I love the piece of art we have hanging over the bar in the hallway of our home. It’s from a series by the brilliant artist Sarah Irvin. The works in this series mimic the connect-the-dot worksheets we did as children. Our piece has thousands of dots that seem to radiate out from the center. It reminds me of that pepper and water science experiment that’s supposed to teach you about surface tension.
But here’s the important thing: when you connect these dots, they don’t reveal anything.
So what’s the point, you might ask? “Connect the dots sheets are used to train a child’s fine motor skills, and to produce the moment of excitement when the final form is revealed from previously unreadable arrangement of dots,” Sarah explains. “By using the framework to produce something meaningless, I’m foregrounding the specific structure of meaning-making itself as well as the viewer’s desire and even ability to find recognizable form regardless of my intention.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about meaning-making in mid-life. Of course, this curiosity is born of privilege. Far too many people do what they do (both personally and professionally) because they must. They have very few choices. I am lucky enough to have lots of choices. But that doesn’t mean I always understand how I make them or that I can always make meaning from them.
For much of my life, I did what I did because I had no agency. Childhood, with its very limited choices, is a carrot-and-stick phase of life. I followed the rules imposed by my parents and other authority figures and earned lots of carrots. When I had choices, I prioritized fun over meaning — playing soccer, building tree forts, and starting, but rarely finishing, elaborate arts and crafts projects. (For the record, prioritizing fun is not a bad way to live.)
As adolescents, we are still subject to plenty of rules, but we begin to question which rules really matter and wonder if breaking them might be worth it. This is the “f— around and find out” or FAFO phase of life. But I had succeeded so well at the carrot-and-stick phase that I didn’t do a whole lot of f—ing around or finding out. I thought I knew what I wanted, and I went after it. Most of the time, I also got it.
When I look back at my teenage years and early 20s, what strikes me as most interesting is how everything I did felt like a stepping stone to the next stage of life. Do well in history to get into honors history, and then do well there to get into AP history. Do well on the SATs to get into a good college. Then do well in college to get a good job or attend a good grad school. You get the idea. The dots connected to form an image of traditional success.
I became a mother at 28 and for the next two decades, the rhythm of my days were largely dictated by the routines of and my responsibility for my children. It was exhausting, but there was also something comforting about it. You always knew what was next, whether that was a meal, a nap, or a doctor’s appointment. For a time, I tried to connect their dots and my own by working part-time, then not working outside the home at all, and then working full-time, but so much of my meaning-making was still all about them.
Eventually, though, even that phase comes to an end. That’s the nature of parenting. The whole idea is to raise children to be so self-sufficient that you (and all the support you once provided) become obsolete. But way before that happens, you begin to find yourself with more and more time, more and more flexibility and less and less of an understanding of what the final image will look like.
I’ll never forget the day I ran into an acquaintance in the Target parking lot who was struggling with this stage of life. She was a stay-at-home mom of three and her youngest had just started kindergarten. We had grown apart, hadn’t seen each other in years, and I innocently asked how she was doing.
She hesitated a bit, then admitted that things were not good. “I went to high school, then college. I got a job. Then I got married. Then I became a mom,” she said. “I always knew what was next. Now that the littlest one has started school, it’s the first time in my life that I don’t know what comes next.” She broke down in tears right there, which I imagine is something that happens quite often in Target parking lots across the country, usually right after school dropoff.
Ah, what comes next? What comes after the kids are all in school? After you quit a job? After you get a divorce? And how do you make meaning from it?
There’s so much I dislike about being middle-aged. But at the same time, I appreciate that I finally have the time and space to connect some of the dots in my own life. To begin making my own meaning without worrying about everyone else all the time. I’ve written about midlife as a sort of second adolescence before and I’m thinking about that again as I type.
What if what’s next is a second FAFO phase? But this time you’re older and wiser. Here’s just one example of what that has looked like for me. For a time I was the head of a small content team working for a real estate startup. I had been unhappy for months, but couldn’t figure out what I wanted. Then while I was working on a big project that involved lots of writing, I had an epiphany: I was always the best writer in the room at this job, which makes it hard to improve. And that’s what I really wanted — To be a better writer. To write about stuff I cared about.
I knew that I couldn’t become a better writer if I stayed put. And I realized that I wanted to be somewhere where words were the product (instead of using words to sell some other kind of product). So I left. Now I’m at Cognoscenti, where ideas are the product, where I am never the best writer in the room. It’s humbling, but it’s work that I want to do, work that challenges me, work that is meaning-making.
I work from home and walk by that beautiful piece of Sarah Irvin’s about a dozen times a day. At first glance, it looks a little chaotic and random. But I often pause for a moment and take a closer look. And the more time I spend looking at it — really looking at it — the more possibility I see.
Have a great weekend,
Wow. This brought TEARS to my eyes. It's so true, so relatable and so needed. You have such a powerful way with words, Kate. Thank you for articulating how so many of us feel. It means the world.