What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson

Author:Po Bronson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781588360489
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-23T22:00:00+00:00

• “Am I avoiding the thing I love so that I can’t fail at it?”

• “Is my mother instinct keeping me from falling in love with a career? Am I subconsciously taking jobs that I don’t love, so that I can easily leave when I have children?” (She didn’t even have a boyfriend.)

• “Am I obsessing about my career because it’s the only thing I can control, since I can’t control my dating life?”

I listened as she worked through them. Eventually she came around to a story of herself that wasn’t so convoluted. In fact, it was remarkably straightforward. Her dad left when Diane was five. It was violent, not good. Her mom was now on her fourth marriage, and though she was blissfully married to her soul mate, it wasn’t always that way, and Diane had moved around a lot when she was a kid. Furthermore, she’d boomeranged from one financial extreme to another. With her birth father they lived on food stamps. With one of her stepfathers, they lived in a mansion on the beach, and had every luxury they could desire. Diane summed it up this way: “I got used to lots of change. Change was normal. And when change wasn’t under way, I’d feel stagnant. I’ll never feel secure standing still. I’m uncomfortable without chaos. I’m always looking out for what’s next.”

In other words, there are Change Artists, and then there are Change Junkies. That made perfect sense, and for a while she embraced it. This is who I am. This is why I am me. This explains why I need to move around. Accept it and embrace it. But she couldn’t quite accept it. To accept it meant she’d never feel at peace, and she couldn’t give up that hope.

One day we were walking back from lunch on California Avenue, and I told her I didn’t think she had to accept it. I wouldn’t have said this, and what followed, if it wasn’t what I thought she wanted.

“But it’s me,” she said. “It’s who I am.”

“Well, there was a time when I thought I should never get married again and never would have kids. This wasn’t sad. In fact it was empowering to embrace it. I thought I was choosing to live in reality rather than romantic make-believe. My parents had been divorced, all of their friends were divorced, and I was divorced, and that was kind of how my universe tilted. Sort of like how your universe tilts toward change. That was me. It was part of my identity. I was proud to recognize it rather than lie to myself.”

“So how did you get over that?” She knew my son had just been born a few weeks earlier.

“Well, I had a girlfriend who I loved dearly, but I was afraid to take the next step with her, afraid I’d end up hurting her like I had everyone else. One day, I realized I was giving my childhood too much power over me. Maybe my childhood had turned me into a person highly likely to get divorced.

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