“What do you want to do with your life?”
This is a question people my age get a lot. Well, at least I do. It’s like everyone over 30 has a special radar, able to detect even minute lapses in the self-certainty of college-age individuals. Like they just know somehow that I don’t know the answer to this question, but they have to ask anyway. Perhaps they really do care very deeply about my future, but I think it’s far likelier that they simply don’t know what else to talk to me about.
Maybe it’s because I have a freakish knack for pattern-recognition, but from the time I was very young, I noticed the development of an unsettling conversational archetype. Adults, when obliged to engage in discourse with a young person with whom they do not regularly interact, seem to jump to their mental rolodex of “acceptable kid topics.” Unfortunately, this does not exactly spur a wellspring of brilliant ideas, because inevitably, when met with the apparently agonizing task of conversing with a child, adults ask some variation of the following question: “How’s school?”
When I was a kid, this question generally triggered a deep internal groan. But I was a fairly timid child (at least, in the company of authority figures) so outwardly I’d smile sweetly and spew out the clever response I kept at-the-ready for just such circumstances-- the dazzling, enchanting, always-appropriate, satisfying yet surreptitiously non-committal, “Fine.”
I could almost hear adults think, “Oh, shit” as they squirmed and glanced desperately around the room, searching for someone their own age to make bigger small-talk with. And that was fine with me because I never felt like divulging much else anyway. But it always made me wonder what it was about children that made most adults so uncomfortable. It seemed that for grown-ups, kids were like the conversational Bermuda Triangle. Once in a while a half-inspired idea would seep out of their web of panicked cranial chaos, giving rise to inquiries like, “What’s your favorite color?” (The word “color” here can be substituted by other kid-friendly nouns like “animal,” or “TV show,”) but not much else escaped.
And you’d think that as we got older, and the gap of intellectual capacity began to decrease, adults would gradually introduce new topics to us, right? After all, we knew more and experienced more every single day. Surely, some substantial common ground could be found. But peculiarly, as I made transitions through elementary, middle, and high school (even dropping out of high school; boy was THAT a show-stopper), the question about school evolved very little. And questions about my favorite color and the like disappeared entirely, so in fact the scope of conversation grew considerably more narrow, not less.
So I guess it makes sense that now, when I’m in college, a brand new question like, “What do you want to do with your life?” would seem like a stroke of goddamn genius to those who, throughout my coming of age, asked the same tired-ass question over and over and over. But this seemingly innocuous new inquisition carries some troubling connotations.
This query, all wrapped up in one tight little bundle of feigned concern, is actually revealed to be rather probing, and even inappropriate, upon further examination. “What do you want to do with your life?” implies several things:
1. That this really means “What sort of career are you pursuing?”
a. Life = career
2. That I should know by now
a. And if I don’t there’s probably something wrong with me
Not that I can really fault anyone for thinking these things. If I were normal, I’d have no difficulty answering these questions, or at least side-stepping them with more fluency. But the problem is that I’m not normal. I don’t fit into the normative mold, and so far I haven’t done such a good job of pretending to.
The significance of this inexorable fact has recently made a cacophonous uprising in my psyche. Suddenly, the bounds of conventionalism, and everything that has long been expected of me simply because I am alive in the 21st century, seem surmountable, and even wholly avoidable. Finally, I’m thinking about what I really want to do with my life, and it has nothing at all to do with how I’ll make money.
Of course, you've articulated this much better than I ever could.
ReplyDeleteI've been feeling much the same way, as you pointed out most college-aged kids do. When someone asks what I'm doing with my life, I generally always said something along the lines of, "Oh, you know... school." and left it at that or noted some insignificant recent discovery (i.e. a new recipe, person I'd just met, or book I've read). The problem that this leaves me with now is that the typical go-to is not there to support the little discoveries. The question, as you pointed out, upon leaving a university life, is where to go from here.
I have absolutely no idea.
You've made a great point here though. Actually, just before reading this I was lying on my bed, staring at my ceiling, wondering this very thing. What am I going to be doing a year from now? Where do I want to go, who do I want to be, what should my career be? The major I've chosen talks about the United Nations and law school and these huge research projects. The more I think about the ridiculous amount of options I have before me, the less I want any of them.
I want to sit down, with a good book or with the people I love, and figure the rest out from there. Why does everything need to appear so structured?
Awesome!
ReplyDeleteI find that now, as an "adult" (psshh naw), I find that I feel rude if I DON'T ask "How's school/work?" So I apologize if I've ever asked you that. :)
You're young yet, toots. You'll find that the silly questions never end. They, in fact, transform into more disheartening creatures with the passing of time and aging of bodies.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, my age makes it so that no one who is not my age can start a conversation with me successfully. Or at least, it makes it so that they cannot mentally formulate any conversational entry points. At the very least you are afforded some form of relation between you and our pryers. I am unfortunate enough to be wifeless, childless, and generally personless. Reclusion is not conducive to my expectation to be greeted: after decades of frowning at things consciously and intensely, I wear a scowl by default (and have thirty times more wrinkles, as a result).
Anyway, my brittle bones discourage interpersonal communication from the youth of the year. My only guaranteed exchanges are from my handful of comrades, colleagues, and confidants, as well as the geri-hags I meet at the YMCA swimming pool.
Do what you want while you have people who care enough to react (for no action takes shape without a reaction). There'll come a day where the umbra of elderhood will slump over the table of your community, and you will see less and less of those who care.
My guess is that you find questions like "how's school?" and "...do with your life?" vexing because you don't have conventional answers. It seems that you see the question as prying rote converstaion rather than a sign that someone cares enough about you to engage you in converstation. Society dictates that when engaging someone in pleasant conversation one asks questions to help you to get to know them, without being nosy. So children get asked about school and career plans, adults get asked about work, kids and vacations. What questions would you ask an adult whom you wanted to get to know? What do you think they should ask you?
ReplyDelete