What We Signed Up For

Millennials are now well into their forties, a development that appears to have taken millennials by surprise. I am one, in case my surprise was not evidence enough.

In our twenties, almost anything could be described as potential. A person we had just met might become the love of our life. An idea might become a business. A job we disliked was something we did while deciding what we really wanted to do. The useful word was yet. We had not found the right job yet. We had not met the right person yet. The future was expected to correct quite a lot, though no one had explained how.

I remember feeling quite old at twenty-seven, which tells you how young I was. I could picture several lives I might have. I gave less thought to what it would feel like to live any one of them on a Wednesday.

Now people I know are living in the futures they once described to me. They got the jobs, married the people, had the children, bought the houses. Some are happy. Some spent fifteen years reaching a position from which they can finally see what the position entails.

The uncomfortable part is that much of this was our idea. We made these choices, sometimes with great enthusiasm, without quite understanding that we would have to go on living with them every ordinary Tuesday. You can be grateful for a life and still find its upkeep exhausting. Say so aloud, and someone will remind you that you asked for it, as if wanting something once obliges you to enjoy every minute of having it. You can love the life you chose and still wish it would take care of itself for an afternoon.

I used to think that the people who made these decisions knew more than I did. They seemed so certain. I had mistaken their willingness to begin for knowledge of what would follow. Of course they could not have had that knowledge. Neither did I when I started my business. We were all deciding which unknowns we could live with.

I started a fashion company knowing very little about fashion or business and ran it for ten years, which I consider impressive. I liked making clothes and had strong opinions about how they should look and fit. I learned the rest as I went, often shortly after it would have been useful to know it. Had someone explained every cost and difficulty to me at the beginning, I might still be considering whether to make the first dress.

There were things I learned only after years of running the business. An order could look like good news until I calculated what it would cost to fill it, or how long I might wait to be paid. An offer could sound generous until the terms became clear. I came to value people who did what they said they would do. It is a modest standard, though apparently a difficult one to meet.

Marriage and children mattered deeply to some of my friends. I understood the appeal, but I did not feel the same pull. My brother and I had a good childhood, and I was old enough to see that its ease had been produced by a great deal of adult effort. If I had a child, I knew I would want to give them that same sense of ease. I knew, too, that the work would continue whether or not anyone noticed it. Then I started a fashion company without knowing the first thing about running one. Apparently I was capable of taking on an enormous responsibility as long as I failed to recognize it in time.

Relationships have their own period of pleasant ignorance. People can look excellent at the beginning. They have had time to prepare, and so have you. Both of you are filling in the parts you cannot yet see. There is nothing dishonest about it. You cannot know someone’s ordinary life from the first few times you appear in it.

It is easy to know this in theory and forget it when you are suddenly single again. Recently, a friend who had come out of a long relationship told me she was worried about it. She spoke as though everyone else had caught the last train.

“Give it a little time,” I told her. “Half the men you know will be divorced in a few years.”

She laughed. I think she had been hoping for something less statistical. I understood her worry. A wedding is visible. So is an anniversary. What happens on an ordinary Wednesday is considerably harder to assess.

My parents’ marriage ended after more than forty years. My brother and I still had the childhood we had. The ending did not reach backward and take it away, though it changed how I understood parts of it. Nor did those good years guarantee what would happen next. For a long time, I wanted a number to tell me whether a life, a marriage, or a business had worked. A number is usually available, which is part of its appeal.

When I was younger, I expected age to settle more of these questions. I thought I would eventually know which ambitions had been sensible, which people were right for me, and what kind of life I was going to have. I know more about what I can live with. That is useful, though it is less conclusive than I once hoped.

We call it a leap because you cannot inspect the landing from where you stand. I am glad I knew so little when I started my company. Knowing myself, I am also glad I knew enough to take other decisions more slowly. I had assumed that one of these approaches must have been the wise one. More than a decade later, I’m not sure wisdom had much to do with either.