Saturn Return - Part 4: Too Much of a Good Thing

Now that half of 2019 is gone and done, whizzed by in a flash, now that my plate remains clearer than it’s ever been in my entire life, I’m still in the same state of stasis that the new year ushered in. Despite months of soul-searching and a morning of Special K-dropping; despite hours of yoga and meditation, remaining vigilant to opportunities, staying open to signs, inviting in the new, I’m no closer to writing the next Chapter of Life, to beginning Part 2.  And it’s a bit frustrating.

(I know, I know what you're thinking:  Boo hoo, poor you.  What First World problems could a freelancing, single, childless resident of the greatest city in the history of  humanity possibly have?)

It's called "overchoice."  And it's real.

Spring was spent moving Mom to Florida.  It took a village and a few months.  She seems to be settling in and acclimating to her new digs, a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted living facility in Naples, FL. (Her family is from Naples, Italy!). So that’s good. 

Moving Tessie out of her 3-bed, 3.5 bath condo required many hours of digging through many closets, clearing shelf after shelf, sorting through piles and drawers and boxes long forgotten, sealed and stored in out of the way corners.  My mother had a lot of stuff, and at this stage in life, with failing eyesight and painful joints and loss of strength, she was unable to do anything but witness and direct the work. Which means yours truly did the bulk of the sorting, organizing, clearing, packing, shipping.  You may know that I had already been through this process with her about 12 years earlier, when she downsized from the big house - the family home where up to seven people lived for over 36 years - after the death of my father.  You may also know from my Saturn Returns Part 1, I’ve recently purged my own place after a major renovation earlier this year. So, for months now, I’ve been ass-deep in the material markers of lives lived.

Anyone who has ever had to pick up and move home and hearth from one locale to another knows that the experts are correct - it is indeed one of life’s more stressful passages.  (Right behind loss of a loved one or close family member, divorce, and loss of job or income.) Both of mom’s moves were huge, daunting, physically and emotionally draining.  To encounter so many physical souvenirs of her long life.  I mean, the closets alone!  Each article of clothing in each of her five (yes, five) clothing closets had a story:  She bought this on vacation in Spain with Johnny, this at Loehmann’s with Harriet; she wore this to Dari’s christening, this to Catherine’s wedding, this to Eli’s bar mitzvah on the beach, this to Aunt Clairie and Uncle Bobby’s 50^thanniversary.  Boxes and boxes, drawers and shelves of birth certificates, marriage certificates, baptismal certificates, report cards.  Mountains of bank and financial statements, legal files.  Photos, frozen moments in not only my mother’s life, but her parents’ and siblings’ and friends’ and children’s.  Christmases, graduations, vacations, barbeques, weddings, births.  Real, tangible, alive.  Still existing in time and space.  What does one do with these vestiges of days past in a long life lived?  What gets downsized away, consciously disregarded, forgotten?

Like I said, exhausting.

Going through my mother’s, and by extension, my family’s, stuff got me thinking about how different life and love was for mid-20^thcentury America.  My mother and father grew up in the same Rockaway neighborhood, they knew each other since childhood.  My mother loves to tell the story of when, barely a teenager, she first set eyes on my father, strapping and handsome:  he was riding his Palomino, Pal, on the beach, and she couldn’t help but blurt, “Who is that?!?”  She insists that at that moment, she knew he would be the man she would spend her life with. Sure, they both dated a bit, but from that first moment their fate together was sealed.  They were married for nearly 50 overwhelmingly happy and committed years, through sickness and health, for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, til death. No ifs, ands or buts.

Which begs the questions:  Did they have any real choice?  And if not, is that why they were so happy?

My father had his baptism, marriage, and funeral service in the same church, St. Rose of Lima’s in Rockaway Beach. Literally cradle to grave in the same neighborhood.  Our experience from the Boomer Generation forward has been very different.  I mean, I was living in Paris as an exchange student at 17; my parents didn’t travel overseas until their mid-40’s.  Thanks to developments in telecommunications, most notably the Internet and cell phones, the world and our access to it has grown supernova exponentially. We literally have everything at our fingertips with a just few strokes at the keyboard; we are now connected by our thumbs to the entire world and humanity's entire breadth of knowledge; we can find and communicate with nearly anyone about anything, anywhere.  The universe in our pocket.  Mind-blowing.

Which begs the question:  is all this access, all this information, all this choice– all this everything - good for us?

I wonder. All of this freedom?  Just another word for nothing left to lose*.

I think of my parents.  They were born during the Depression, grew up during World War 11, experienced the Cold War, the Korean War, et al.  Their choices were far more limited than mine – they didn’t get college degrees, they didn’t date much outside of their circle, outside of their community.  My mom’s work rarely took her outside the home; though he founded and ran a highly successful company, my father’s work rarely took him out of Queen, Brooklyn and Manhattan.  Yet, they lived long and productive, fulfilled, mostly happy lives.  They knew who they were, who they wanted to be, and they lived it.  

My work has taken me sailing across the Atlantic several times, to South America, Alaska, Europe, the South Pacific, Asia. I live in a city of about 8.5 million and have yet to find a life partner. After graduating high school, then college, after courses at the Sorbonne, after decades of acting lessons, after receiving coaching certifications - I continue to search for profound personal purpose.  A real reason to get up in the morning. 

The world is literally my oyster, and I struggle to pick a meaningful new path, to make the right choice.  This unlimited array of choice at our constant disposal was supposed to make our lives fuller, richer, easier, more satisfying.  That’s a primary premise of capitalism:  the more we have to choose from (read:  the more stuff we can produce and/or buy), the more likely we are to find the perfect house/job/car/mate/stroller/hair color/cup of coffee, the happier we’ll be.  

The people experts claim otherwise.  Psychologists and researchers continue to find that all this choice is not good for our soul.  Quite the opposite:  it can lead to paralysis, frustration, cognitive dissonance, doubt, dissatisfaction, overwhelm, sadness, a phenomenon called “overchoice”.  When confronted with an abundance of choices, we fear that we will choose badly, so 1.  We don’t choose at all, or 2.  if we do, we question our choice, wondering if we made the best one, thinking what would have been had we chosen differently, and experience mostly stress and doubt, maybe even upset or depression, as a result of our decision. 

"I have to, I have no choice." Ironically, most modern day men and women (and every other gender category) believe we suffer from a lack of options.  We have to go to work, we have to see our family at holidays, we have to lose weight, we have to help mother move to Florida ... What we fail to realize is that the paths we agree to follow, these obligations we agree to accept, give our life structure, meaning.  A reason to get out of bed in the morning, a sense of accomplishment and purpose.  Without them, we flit about the cosmos, looking for and grasping at some sort of tether to something important, good, hopeful, meaningful, lest we float off into oblivion.

Another of life’s paradoxes:  Without choice, we’re impoverished, enslaved, limited, miserable; with too much choice, we’re overwhelmed, unhappy, dissatisfied.  In modern America, on television and on the Internet and in cities and everywhere, we are bombarded with a plethora of choices every minute of every day.  From our waking moments!  Consider Starbucks, which turned ordering a cup of coffee into a life or death, identity-defining statement:  a tall half caff skim mochaccino?  Or a “half caramel, half vanilla latte, decaf espresso heated only to 100° with nonfat milk and caramel drizzle on top”?  Really?

So here we are, post Summer Solstice 2019.  The days have begun to shorten.  Soon I’ll acknowledge the last year of another decade of life in this body on this planet.  Soon I’ll have a new decade, vast and wide and open, empty, staring me in the face. With nothing of substance to fill it with.  And no real clue regarding which path to take next.  Sad face emoji.

(So this is why people have children!  To give a us prescribed raison d’etre!  To give us a socially-sanctioned, sacred, universally-accepted road map of what to do, when to do it, for and with whom to do it. For the children!  Because it’s extremely challenging to forge a path to somewhere, anywhere, from scratch, of your own choosing, without life’s generally-accepted markers to instruct and guide you.  Another paradox:  Giving your life to raising your children actually gives you a life.  A life of meaning, of purpose.  For the children!  Figuring out other ways to contribute, find meaning, are far less evident.)

One thing I have discovered so far this year: The professional choices I made earlier, to give life meaning, purpose, structure, value, to give back some of the gifts I have been granted, seem to have lost some of their magic.  I still love acting, but being an “actress” no longer seems to drive me.  I still love coaching – I coach people (including myself) all day, every day - but I don’t see myself seeing most clients according to the traditional coaching paradigm.  I still love to capture the beauty of the world through travel and cruise photography, but these don’t come along in any reliable, regular fashion.  I still see myself with a partner, but finding one has become less likely, and fortunately, much less of a priority.  If at all. 

That, I hope and choose to assume, means a very big Something New is coming.

So the Big Theme of 2019 - Out with the Old – continues unabated.  Feels like everything from Part 1, whether physical, emotional, spiritual, that gave stability and meaning is falling away … while the other Big Theme of 2019 – In with the New – remains aloof.  The endless ethereal possibilities available for Part 2 have yet to crystalize into something, anything, wondrous and earthbound and real. I’m living our 1^stworld modern existential paradox of too much of a good thing being bad.  Too much choice is proving to be a bad choice.

But this Something New will be big, different. It’s out there, somewhere, just itching to be found, coyly waiting to reveal itself. A new game on a different field with unfamiliar rules and highly rewarding outcomes.  In the interim, patience, perseverance, persistence.

*Thank you, Janis

© 2019  Tess Quadrozzi, A-Muse-In-Manhattan