The fantasy of independence
If you’re living in New York City, or San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or London, or wherever, it doesn’t really matter, and you’re between the ages of 18 and 30 (let’s say), you’re probably in the “independence phase” of your life.
If you’re lucky enough to have graduated from college, get a job, move to a Big City, and have everything go relatively well, there’s this idea that you get to spend time finding yourself and focusing on you: your career, your love life, your creative interests, your friends. This independent phase of life is the phase that really matters, we think. There’s some truth to this, of course. This is the phase where we form ourselves as individuals. It’s usually the phase before our parents get very old and we become parents ourselves.
This “independence phase” is independence from everything and everyone: the pursuit of oneself by focusing totally on oneself. It is unencumbered independence in all forms. We are free from stifling obligations and free to choose every aspect of our lives, from how we spend a Friday night, to the IKEA bathmat that speaks most to who we are deep inside. It’s the phase of life that we prepare and perfect ourselves for, so that we may go on to revel in our perfection for many years on end.
But even if everything is perfect, which it seldom is, the time each of us has for total self-focus feels so short—so shockingly, almost insultingly short, especially to the millennial sensibility—that I’ve begun to believe that independence itself is nothing more than a fantasy. I would go so far as to say the phase of life that we have been taught to believe matters most, this “independence phase,” doesn’t even exist.
This is certainly true from a historical perspective.
I studied history in college (ancient Greece and Rome, mostly), and one thing it taught me is how happy I am to be living now. For most of human history, life was a state of dependence and toil from cradle to grave. Pretty much all of the people who have ever lived—the vast, vast majority of your ancestors, especially the women—never got to experience “independence” in the way we think about it now for even a single day. I know. They didn’t even get a chance to monetize their side-hustles and release merch.
Moving into to the twentieth century, our grandparents are no exception. If we’re roughly the same age, and your family is anything like mine, your grandparents married young and became parents in their teens or early twenties. They were independent adults for, what, two years? Three? Even then, during their precious twenties and thirties, they were likely fighting in a war. Or fleeing one.
So that’s most of history.
It goes without saying that most people on Earth right now don’t have the luxury of an “independence phase.” It never happens for them. They have families to support from a young age, they don’t have the money, education, or opportunities to move away and undergo a rigorous, years-long process of self-discovery.
So that’s most people.
But we should still break it down for the Lucky Ones. Some may claim the “independence phase” of life starts at eighteen and ends whenever someone decides to marry or have children, the idea being that both marriage and children mark the end of one’s “independence phase” by tying you to another person for the rest of your life. The time between age eighteen and this “optional end-point” seems like a really long time to dedicate to oneself, but I’m less and less convinced. The timeline starts to get pretty choppy and narrow, the more one thinks about it.
We could start the “independence phase” at eighteen, when it starts legally, but that’s not really the start for most people. (For the record, I am not arguing for infantilizing adults, but let’s be realistic.) You’re a legal adult at eighteen, sure, but if you went to college, you were probably too busy with work and classes and your parents’ and peers’ expectations to truly focus on yourself. College can be a tremendously fun and rewarding period of life. It may be the start of self-discovery, but I wouldn’t say it’s the start of true independence. In college, people move in packs. Parents often provide for their kids while they’re in college. So, let’s push the independence phase back a bit to start at age twenty-two.
But that doesn’t really work either. You may be (barely) financially independent by twenty-two, but remember that what makes the fantasy of the “independence phase” so appealing is its independence in all forms. Those of us who have passed through our early and mid-twenties know that the from the ages twenty-two to twenty-six (or later), it’s a struggle. No one knows what they’re doing in the first two or more years of their career. Anyone who holds down a challenging job knows how little time it allows for self-discovery and flourishing. You are overwhelmed by existential, external pressures at this age: you need to pick a city, decide whether or not to stay with your college boyfriend or girlfriend, find a group of friends, keep your head above water financially, find a new boyfriend or girlfriend, the list goes on. This is even harder if you aren’t able to find a path right away.
It’s such a chaotic period of life, with endless options and possibilities. But it’s also marked by so many interruptions and limits. Hopefully your parents are still in good health and relatively young, but maybe not. Hopefully you are too, but then again, maybe not. Maybe you’re struggling with something big, like most people I know. That will certainly delay the start of this so-called “independence phase.” The world hammers home the message—this is the prime of your life—but I distinctly remember thinking, I hope not.
And then, you’re suddenly in your late twenties, and people are getting married and having kids. So, wait. Hang on.
When did the “independence phase” start? Let me think. I think mine started at the grand old age of twenty-seven (I’ve always been a late bloomer), but I was already dating my would-be husband at twenty-six, and I depended on him all the time. I was hardly free from commitments and obligations, and, I’m sorry to say, people were hardly free of me.
Was I ever truly independent in my mid-twenties? Have I ever been truly independent in my life? There were fleeting weeks or months where the fantasy felt real, sanctioned by a good night’s sleep in my queen size bed with no plans the next day, or an expensive Goop purchase, or a rooftop cigarette that had me thinking, “Yeah, it’ll definitely be like this forever.”
But, looking back, there wasn’t a single day I didn’t depend on others: an understanding colleague who told me it was ok to cry, a long-distance call with a dear friend, the countless small kindnesses of the baristas at my favorite coffee shop in the East Village. In the height of my so-called independence, I depended on everyone. Everything good in my entire life came via someone else or by the grace of God. No woman is an island.
What I’m getting at here is that if you’re worried you’re wasting your precious twenties because you haven’t entered the “independence phase” yet, or if you’re struggling to be totally independent from everyone and everything else in the world: stop. It ain’t natural, babe. It’s a total illusion. You’re never really free from obligations in this life. Hopefully, your life will be long, and the usual state of life is that of dependence. People depend on you, and you depend on them, in aeternum, et semper.
Think of it this way:
Imagine a long hallway, with doors on each side. When you’re born, if you’re a Lucky One, you get a room, and it’s totally empty. The task of life is to fill it with all the things you are and all the things you love, to make the room entirely your own. Your parents help, as best they can, for the first eighteen years. Then you go to college, and you knock on everyone’s door and peek into their rooms. That can be very inspiring, but you end up having all the same stuff as your friends. It’s college. You all happen to love mandala wall hangings.
Don’t worry if you graduate and you haven’t started your room in earnest. Everyone says there will be this glorious period of life after you graduate when you will be able to work on your room, uninterrupted, for like ten to twenty years. Doesn’t that sound great?
Of course it does. Now you’re twenty-two, and you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work on this room, dammit. But just then—knock knock. Someone is knocking on your door for help. Very annoying. But then you need help, so you go knocking. It’s so easy to spend a decade or more like this, resenting every knock, waiting for the time when you can just lock the door and get to work, uninterrupted, free of obligations to others, free to focus on yourself.
But here’s the reality: the knocking will never go away. This is true whether you get married or not, whether you have kids or not, whether you eat your kale or not. The ease of technology has given us unrealistic expectations for our real lives. And in real life, someone or something will always come knocking on your door. You can let it drive you absolutely mad, or you can fling the door open and tell them how happy you are to see them.
By all means, do your work and decorate your room. You’ve been afforded the opportunity, so do it well and do it right. But leave the door open. It’s much more pleasant with others around, even if it’s a bit of a mess. Better than celebrating the fantasy of independence is to celebrate just being young and alive and having a room to begin with.
The time will never come when we get to be all alone, in our perfect rooms, fulfilled in every aspect of our lives. That’s not a life worth desiring because it is not possible. We’re not meant to be independent creatures, all alone. We’re meant to depend on each other. It’s an unsettling truth: the less we depend on each other, the more we depend on the market. We summon eggs to our apartment via an app instead of simply asking a neighbor. We hire a therapist—incapable of loving us back by design—and forget to call our family and friends. We focus narrowly on ourselves, hoping to attract the right partner, but become totally self-absorbed in the process. In our never-ending battle with our own egos, it is a gift to have people who depend on you, and a blessing and comfort to have people you can depend on.
It’s humbling to remember: we go knocking all the time. Yes, there’s always someone we can help, but there’s always someone whose help we need. The worst thing that can happen in life is not putting your room—your life—on hold to help other people. The worst thing is when you’ve been so successful at ignoring the knocks that people stop knocking on your door altogether.
