Nice tights, Janeane.Speaking of twenty-somethings, I recently watched the cult classic Reality Bites, starring a young Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, with Steve Zahn, Janeane Garofalo, and Ben Stiller, who also directs. It's a healthy dose of early 90s culture, and though it fits the format of a standard romcom, its cult status is deserved. It's well-made and acted and it gets to the heart of the things that terrify 22- to 28-year-olds*.
It's about the romantic, despairing, and hopeless pursuit of a dream job; it's about the confusion of first loves and complicated friendships; and it's about trying to find a path to follow, whatever that may be. (I know, I know, cue the tiny violins, but stick with me.) The characters strive to reconcile their circumstances and their lifestyles while going through a time period that every self-aware adult recognizes. Coming out as gay, getting fired from a job (or twelve), experiencing amazing sex, getting that first taste of realistic success, suffering an AIDS scare -- even if these aren't our lives word for word, we can see the vibrations and understand where they're coming from. The breakdowns, the celebrations, the joy, the despair -- it's a 98-minute lyric poem.
I read Annie Dillard's The Writing Life this week for my revision workshop and pulled this quote from it: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." The simplicity of this statement just bowls me over. It's actually a beautifully freeing thing, because it implicitly awards the individual the choice of how to spend their time. It could have read "how we choose to spend our days is how we choose to spend our lives." Each day we're awarded 24 hours, and we spend them like currency -- this much on sleep, this much on work, this much on play, this much on dicking around and watching The Bachelorette on Hulu.
But those little choices each day build up, and as time passes they'll be what we remember because that's what actually happened -- not necessarily what we wanted or expected. So we seek this status quo, a state of being and set of habits, that will bring us the utmost happiness. For some that happiness is a secure job and a passionate love affair and a four-door sedan. For others it's a gypsy lifestyle, always on the move, always experiencing new things. There's no wrong answer, both the movie and Annie Dillard tell us, but you should probably at least be attempting to seek one out. You know, in your free time.
* I assume the quarter-life crisis will be over by 28. At least that's what I'm hoping, because I'm pretty sure the "I'm about to be 30" crisis will take over either way.
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UPDATE, 12:13 p.m. - So after posting this, I continued daydreaming and waxing philosophic about being 24 and yadda yadda, and I had a thought. An extension of a thought, really, regarding how we spend our time like cash at a farmer's market, handing it out in return for various satisfactions. Why waste time, then, doing something you don't like -- spending on things you don't care for? I understand that people work jobs they hate because they need the money and that couples stay together for the kids sometimes. But a vast majority of the time, there's no one forcing us to conduct our lives any which way. So why wait around, being unhappy? It's like wasting money -- except that money is replaceable whereas time is not.
Oh...my...God...could it be? Could they have been RIGHT ALL ALONG?!!
Happy summer, everyone.
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