A young girl named Sarah got ready for her first
day of 5th grade. She was at a new school in a new town, after having moved over the
summer. Naturally, she was scared and nervous about what it would be like and if she would
be liked. Before leaving for school, she sat at her kitchen table, enjoying her favorite
cartoon and eating her favorite cereal. About 2 hours later, she was at school, lost and
nervous. As the first school day turned into first
the school week, first month, and first half of the year; Sarah
remained fairly nervous each day. Everyday felt like a minefield
of social games and classroom stresses. She worried about
boys and she worried about the popular girls that weren’t very
friendly to her. She wasn’t bullied, per se, but she often felt
inferior and uncomfortable. At about halfway through the
year, though, Sarah had found a nice little friend group of other
kids dealing with similar things, which helped. One of the few
things that helped her get through each week, after morning cartoons
and cereal, was recess with her friends. They wouldn’t
need to do too much. Just hang out, joke freely, swing on the swings,
and flirt with each other. The whole world became an elementary
school playground as everything else dissolved outside
the fence of the school yard.
Every Monday, Sarah had a math test after recess though,
which always kind of ruined the day for her. She struggled with
math and always felt stupid during the tests. Every Wednesday
and Friday she also had to give presentations in two classes,
which she also hated. Just in general, she felt more stressed
that year than any previous school years, and every day was sort
of an uphill battle. One day, after a math test, Sarah left class
to go to get a drink of water. On her way to the water fountain,
she noticed a second or third grader crying in the hallway
with a guidance counselor. The counselor was saying, “It’s
ok. It’s just a game. It’s just a game.” Over and over. As Sarah
walked past them, she thought to herself how little kids have no
idea how good they have it.
6 years later. Sarah was 16. She was a junior in high
school. It had been one of her hardest school years yet. She
struggled to keep her grades up and felt the pressure of needing
to more than ever. For the first time, she started looking at
colleges and having to think about her life after school. All of
it terrified and stressed her out. That same year, Sarah got her license and
could essentially go wherever she wanted. She had to schedule
around when her older brother was using the families second
car, though, which meant her and her brother fought over it nearly
every time. When
she did get to use it, though, Sarah and her friends would go out and enjoy the new sense
of freedom that came with being that age. They would go to the park, the mall, parties,
each other’s houses, and sometimes just drive around and smoke weed and get food.
Most of the time it was really fun, but a lot of the times, Sarah felt a weird competitiveness
with her friends, especially when boys were around. One boy in particular, who Sarah liked
a lot, ended up making out with one of Sarah’s friends when they were all at the mall together.
Of course, this devastated Sarah, and she rushed off and sat in the food court by herself,
trying not to cry, while she waited for her mom to come pick her up so to avoid going
home with her friends. While she sat there, thinking about how horrible the year had been
with all the stresses of school and new responsibilities and increasing social challenges, a group
of 3 little girls, who looked to be around 5th or 6th grade, walked by her and sat a
table just a couple feet away. Sarah overheard them complaining about a teacher or something
and she condescendingly laughed to herself. She thought about how they had no idea how
easy they had it. Simultaneously, she was suddenly reminded of her own elementary and
middle school years. She remembered how easy and fun it was to be at an age when you still
had things like recess; just hanging out, flirting with boys with no real pressure,
and no real-life stresses other than silly little
tests and other dumb little kids. She got visuals in her head of her 5th and 6th grade
classrooms and hallways and so on, recalling various specific memories that she had forgotten
about, but were now suddenly being played out of the strange storage center of the brain
like blurry little movies. In that moment, she felt a longing to be back there.
8 more years went by. Sarah was 24, living in New York City
after going to College in Syracuse, New York, several hundred
miles away from home. She decided to stay in New York after
graduating and moved to the city for work. She was living in an
apartment that she split with 4 other people. It was tight
quarters, but the group had sort of become like a little family,
and something was always going on in the apartment. The whole
group would sometimes go out to the bars and clubs together,
bringing their other friend groups all into one big one.
However, a good percentage of the time, most of her friends and
roommates were busy, tired, or uninterested in going out, all
with their own lives, relationships, jobs schedules and so on.
During this time, despite living with 4 people, Sarah
constantly felt lonely. It had been 3 years since she broke up
with a guy she dated seriously in college. She broke up with him
because he drank all the time and was an asshole when he did.
But she still wasn’t really over him, and she definitely wasn’t
over being alone.
For work during this time, Sarah was a typesetter for a
mid-sized publishing company, helping create text layouts for
business-oriented books and print publications. The job was both
tedious and stressful. The pressure of the work environment
paired with her lack of personal connection to the outcome made
it meaninglessly difficult. She loved living in New York City,
though, and her options were limited in order to afford the
nearly impossible cost to stay. In order to try to increase her
income, ever since graduating college, she had been trying to
build up her own graphic design business on the side, which she
put most of her spare time towards. She was always looking for
freelance projects and working on personal portfolio pieces. But
she had yet to find any sort of success. She worried deeply
about the direction of her life, or lack thereof, and felt
aimless, incapable, and afraid of never finding success in
anything personally meaningful. The unknown and uncertainty
gnawed at her like a cramped muscle in her spine.
One night, on a fairly ordinary Saturday, Sarah drank wine
by herself in her apartment while working on a graphic design
piece. A couple hours in, she was properly drunk. While looking
for source material and old files, she ended up looking through
old photos on her laptop. Specifically, photos of her and her
ex-boyfriend in college. This then led her to look at other old
photos and videos from college and high school. Parties,
projects, travels, dorms, her winter and summer breaks, videos
that her and her friends made at sleepovers, and so on. She
thought about how fun college was and how easy high school was.
To have friends that weren’t always busy and to have fun just
driving around and going to the mall. To not have to worry about
real money problems. To have summers that still felt like
summers. To have semesters that ended and began. To just be a
student with nothing that serious on their plate. And to still
have a boyfriend who made her loneliness feel less real. In this
moment, Sarah felt a deep, nostalgic longing to be back in the
time of the photos. 21 years went by. Sarah was 44 and had since
become a wife, a successful independent graphic designer,
and a mother of 2 boys.
When she was 36, one of her designs that she posted on the
internet got noticed by the founder of a startup tech company.
The founder liked it so much, she reached out and asked Sarah if
the company could purchase an iteration of the design and use it
as their logo. Sarah, of course, agreed, and 2 years later,
after the company had become a massive success, she was given
the opportunity to lead the companies brand identity, icon
designs, and nearly all other visual elements. Ever since, Sarah slowly became a highly sought
after, world-renowned graphic designer, eventually
starting her own
studio and design consulting agency, partnering with several
other industry leaders. Between this and her two children,
almost every week was filled to maximum capacity. There was
never a dull moment, which was engaging. But there was never a
dull moment, which was also absolutely exhausting. She appreciated her job and loved her family,
but Sarah often found herself feeling suffocated by
her life; not just by the intense stress, pressure or responsibility
of everything, but by the feeling that all possibilities
for anything else were essentially gone forever.
On one Friday, Sarah picked up her youngest son from
baseball practice in between two of her afternoon meetings. On
the way back to the office, Sarah stopped for a drink at a local
bar to give herself a moment to breath. She had 2 more meetings
that day and then a seminar presentation that night, along with
two more big presentations over the weekend. This was a lot, but
normal for her. While at the bar, a small group of 20 or 30-something-year-
olds came in and sat next to her. They were talking about what
sounded like a business they were working on or towards. Sarah
listened while she drank. She looked over out of the corner of
her eyes and thought about how nice it would be to be that age
again. To still have a friend group like that. To be able to go
out once or twice a weekend with no worries. Or even just be
able to stay in by herself and drink wine, relax, and work on
her own projects with no distractions. She remembered the times
when she was first living in the city. The shitty apartments
that she loved. The roommates that were always around to have
fun. The nights out being young and single. She thought back to
how exciting it was to be in the face of the unknown. Everything
in her life now was mostly figured out. And now, she longed to
be back when nothing was figured out and everything was still
possible. She thought to herself, almost slightly mad at the
naïve young adults next to her, that 20-year-olds never realize
how good they have it. The last 40 years went by. Sarah was 84. She
had developed moderate osteoporosis, which had begun to
somewhat limit her mobility, with all likeliness of worsening.
She lived in an assisted living center for elderly with memory
and mobility issues.
On a normal Sunday, her 16-year-old granddaughter, Olivia,
visited her. Sarah and her granddaughter were very close, and
Olivia would often visit to talk, keep her company, and ask her
for advice. On this particular day, the two watched a movie
together. It was a sad movie where someone died really young
from cancer. When the movie was over, the two cried a little
while they talked about it. At one point while talking about
life and aging, Olivia asked Sarah if she regretted anything.
Sarah thought for a little about how honest she wanted to be
with Olivia. Then she answered and said that one of the things
she regretted is that she never realized how good she had it
until it was too late; until she was this frail, old woman,
alone in an assisted living home with nothing to do. She said
that she would give anything to be back any age younger than 70;
not even to do anything different but to just do it again. To be
45 again and be passionate and engaged in a job she thrived in.
To still be a wife and a mother of little children. To still be
front and center of the orchestra of her life. Sarah ended with
saying something along the lines of, “Don’t overlook what you
have while you have it, Olivia. You don’t realize how good it is
to be where you are until you aren’t. And you don’t realize how
young you are until you realize you were just young for the last
time ever. Don’t wait until you’re my age. It’s no fun.”
After asking a few more questions, the two said goodbye
with a hug and Olivia went home, leaving Sarah alone in her
room. Before turning the TV back on, Sarah thought
about her own advice for a moment. She wasn’t sure if
she meant what she said or if it was more of just what she thought
she was supposed to say if she was in a movie or a story or something.
She thought about how she essentially said that life comes
down to being this old, and everything before it was good,
and everything
after it is basically the runoff. But then this made her think
about how even there, she wasn’t listening to her own advice.
She considered that in that moment, she was in fact existing in
but another period of her life that, if she lived longer, she
would almost certainly look back fondly on. That if in 10 years,
she was still alive but completely bed ridden or beginning to
lose her mind, she would look back at this time when she still
had a body and brain that worked. A time when she had
essentially nothing to worry about other than what activities
she wanted to do at the home. A time when her kids and grandkids
visited her and she still knew who they were. This then made Sarah question how she looked
at her whole life, during each moment. She always knew
that she looked at the past through rose colored glasses. She knew
everyone did and that this was just a cliché written into
the script of life. But she never really thought about what this meant
about the present. That if seemingly every version of
the past could be viewed through the positive color of rose,
than that same shade of rose must exist in every moment and period
of life. Including this one. And that perhaps the problem is,
rose is just one shade of many colors that coat every moment
at the same time. And when you mix multiple primary and complimentary
colors together, you get a brownish or grayish color.
And when you see brown or gray, it’s essentially impossible
to see the other
shades of colors that helped make it. She realized in this, that
even in the mostly positive rose-colored moments of life, it
didn’t take much green or yellow to make everything look brown.
And when reflecting back, she didn’t see the colors of anxiety
or stress, not because they didn’t exist, but because the
stressful, confusing, and overwhelming parts of her memories
weren’t so stressful, confusing, and overwhelming anymore, now
that she knew how they were all resolved or no longer relevant.
The complimentary colors dissolved away and left the primary
memory in it of itself, free from all the moods that painted
over the experience while she was experiencing it.
But the rose was always there, somewhere. And in this moment, Sarah finally saw it
while
she was
in it.