The Script

I have been wondering why people tend to ‘freak out’ at some point in their lives, end relationships abruptly, leave jobs, move elsewhere out of the blue. Over the past several months I have formed a hypothesis. Certainly not new or unique hypothesis, but one that I try to test against reality to see how well it matches. What is this hypothesis? Most of us hit some wall in our lives where we wake up one day and suddenly see the stark discrepancy between the reality of our current situation and our largely unconscious and deeply-rooted expectations, the ‘script’ of how our life is supposed to play out.

This makes sense, I suppose, since we are continuously bombarded with all sorts of messages about what will make us happy, what others expect of us and what we need to achieve and do to be successful. I have certainly had periods where I felt the terrible abyss between what I had thought I was doggedly pursuing and what would make me truly happy. Further, I think that the ‘script’ drama plays out differently for men and women. In women, I have observed something I call the ‘danger years.’ These are arguably between about 28 and 35. Many women I have known have abruptly changed relationships, jobs, cities because they were trying to deal with a deep sense of disease and dissatisfaction about how their lives are going. For women, I think this largely has to do with desire and expectation to have children. At the risk of oversimplifying (as many hypotheses do), I have seen the struggle many women have had around feeling like if they are going to have children, they need to hop right on it in tension with whether this is what they really want in their lives. Some women badly want to have children and their script drama has to do with finding a suitable mate and starting a family when conditions in their lives (their current relationships, career aspirations, etc.) have made pursuing this difficult. Others are in a somewhat opposite situation. They have a mate and have made other choices compromises in order to make it easier to start a family, but find that this is not the life they want to lead.

For men, I don’t think the script drama is so bound by a particular age or life circumstance. For me at least, I go through periodic cycles of wondering what it is all about and whether I am doing the right thing. Men do not have the same time-based concerns as women around having children. Men’s dramas, I believe, are more centered on whether they are fulfilling some picture of being a successful man and achieving the material and social status that society uses to assess worth.

So what does this all mean? Not much I suppose. When you are in the script drama, it is hard to gain any perspective since it literally feels like life or death. Perhaps age has given me some perspective, at least on the dramas that I have lived in the past. Getting older has helped me to be more realistic about who I am, who I can hope to be and what I believe will make me happy.