nor I have a definitive answer to either of those questions, particularly the second; our views ping-pong back-and-forth on an almost daily basis. Typically, the answers hover somewhere around “sometime in the future…maybe.” That’s a comfortable area for us, an indecisive, lack-of-conviction that keeps us from constructing a permanent road toward…wherever.

The conclusion of that last paragraph might suggest my wife and I are merely treading water, unable to commit to anything definite outside of each other; however, I feel such a reading stems mostly from the expected path so many of us are expected to walk once we hit a certain age. Across the Internet, I read a lot of essayists ruminating on twenty- and thirty-somethings prolonging “adulthood” in favor of “trying to figure it out” or “having fun.” Some support such enterprises, while others lambast it; personally, I resent the idea that delaying parenthood is merely shirking responsibilities or an indication of apathy.   

Now, this shouldn’t suggest that I will never buy a house or have kids (actually, when people tell me they think I would make a great parent, I take it as one of the nicest compliments I could ever receive, as it lifts me to that larger-than-life level my own parents occupy); however, I just don’t know when those dates will be, and hammering down such details now seems unfair, especially when considering it’s “what’s expected of you at a certain age.”

“It’ll just pop up,” many will say, smiling that I-used-to-think-like-that-too smile. “You can’t control these things.”

True. Trying to delay parenthood is often an act of futility. Sometimes, “these things just happen.” And when they do, well, the scenic route will end abruptly, and I will have to find my way to the beaten path. However, I always was one to linger, so unless I have to make my way back, maybe I’ll wait just a moment and concern myself with the scenery.

Oh, I’ll make my way to the path the others are walking, eventually.

…maybe.

However, despite when we find that path, I’m not sure our walk together will be marred by our tendency to dawdle; in fact, I think it will make our particular journey all the more sweet.

* * *

Of course, the above shouldn’t suggest I think young people, including those younger than my wife and I, should forego having children or buying homes (or both!) if they feel they’re ready and they want these things. These paths are different for all of us, and really, that’s the point. When you’re ready, you’re ready.

When you’re ready.

“Unless it just pops up.”

Of course.

To Be Continued