(A note for anyone who thinks their younger or older self would be better off)
Do you ever wish you were in a different part of your life?
Yesterday, a good friend mentioned that he’s now as far from veterinary school as the mentors he idolized back when he graduated. The veterinarians who made it look so easy had been in practice 20 years, and now my friend has been practicing that long. “How did this happen?” he asked. “Those people were a world away.”
I must have been subconsciously thinking about him this morning as I walked the dog because it dawned on me that I am now the same age and life stage as my friends’ parents were when I was in high school. That really blew my mind. Every memory I have of the parents of my teenage friends features them in a role of seniority, certainty, and stability that I now realize must have been inaccurate.
When I was a junior in high school, eating food from my friends’ refrigerators, I never once looked at the owner of said refrigerator and thought “that will be me someday.” Those people were so many life stages away from me as to be completely unrelatable. Yes, they were aspirational figures in that they seemed to have life figured out and were well off enough to not care that a stray teenage boy was eating their food, but the path from where I was in life to where they were just didn’t seem real.
Yet, here we are today. I suspect my daughters’ friends see my wife and me in a similar light as they eat our food. I look at these young people and part of me wants to tell them “I do not have this all figured out! I don’t know where the world is going, the check engine light is on in my car, and I don’t know who I’ll be when my kids go off to college! I know you secretly think you won’t ever be as old as I am now, and if you are then you’ll have everything figured out, but YOU ARE WRONG!” Unfortunately, I don’t think this would help anything (except reducing the number of teenagers who are willing to come to my house to eat my food).
The other part of me wants to move back towards where those teenagers are. Oh how it would feel to wake up without any part of my body aching. To have no greater questions than “what will be prepared for me for dinner tonight,” “where is everyone hanging out this weekend,” and “how much homework do I have?” Can you even imagine that level of freedom?
When I think about the veterinary mentors, I see the same pattern. It’s hard to believe that I’m one of the people who has been in practice almost 20 years. I remember seeing those grisled veteran veterinarians when I was a fresh faced new grad. They were relaxed, experienced, and unflappable. They were a different species from us newly minted doctors, carrying our clinical reference guides in the pockets of our white lab coats. I never truly thought I’d become one of them, but suddenly … here I am.
Now I look at the new graduates and think about how exciting it would be to go back there. Yes, I’m proud of the life lessons I’ve acquired and the years of experience under my belt. I also can’t help but romanticize what it would be like to start with a clean slate. Imagine having your entire career in front of you, being able to pick how you developed as a doctor, and to re-experience doing everything for the first time. Also, it goes without saying, there’s something appealing about being 28 years old again, amirite?
As I consider the idea of people in one life stage looking longingly at a different life stage, I’m reminded of Ray Bradbury’s classic horror story, Something Wicked This Way Comes. For those unfamiliar with the tale, it involves an evil carnival coming to town and a carnival owner stealing souls. The way he does it (spoiler!) is by offering people rides on a merry-go-round that can add or subtract years from their age. Ride the merry-go-round forward five turns, and suddenly you’re five years older. Ride it backwards twenty times, and you’re twenty years younger. You can ride as much as you want!
There are two downsides to taking this ride. The first is, of course, giving up your soul to a carnival monster. The second is the psychological trauma that ripping yourself out of your current and true life stage causes. Young people catapulted forward lose the friends they relate to, miss the experiences that would define their lives, and quickly come to regret the shortening of their own existence. Older people sent backwards have a similar experience of tearing themselves away from their friends, family, and community. The newly-young sever all the anchoring relationships that have given their lives meaning, and they come to realize that age is never the thing that is truly preventing us from having what we desire. Everyone who rides the merry-go-round ends up insane.
The great challenge that the heroes of this story must overcome to triumph is not only truly accepting where they are in life and laying down the desire to be at a different stage, but finding joy in the place where they are today. By embracing what they have and where they are in their lives, the heroes are able to battle back against this trap of temptation.
As I look back on the different ages and stages of my life, and imagine a younger me looking ahead to where I am now, I think the carnival trap is a metaphor for the struggle that many of us face. Just as the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, our current stage of life often seems to be more challenging than another stage would be. We tell ourselves that if only we were farther along in our careers, we’d be confident and secure, or if only we were ten years younger, we’d have the energy to make the life or career change we are just too tired to start.
Of course, none of this is really true. We are where we are in life, and if we were somewhere else, we would have all the problems that go along with that reality. Every piece of our lives has its own beauty and opportunities. To get the most out of our limited trips around the sun, we must make ourselves untemptable by the carnival owner and his merry-go-round. We must find peace and pride whether we are the teenager in the fridge, the new doctor, the parent, or the veteran clinician. There is joy to be had in every stage, and the fastest way to squander that is wishing we were somewhere else.
