does reality really bite?
Last Saturday my family and I watched the 1994 movie Reality Bites. If you haven’t seen it, here it is, in one sentence, as described by Wikipedia:
After college, Lelaina (Winona Ryder) films a documentary about herself and friends as they flounder in their attempts to forge relationships and begin careers.
When this synopsis was read aloud on Saturday night before we started our screening all heads turned immediately to me, as if to say: wow! how relatable for you! Now I know my family doesn’t think I’m totally floundering (at least I hope not) and I probably made some self-deprecating joke about being a floundering college graduate myself but I couldn’t seem to shake that word: floundering.
Floundering. Am I foundering? Have I been floundering?
Some may know that when my sister and I were born my dad started writing us journals that become ours to keep once we graduate college (yes that is the cutest thing you’ve ever heard). My dad has been updating mine a few times a year since 1997 and about a month ago I finally got to read it.
My dad called the journal: The Story of Elle (at least so far).
I read the entire journal in one sitting and when I had scrolled to the end of the final page a thought popped into my head: what the heck comes next? What comes after that “so far”?
I’ve always been someone with a lot of questions – a character trait that became even more clear to me when reading through my journal and my history of 22 years of indecision. But I don’t know if it has ever felt scarier to not know than it does right now. Read that sentence again and you’ll see what I mean about being someone plagued by indecision. I can’t even seem to make a firm declaration about what I do or don’t know about what it feels like to not know.
Anyway, the point is that I have a lot of questions. I feel the normal uncertainties of a college graduate: not knowing exactly what I want to do or where exactly I hope to end up. I emphasize exactly there because I want to be clear that I am not totally lost. I have ideas and passions, goals and ambition, I just don’t know what is the exact right first step. And so, to any concerned adults in my life reading or if by some happenstance someone I hope may hire me is reading, I want to be clear that I am not totally clueless, just still really curious about what’s out there. I will add too that I think most 22-year-olds feel similarly - even some of the ones who say they know exactly what they want. But that’s really another blog piece.
Of course this is all made more confusing by current national crises. The whole country seems unsure right now. And the reality of being someone with questions in a rattled country has left me feeling a bit like Winona Ryder: a little lost and a little discouraged.
I’m certainly not living the reality I grew up thinking I would at 22 and the possibility to plan or hope for a certain or exact kind of future now seems wishful at best and perhaps a bit naive. We’ve had to abandon what was “normal” (hopefully to never return to it) and every day are discovering what is and isn’t “possible” now. The world is dramatically changing daily in ways I find equally inspiring and daunting.
If you follow me on Instagram it probably won’t come as a huge surprise that one of my favorite follows is Jacqueline Whitney. Last week she shared a post that I am left to believe she has since taken down because it has disappeared from my “saved” but the gist was this: trust in the timing of your life. Along those same lines, she also recently wrote this:
You are not a failure for not being where you think you should be
I think mostly about life post-grad, first “real” jobs, and moving in and out of new cities with old and new roommates when I think about where I thought I “should” be right now. I know I am not alone in my uncertainty and not the only one struggling to secure that coveted first job right now. I know that. I even know that this is probably a more common struggle now than it has been in years past, that people now maybe more than ever are grappling with the reality of post-grad plans being changed slightly if not dramatically or stunted altogether. And yet I still feel a bit embarrassed that it’s happening for me.
I know that these are unprecedented circumstances that inarguably make job-hunting more difficult and yet I feel still uncomfortable or embarrassed or down that I don’t have the answers I once thought I should or would have the summer after college. It’s hard to admit that you’re afraid. It’s hard to admit that you don’t know the answer or exactly what comes next, even in these circumstances when I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that anyone knows “the” answer or knows exactly what comes next.
In March 2003 my dad wrote this in my journal: Sometimes the world gets scary.
That feels true today. For so many reasons. And I think all of us could, if we spent even just a few minutes, think of a few reasons why yes, reality bites.
But somehow, despite all of what I just said, all the fears I just named and all the anxieties I just put out there, that doesn’t feel true. I don’t feel altogether hopeless.
I have said it before and I will continue to say that, with a few exceptions, I have been impressed and inspired by the creative ways we as a global community and, speaking more specifically to people in my generation, we as young people have sought to be in community with one another amidst quarantine and social distancing guidelines. I have been encouraged and felt hopeful, again with a few expectations, to see the ways in which we, especially as young people, have worked to hold ourselves and our communities accountable to a higher standard the past two months as we have seen an increase in attention paid to the Black Lives Matter movement.
And so I don’t see us floundering. I see us rising to meet the moment. Of course I still feel a little lost and a little discouraged. I think all of us feel the weight of a scary world right now. And yet somehow, we, for the most part, are meeting this moment, this rather crappy hand we’ve been dealt, with resilience and empathy despite fear, anxiety, and disappointment.
So I don’t think reality bites. I don’t think we’re screwed. I think there’s hope.