Many of us reach a point—often in our late twenties or early thirties, if you want to generalize—when we discover the option of settling down. We might realize we’ve stuck to one city for several years, or that we’ve stumbled into partnership—even marriage. In either case, sometimes it becomes easier to stay. And I mean stay in more than one sense of the word.
A particular career path might have become dominant, most viable. A single company might have made life feel more together than it would have otherwise. The company might give you that thing you need—money—in exchange for the majority of your waking hours and creative thought.
This is not to be taken lightly. On one hand, shouldn’t you preserve the best of your thinking and creative potential for yourself? Probably. In a dog-eat-dog world, more rich white dudes shouldn’t profit from my superpowers while I’m satisfied with a 1-3% annual raise. On the other hand, there’s still that thing you need: money. Yeah. I know. The mean green that makes the world go round. Can’t live with it; can’t live without it.
Stability is its own double-edged sword. A predictable day-to-day can foster excellent mental health. Better relationships, uninterrupted sleep. Routines are calming, for those who like such things. Others of us, myself included, never live one day that looks like another. Stability. When one doesn’t have to worry about who’s writing her next paycheck, she can breathe a little easier.
At the same time, stability can make you want to stab your eyes out with a fork. Where’s the inspiration, the nectar, the excitement you thought life could offer?
Life is exciting, right? Nectar is out there. At least, you thought so.
Somewhere between eighth grade and crying uncontrollably at Pachelbel’s Canon at the end of senior year, you imagined all you might be. You dreamed big dreams. People talked a lot about passion. Little did you know, passion in capitalism often translates to helping someone else live their dreams, or boosting another person’s product towards success.
Once life’s milestones start making themselves known, there’s a certain expectation that follows—subconsciously, glaringly, and everywhere in between. The idea is that when things start ticking along, really rolling—no matter how hard it might’ve been to get them going in the first place, there are boxes to check off.
Buy your first home—check. Get a pet—done. Buy a newer car—check. Work your way up the ladder at work—yep. Forge a path towards flexible income and maybe even a vacation—okay. Paid time off—now that is success. And finally—reproduce tiny walking offspring, if you’re so inclined.
Done, and done.
It goes without saying that the progression of these events directly correlates with privilege. How much further ahead or behind on the starting line were you? Are you white, or black or brown? Is English your first language? If you are white, how much hidden white people money* benefitted you? Was the support you received blatant green and by that I mean dollar bills, or other, subtler things, like having an advantage in job interviews because of your family’s status or the color of your skin or your weight or your unthreatening personality or your clothing brands?
No matter your starting point, let’s assume you’re able to find gainful employment—something not to be taken for granted, something I’ll never take for granted again after entering the job market with two music degrees in 2010—and in one way or another, you can consider settling down. With a company. Doing work. In one place. To have a kid. To live for the weekend.
Some have the fortitude to claw up, up through the ranks of the meritocracy—moving around the country repeatedly, doggedly, happily to achieve success. This is its own kind of settling—into a career, perhaps, or moving towards goals for wealthy retirement. Others prioritize geographical stability over career climbing, opting for a long-term home, friendships, and a comfortable place to raise kids.
Stability comes in all shapes and sizes. Settling has many forms.
These words take on individual meanings in each life, molded by a person’s hopes and dreams and fears and struggles.
What I want to talk about is the fork in the road, the moment or series of moments at which we decide to settle—or not. At one point, for example, my partner and I found ourselves well on the way in the game of life. After a true struggle to find work in the wake of the recession, we figured out how to get our feet on the ground.
It was like we pulled out a lasso and caught stability in a chokehold. And it happened in slow motion. When security is all you want for a period, and it stays just out of reach, lassoing it feels like a pretty big deal.
Getting there took a few years. It meant moving to an inexpensive city and taking work we didn’t love. I’m thinking of my husband, in particular, who went to prestigious schools and is generally useful in a million ways—kind and trustworthy and effective and pragmatic and will do any one task a hundred times faster than you thought possible—but after stepping back from music, had to put time in at Starbucks and Target before he could persuade anyone to actually hire him. When he did convince someone, they made him volunteer for a full year—for free, in exchange for healthcare—before he got paid.
In other words, my family does not take stability lightly. When we felt like we were grasping—despite our privilege—without a safety net to lean on, we got as practical as possible. He directed traffic towards electronics on Thanksgiving Night at Target. I took a job at an arts school and started freelancing to make ends meet.
It worked out. One thing led to another and finally, we both had good jobs, took our dog to the vet and ourselves to the dentist, and bought a house. We started to explore the world, even. Stability.
But here’s the plot twist. Finding stability carved out space in our lives to remember the people we’d been at the beginning. The musicians who considered opera and conducting meaningful career choices. The dreamers. The writers. The kind of thoughtful people who thought a lifetime in academia sounded great.
To be fair, we weren’t born into that world, either. Those were things we found for ourselves. Fought for, even. We started behind others we knew, and in a way, caught up.
But when life hands you tough cards, you make tough decisions. So we did. And we were happy.
After one particularly inspiring trip to the desert—a trip made possible by stability, that is—we found it hard to return to work. My brain felt different in the southwest: expansive, spacious, calm, inspired. How, I wondered, could that translate to everyday life? Expansiveness of spirit deserves more than one week a year. Doesn’t it?
That moment was our fork in the road.
Do we settle—or not? Should I climb the corporate ladder, prioritize financial comfort, and make the most of our inexpensive little city? Or should we listen to that still, small voice that says: but what if there’s more.
Here’s the thing about refusing to settle. You can do it in huge ways or small. You can save aggressively, leave your job, and take time away—known as a sabbatical in our culture of overwork and productivity—or you can simply steal a few moments back each week for yourself, before you commute, before you check email. You might decide that saving for a downpayment on a house would be settling. Or letting your favorite hobby die. Or not getting a dog.
That’s the thing, though. What constitutes settling—or not—is completely up to you.
One might refuse to settle at home, at work, at night, on the weekend. You might decide that not-settling means being happy as a cog in the wheel, that you don’t have to pursue management, after all. It might mean reading books instead of watching TV. Maybe it’s shopping with independent retailers rather than that one massive company that is everywhere all the time even in your grocery store and uses drones and won’t go away.
Settling means different things to all of us. The important thing, in my mind, is to consider where you’re settling and where you might reconsider something. Where you might recalibrate or examine a piece of life left unquestioned.
When one asks the question of settling—or not, she has the opportunity to live a tiny revolution each day. To choose values and create a life that expresses them. In big ways, in small.
The values my partner and I chose at our fork in the road were freedom, exploration, and potential. We’re still figuring out what those mean creatively, and how they manifest practically. It’s been fun.
It’s also been difficult, and at times, exhausting. We’ve been both inspired and deflated. We’ve taken risks. Holding hands, we jumped off a cliff. There’s another universe next door, and we’re taking a peek inside.
*Hidden white people money is a term I have lovingly borrowed from Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow of Call Your Girlfriend. Think about it.
**The poem referenced twice here is “pity this busy monster, manukind” by E. E. Cummings.