Why the Hell Not?
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Why the Hell Not?
Reading "The Catcher in the Rye" for the first time in adulthood reignited the resentment I felt following my divorce. I thought I'd followed the Life Blueprint. But I was more miserable than ever.
Author’s Note: I wrote hundreds of posts on my old blog Must Be This Tall To Ride, and moving forward we will be dusting off some of them for resharing and reflection, but I will inevitably be editing, updating, and adding present-tense notations when applicable.
I was writing a lot and often the first few years following my divorce. Several times per week. And all of the writing was fueled by a relentless focus on personal growth. Among the many lessons learned on the journey was the idea that so many of us grow up with all of these expectations placed on us. We look around in our childhood, surrounded by people who are living their lives a certain way. This is what you’re supposed to do! Everyone who doesn’t is doing it wrong!
For me, what everyone was supposed to do was live a quiet “normal” life in a small town, or the suburbs. Graduate high school. Go to college. Graduate college. Get a job. Get married. Have kids. Stay out of trouble. Save for retirement. Die and have a decent amount of people show up and cry at your funeral. That was it. The Life Blueprint.
I got pretty resentful about this Life Blueprint I had never realized was optional until my life fell apart in 2013 following my divorce and I stopped giving a shit about winning the approval of everyone I’d grown up with.
In April of 2015, I was reading J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” for the first time. I fell in love with it and the story’s protagonist Holden Caulfield right away.
The takeaway from this archived post, as I see it, is not to pursue rebellion for the sake of rebellion. But rather to not allow other people’s definitions of “success” or other people’s expectations of us to steer us down life paths that don’t align with our own values and passions and interests.
I don’t always like doing things I’m “supposed” to do. I’ve rarely liked being told what to do, outside of coaching and mentorship designed to help me improve at something.
My work today is based on the idea of self-awareness and learning how to protect others—primarily relationship partners—from the accidental wounds we might inflict on them in our blind spots.
But aside from avoiding hurting others? Be you. Be mercilessly, relentlessly, you.
From the Must Be This Tall To Ride archives. April 8, 2015. (Present-day notes in parenthesis.)
I’m reading The Catcher in the Rye for the first time.
Holden Caulfield is the protagonist, and while we don’t share a ton of similarities largely because I’m 20 years (now nearly 30!) his senior, and grew up in a small Ohio town, we share two ideas I think are really important.
1. We can be intelligent and well-educated even if it’s accomplished in unconventional ways and mired in self-doubt.
Thomas Edison. Albert Einstein. John D. Rockefeller. Walt Disney. Bill Gates. Richard Branson. Charles Dickens.
Icons, all.
School dropouts, all.
All that means is, while I very much respect people with advanced degrees in higher education, and people who use traditional channels to educate themselves and advance their careers, the thing that really kills me is when people don’t play by the rules.
When people don’t ask for permission to do something with their lives they really want to do.
They say: Sorry. This isn’t for me. I’m not like everybody else. I’m going to go do this other thing. My way.
And they don’t just succeed. They soar.
I may never be anything like those people. After all, I am 36 and work in a cubicle. (Today, I’m 44. But, since writing this, I did manage to score a book contract, become self-employed, and have my work translated into at least five languages so far. I would have been insanely proud of that on the day I wrote this post originally. Now, it’s just ho-hum everyday life because I have a real hedonic-treadmilly gratitude problem.)
But I sure do admire them.
2. It DOES NOT have to be this way.
Your love life. Your financial life and career. Your spiritual life. Your physical appearance. Your mental and emotional health. Your geographic location. Whatever.
Holden calls up his old friend Sally and gets her to agree to a date. And she shows up looking good. Really good. He’s a madman. He really is. And he just comes out and asks her to run off with him. He’s got some money.
Let’s go start a new life, he says.
And she says it sounds fun and all, but people can’t just do that.
You can’t just break the rules and go live whatever life you want.
Holden thinks that’s bullshit. And it’s exactly when I decided to love him.
“Why the hell not!?!?” he asks.
…
I’m not advocating irresponsibility. Two 16-year-olds shouldn’t run off together and live in some New England cabin with no means of taking care of themselves.
But that’s just old-guy, dad Matt talking.
I agree with Holden’s inclination to ask WHY NOT!?
People don’t think about this enough. People never think enough. I never think enough.
We never ask ourselves the right questions.
What are the right questions?
They are the ones that challenge our assumptions and beliefs and force us to consider an alternative. A better way.
Matthew E. May shared this classic story about the advent of Polaroid:
(I included this story in my book “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships” because I think it’s such a powerful anecdote regarding the power that good questions can have.)
“Back in the 1940s, Edwin Land was on vacation with his 3-year-old daughter. He snapped a photograph of her, using a standard camera. But she wanted to see the results right away, not understanding that the film must be sent off for processing.
She asked, ‘Why do we have to wait for the picture?’ After hearing his daughter’s why question, Land wondered, what if you could develop film inside the camera? Then he spent a long time figuring out how—in effect, how to bring the darkroom into the camera.
That one why question inspired Land to develop the Polaroid instant camera. It’s a classic Why/What if/How story. But it all started with a child’s naive question—a great reminder of the power of fundamental questions.”
…
You do NOT have to stay in your soul-crushing job.
You do NOT have to go to that family event you’re stressed about because your mother will be disappointed if you don’t.
You do NOT have to say “yes.” Say NO. Say “no” a lot.
You do NOT have to go back to college to get a better job.
You do NOT have to have a “job.” You can make your own.
Because you CAN do whatever you want. (Though I hope it goes without saying that anything that unfairly hurts other people in the process should probably be avoided.)
…
Sometimes I think about how fast time goes.
Holy shit, my son is almost 7. (He just turned 15. Wild.)
Holy shit, she’s been gone two years. (She just bought a house with her significant other. Hell, in a few years they will have been together as long as she and I were.)
Holy shit, I’ve been sitting at this desk for four years. (I get to work from home now. I miss working with other people. A lot. But I still prefer it to having to clock in somewhere else. Even if the retirement and health care benefits were way better.)
Holy shit, I’m 36. (Again, it’s 44 now. Time is ridiculous and honestly needs to settle down.)
The worst thing that’s ever happened to me already happened. I can’t figure out what I’m so afraid of, because you CAN’T KILL ME. And the day I’m finally wrong about that? I’m not going to be around to eat any crow. (This makes me laugh. I was so cavalier then. I’m less so now. I’m pretty sure you can kill me if you want to badly enough. Please don’t.)
And I don’t know when that day is going to come. But it might be tomorrow. Maybe even today.
We waste so much time doing things we don’t want to do because we lie to ourselves and believe them. We MUST do this! We have to!
No, we don’t.
You don’t really have to do anything.
Write down the 10 things that matter most. The 10 things you want most in life. Consider everyone you love.
And then maybe spend the rest of your life only pursuing those things.
The things that actually matter to you.
Don’t tell me you can’t be happy unless you follow the rules.
Don’t tell me people can’t just do that.
Because I’m with Holden.
Why the hell not?
Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.