It’s been one of those weeks of self-doubt, frustration, stress, unprofessional idiots, regrets, and dealing with a lot of back & forth about what to do & where to go from here. This piece by Rudyard Kipling (it’s for us daughters too!) is exactly what I needed to feel like Aaliyah..and dust myself off & try again.
“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”
-Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father’s Advice to His Son
This post isn’t about anything novel and it isn’t written as well as the thousands of other posts about it, but I like having an opinion on most things, so here you go. I’m one of those individuals that is lucky enough to have been part of two eras of technology; the one where I used a pencil to wind an audio &/or video cassette, blew on Nintendo games to make them work, had a Walkman, had to just wait it out if someone wasn’t someplace at some time, and had dial-up America Online (“10,000 FREE HOURS!”) with a parentally mandated 1 hour of internet a day and the current “iGeneration” era where you Snapchat a photo of yourself to put on Instagram to simultaneously share on Facebook & Twitter while making sure none of it ever gets on your LinkedIn page and never having to get off of your iPhone to do any of it.
I’m on my phone pretty much most of the day. I watch TV on it, I pay bills on it, I check statements on it, I take pictures on it, I converse with people on it, I use both personal & company social media on it; hell, it even has a name (Pablo, btw). Strangely enough, I rarely take calls on it though. I don’t even use my laptop for weeks at a time, because it doesn’t fit in my pocket. I sometimes literally feel an urge to tweet something just for the sake of not having done so in a few hours. But alright, let’s say for the sake of being devil’s advocate (and using it as a fabulous excuse), that social media is a networking tool & I need it for my fashion brand, and in order to bring awareness to my fashion brand, I also have to utilize my personal network (this is great, I just convinced myself in that one sentence that I should be on all of my social networks at all times, I need an intervention). What about all the rest of it? Texting other people while at dinner with a completely different group of people? Forgetting to eat the food on your plate because you’re busy rearranging it so it makes for a pretty Instagram or Foodspotting picture? Making a completely unnecessary ridiculous face into your “selfie” (I’ll go into my rage at that becoming Webster’s word of the year in another, possibly beer-induced post) camera for the sole reason of captioning it with “OMG SO AWK!” and Snapchatting someone with it? TEXTING AT THE MOVIES WITH YOUR BRIGHTNESS ON MAX!? I’m a little concerned for my two & a half year old nephew’s generation because this will be the norm to them. He has already known for over a year how to maneuver iPads and iPhones and iLaptops. He accidentally uses the regular TV as a touch screen sometimes! iPad was probably his 4th word after vacuum, mommy, and daddy. WHEN IS IT ALL TOO MUCH!?!?
In case you haven’t noticed by now, recently I’ve been experiencing world wide webxaustion. I think it partially hit when I went to the AT&T kiosk and the employee showed his colleagues with awe (& I’m pretty sure, a little disgust) that I’m the first person that he had ever met who actually made full use of the unlimited data plan with the fact that I use 12GB a month (the silver medal of the iPhone Olympics was awarded to my brother with a close but no cigar 10GB a month). Then it hit when I noticed my family & friends, including me, all on our phones at the same time while supposedly spending time with each other! I’m guilty of all of the annoying things I mentioned earlier (except I refused to ever succumb to Snapchat & I stopped the movie one, I swear), but lately I’m okay with not being attached to Pablo palm to case. Sometimes I purposely leave my phone in another room so that I’m not even tempted to see what my faves are tweeting about or who had the perfect tiny portion of the perfect tiny dessert at the perfect [tiny] overpriced restaurant (but also, a lot of my posts are of martinis at Applebee’s & I could just be slightly envious of those other people). And I’ve become more aggravated at others who are constantly on their phones when with me. I haven’t 100% succeeded yet, but I’ve begun to make a concerted effort to not be distracted when I’m with company or when I’m out with people for a meal or a get together. I’m slowly realizing that the quality of time being spent with my loved ones has been significantly less in quality & more just sitting near each other while talking to others via data plans, and I’m not okay with that. Last Sunday, I told my brother to get off of his phone (while he was playing whatever the newest “____ Bird” game out there is, I’m sure) because I wanted to “connect.” Besides the fact that he was a little creeped out, he still had to finish his game first. I MEAN, WTH! CONNECT WITH ME, MAN!
There are of course positives like being able to call my 90 year old grandma in Bombay on her cute little Nokia phone, stay in touch with my amazing family in India and friends in other countries all the time via What’s App (until Facebook ruins it), being able to Google anything on the go like doctors’ info, nearby restaurants & gas stations, the option to use pharmacy apps to refill prescriptions immediately, etcetera (I’m still on the fence about Siri, though), but I’d like to know how my brother’s day was at work, what my sister taught my nephew that day, what my little sister ate for lunch (trust me, that one is always interesting) via conversation; not pictures, not texts, not Facebook posts (also, someone please stage a Solitaire intervention for my mom and an Indian radio app intervention for my dad). By the way, I typed this post on my laptop & only looked at Pablo twice with no social media checks in between!!! Ah, progress is such sweet sorrow.
Anyway, I’m going to go tweet & Facebook this post now so..text me, tweet me, if you wanna (maybe) reach me!
Most of us grew up with a similar dream. Get through K-12, go to college, graduate, move out, be independent, make money, live life. At 17, all you are looking forward to is the freedom-filled lifestyle of living on your own, away from (so thought at the time) nagging parents, going out, meeting new people, etc. At 17, you don’t think you’ll ever be back at your parents’ house when you’re an “adult.” At 17, you’re naive and doe-eyed, frolicking about in your happy little daydream. But it happens. From 18-22, you do exactly what you dreamed of. Most of us get jobs or go to grad school and still continue that dream. And then something else happens; you’re laid off, the market is down, you’re in loan debt, someone needs help, and the next thing you know, you’re 30 years old and sleeping in your childhood bedroom with your parents right next door.
I’ve clearly made things sound awful, but that’s not my intention. Please read on. The Boomerang Generation, as it has now been coined, is defined as:
“[…] the current generation of young adults in Western culture. They are so named for the frequency with which they choose to cohabitate with their parents after a brief period of living on their own – thus boomeranging back to their place of origin. This cohabitation can take many forms, ranging from situations that mirror the high dependency of pre-adulthood to highly independent, separate-household arrangements.” according to Wikipedia (I know, I know, but in this case, it’s on point).
I’ll be the first one to say I’m 100% part of that generation. I went to college in New York City, but stayed on campus. I then moved to Bombay for a year & some-odd months to equal parts escape a traumatic situation and delve into some long-held dreams. I came home for 2 months & then moved to the Caribbean for medical school. I’ve lived in 2 countries, went to a professional school, gotten a job, started my own company, been as independent as can be..only to come right back to the house I’ve lived in since I was 5. Many people come home as a result of necessity, financial or otherwise. I came home for comfort as well. The same irritation I had with my parents at 17 is the same acceptance I have with them at 32. To give them their due, they’ve also had to grow and change between my brother & myself discovering alcohol, quitting our respective professional schools, relationship woes, etc. (this also means they’re less annoying & more understanding now..or maybe we are, who knows). We all accept each other as adults and honestly, my parents are 2 of my closest friends, & pretty freaking interesting, intelligent, and diverse people. I talk choreography with my mom, toss back a few brews with my dad (sorry, trying to appeal to the XYs here too) and we just plain hang out like homies on a brownstone stoop waxing poetic about the good old days and dreaming of the new old days. Obviously we all get on each others’ nerves from time to time and no matter how old we are or how experienced they are, a parent is a parent is a parent and my dad still tells me to “Stop drinking sodas and all of this junk, you’ll get kidney stones” and “Look for a good guy” and my mom still tells me to “live a routine life” and “Can you please not go out on Friday nights because then I have trouble on Saturday mornings after staying awake until you get home.” These are peppered in between the “You will be successful, I know you will-s” & the “You can do everything you want to do, we will help you and make sure of it-s.”
Recently, I almost lost both of them in the span of 4 months & it has been the toughest experience of my life. Being forced to face my most terrifying fear with no control over any aspect of the situations or circumstances is not the way I had wished to spend Christmas & the new year. But over the time I spent in the hospitals and doctors’ offices and being Florence Nightingale, I learned that despite all of my gilded dreams and wanderlusting fantasies, I was never more thankful that I was at home with them. That I could, in whatever absolute miniscule way, try to repay them for their years of selflessness, confidence, education, tolerance, acceptance, guidance, never-ending love, and a limitless list of other adjectives.
The point is, there’s nothing to be ashamed of if you’re one of my boomerang brethren. These are the people who love you unconditionally and raised you to the best of their abilities and for many of us who are 1st generation Americans, probably also sacrificed incredible amounts to give you the life you enjoy (whether it doesn’t always feel that way or not) today. They’re not going to be the ones who shame you or guilt you when you need to come home; after all, wasn’t it them who incessantly lamented about the whole “empty nest” thing anyway!? The stigma that used to befall those adults who still lived at home (“OH, YOU STILL LIVE WITH YOUR MOM!?”) is not as prevalent today, and I, for one, am glad for it. The only thing I’m worried about now is if, & when, my parents try to break up with me: “It’s not you, it’s us.” 😦
Basically, there’s no place like home, and OH, BTW, BRADLEY COOPER STILL LIVES WITH HIS MOM TOO so I think we’re all gonna be just fine.
champagne & cookiedough 