On duckies and saxophones
Trying not to get too in my head as I contemplate the wisdom of Sesame Street
I’ve taken a break from writing this summer. I’ve thought about writing a lot, and in my head I’ve been hard at work trying to craft something new and worthwhile. But it’s been a struggle to make myself sit down and *do* anything about it, and I’ve found myself engaged in a lot of second-guessing. Is this really worth writing about? Wouldn’t that post just be a rambling mush of words rather than a coherent thought about something? That doesn’t make sense. No one cares about this obvious and banal point that you’re laboring over! You could say I’ve gotten a case of the writerly yips, I suppose.1
One theme that I’ve fixated on though (at least in my head, if not on the page), is that of getting older and making choices. I keep thinking specifically of this Sesame Street sketch from the early 80s that was a favorite around the house when when I was growing up. My dad would recite its familiar refrain to me and my brother whenever he felt we needed a good lesson in how to self-regulate. The plot here is very simple. Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but he also wants to hold onto his rubber duckie while doing so. Hoots the owl makes a passionate, forceful plea to Ernie in song that he can’t do both — at least not at the same time. Using a diverse cast of random 80s celebrities, Hoots drives home the message that has been embedded in my subconscious now for four decades: You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.
Of course, for kids, this song is a cute lesson about holding off on fun stuff in order to do things that require more effort and discipline. You can’t just have cake and ice cream for dinner and all that. As an adult, I come back to this song because, well.. I’m not sure much has changed. For me, the lesson still needs learning.
I know it sounds silly to just spell out, but when I was in my 20s, I didn’t think about the need to balance trade-offs like this. To torture a metaphor, life was full of duckies and saxophones, and I was just fine juggling both. I mean, yes, of course — I made some “big” choices. I picked a major in college, I decided what I would do after college, I moved cities a couple times. I decided to go to law school, I made a few big course corrections because whatever path I was on at the time wasn’t working for me. I also made one or two bone-headed mistakes and I learned from them. Frankly, as I look back it’s a goddamn miracle I managed any of this because.. what did I know about anything?? Why do dumb, naive kids in their 20s get to make monumental choices that people in their 40s or 50s and beyond then have to live with? Like I said. It’s silly to spell it out and reflect on this. It’s just what is.
I guess now that I’m older I just think — I made those choices, and they worked out, more or less. But I had no concept that I was foreclosing other options while doing so. Life seemed so long and vast and there was so much that I hadn’t figured out — how could it be that any choice I might make could actually “matter”? Any wrong moves could later be fixed because there was an infinite amount of time that lay ahead in which to course-correct or do something else. But now I have two decades of real, post-college adulthood behind me and like.. the opportunity to fuck around and live in Seattle in my 20s is gone. The chance to drift aimlessly between not-exactly-sorta-jobs and half-assed mattress-on-the-floor living arrangements while I figure out my next move.. that’s passed. Or whatever. I don’t even think I ever wanted to live in Seattle in my 20s, but if I did, I know now that I won’t. You get what I mean.
If being in your 20s is all about making big choices without fear of consequence (because there are a million possibilities out there anyway), I’ve come to think of my 30s and 40s as a time when I really internalize the notion that there are consequences — that the choices do matter because time is precious, doors close, and there aren’t as many options open as I thought there once were.
This probably sounds like some Barbie-inspired existential dread, and maybe it is that a little bit. But Barbie was preoccupied with the idea of dying. I can honestly say — I don’t think that’s where I am. Dying still seems like something that’s (hopefully) way, way off, and it’s not a visceral, immediate concern for me.2
To the extent I’m having new-found anxiety or insights about getting older, it’s not about death. Like I said, I really do think it comes down to choices. To digress a bit, the summer I lived in Alaska (one of those aforementioned mattress-on-the-floor times), I often went with coworkers to the local diner, which happened to be in the airport. Little Alaskan towns of even 8,000 or 10,000 people all have a local airport because it’s Alaska, and flying a tiny twin prop airplane is the only realistic way to get between parts of the state that are separated by hundreds of miles and vast mountain ranges. Anyway, in the cafe there was a big banner advertising the local puddle-jumper airline, and on the banner there was a picture of a duck marveling at all the Alaskan cities and towns he could fly to and how many times a day the flights ran.3 The banner just had the duck looking straight to camera with a speech balloon over him that said, “I love choices!” That was the whole ad. “I love choices!” I thought it was funny. What’s not to love about choices??? Isn’t that duck fortunate to have so many options?! What I’m struggling with as I get older is… maybe the choices are actually the source of my stress.
There’s a very basic, small-scale way that making choices comes with different trade-offs as we get older, of course. Choosing a big night out with lots of drinks comes with a heavier price to pay the next morning. An intense workout or long distance run that I’m not really in good enough shape for will hurt way more than it used to.4 But I can live with those things. I’ve experienced plenty of nights going out now, and it makes sense that the hangovers might start to really sting. It’s fine.
But it’s the bigger choices, obviously, that I feel.. well.. I’m not even sure. I don’t mean to suggest that I’m full of dread because I’m “locked into” anything with a job or mortgage or planning for kids or that stuff. I’m really ok with where all those things are going. But.. I realize now these are the defining choices that are going to shape the next 20 or 30 years of my life. This is really it.5 I’m satisfied with the choices that are at hand, and I’m not second-guessing myself, but I really, really feel the weight of these choices in a way that I never did when I was younger.
My job is fine and sure it could be better, but it’s not worth being unhappy about and there are a lot of reasons to just stay where I am and not take on the massive anxiety that would come with switching to something new. I think I’m well-suited to my job temperament-wise. That’s not a full-throated endorsement of my current career choices, I realize, but.. it’s working for me for now, anyway. As for having kids… I can’t even begin to imagine what I would say that’s halfway intelligent here. Sam and I want to have kids, and there’s some part of me that feels like I’d be playing life on easy mode if I went the next 20 years without doing this. I don’t want to reach the end of my life and have never done it. Raising children is too big and too fundamental a part of what it means to experience what life has to offer, and so I’m ready to give it a try. But beyond that? Who knows. We’re going to make it up as we go along. Again.. total cliche to say all this, but.. right now cliches are the only thing I can think to draw on when I think about kids. I’m not dreading it. I know enough to be terrified, but maybe not enough to be genuinely excited just yet. It’s the next step, and it’ll be ok. I don’t want to spiral here, but.. this is one choice I’m making that has the ability to throw every other conceivable plan I might have into chaos, so.. I dunno.
Literally how do I want to spend my remaining time on earth, and am I doing the things I say I want to be doing? If I want to learn to speak Italian, try to write professionally, learn to bake fancy pastries, take up photography, travel abroad more (or even live abroad at some point) — these are all *choices*. They’re just little quotidian hobbies or ambitions, sure, but they all take time and energy, and that means they take away from other things I would also like to do. That’s obvious but it’s frustrating. I’m not in a panic yet about growing older, but I’m starting to see what that panic could be like someday. How do I do all the stuff I want to do in life? How do I prioritize? Are the things I say I want to do really worth doing? And what if I don’t prioritize anything and I never make any plans and all the time that lies ahead just kinda .. passes by? I never used to ask myself these questions, but I ask them now.
Maybe that’s the answer why I haven’t written here in a couple months. I’m paralyzed by the choice of whether to do so. If I dedicate myself to any one thing, I’ll be shutting doors I feel like I’m not ready to shut. But that’s what getting older is. It’s coming to terms with the idea of choices. Choices that were made cannot be unmade. Choices that lie in the future have to be approached with a little more deliberation and care, because there isn’t as much open road ahead as there used to be. That’s what I’ve been thinking about this summer.
Speaking of writerly yips, this clip of Martin Amis talking about cliches is so good. Once you get self-conscious about trying to avoid pat, empty language, it can be almost impossible to say anything. Thankfully, I’m not Martin Amis, so I don’t have to torture myself with this.
And sure but like, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, it’s ok because that’s just how life works. Nothing’s guaranteed. People who are haunted by the idea of their own death make no sense to me.
Of all the Alaskan animals that might need a twin-prop airplane to get places, a duck isn’t really the first that comes to mind. But I guess he’s a duck that likes to travel in comfort.
I refuse to complain about my 40-something-year-old knees, but goddamn my knees. They are getting older, and I don’t care for it.
Still absolutely blows my mind that some people (most people in the case of older generations) were able to make these big “rest of your life” choices in their late 20s or early 30s.