After she has endured a couple of failed engagements, some meaningless and forgettable romances and now a Metra stalker and Internet lover, she’s not in the “looking for true love” phase that she was in at 21, as much as a “looking for someone who doesn’t have three eyes, a criminal record, five children, two STDs or who lives on a bench at Navy Pier” kind of phase.
It’s funny to think that so many men and women start out as innocent, healthy, happy and trusting bachelors and bachelorettes - trolling the Lincoln Park bar scene for at least a couple years out of school - and end up, five, 10, or 15 years later, being those Metra stalkers and Internet chatters with screen names like LonelyTonight45.
It’s the same in our careers, isn’t it? So many of us dream in high school or college of being those high-paid, much appreciated, totally fulfilled and rewarded artists, teachers, doctors or lawyers that we were told we could be if we put our minds to it. The Army made it seem like it was a phone call away. US Weekly makes it seem like it’s all about owning the right belt or bag, having the right glow to your skin, attending the correct party, or at this point, landing on the proper reality series.
If we have a talent, we dream of becoming a celebrity. If we have intelligence or ambition, we dream of making a multi-million dollar business or owning our own practice. Future teachers think they will be like Michelle Pfeifer in "Dangerous Minds" or Mr. Holland and his opus. Sure, Elementary Ed majors were chided for belonging to the “easy major,” and liberal arts was feeding you a whole lot of theoretically interesting, useful and inspirational information that was really not going to help you at all once you left the classroom or closed that book about Buddha or Plato. But we tend to have this inherently optimistic view of the world for a certain amount of time, don’t we?
I mean, maybe we know there is no tooth fairy, Santa Claus doesn’t exist, money doesn’t grow on trees. We realize there is war, people on the bus are capable of stealing our wallets and guns kill people, but it takes many more years to lose the hope that has been wound so tightly around our hearts for so long. It takes a while to pick up the prejudices, gain bitterness towards our parents and nostalgia for our childhoods or college days. It takes looking for real jobs in the real world for a real long time. It takes hitting ourselves in the face with the bat of TRUTH that says YOU WERE DUPED. It takes longer, I have learned, for the “be all you can be” mantra in our heads to evaporate into “if you hire me, I’ll do anything.” But eventually, most of us feel somewhat desperate, overwhelmed, and ultimately betrayed at least a little.
So, we started out as kids watching "Sesame Street" and being brainwashed with images of princes and princesses, eternal and unconditional love, magic medicine and miracles, wholesome families and a job market like the local Jewel Osco, where you can arrive at your convenience, pick anything you want off a shelf and be on your merry way. In some ways, we were given the promise of perfect lives - perfect relationships if we are lucky or sexy or desirable enough, perfect careers if we are smart or hard-working or ambitious enough. And as we turn 23, 24, 25 and look at ourselves and everyone else our age, also disillusioned, lost, let down and searching…we learn that perfection was a deception - an illusion. Maybe it was our parents’ faults, maybe our teachers or caretakers, or maybe it just our own fast conclusions and false perceptions.
In any case, being grown up - like growing up - is hard. We must accept that no one has a perfect life. The beauty is that no one starts out with that $100,000 paycheck you envisioned for yourself, or that perfect romance or love that you thought you deserved - the one that would last forever and lead only into a blissful, "Brady Bunch" marriage. Even if we experienced something much different, even if we experienced pain and dysfunction growing up, we think that we will be different, we can be happy, we can have it all if we do everything right. Right?
No. No one is perfect. No one looks, feels or is perfect. No one else became the start your parents reserved for you, or stole the spotlight that was stolen from you. The real world, unlike Hollywood or career day, is full of millions of other wonderful, talented, interesting and capable people like you, all disappointed and hungry for success and happiness.
So maybe the place to be isn’t reaching for the stars or any form of perfect. Maybe instead of resenting our parents or missing our pasts, we should cherish and enjoy and be thankful for the middle. The happy medium. The sort of. The almost. The possibly…and accept the fact that none of us will ever become everything, so we should all love little bits of anything. A good kiss. A first job. A step up. A real paycheck. A new apartment. A month without crying. A day without fighting. An hour of fun. A minute of peace. A moment of laughter. And the amazing feeling of love and friendship that can be found all of the time - on the el, in the office or across Instant Messenger - between all of us imperfect, incomplete people looking for what we want.
