To the Janes That Could Have Been
Dear Jane,
Remember when you thought you wanted to be an actress? It was in middle school, and you made your mom drag you to all of the auditions Manhattan could hold. You were a drama major at Bay Academy and you thought that starring as Yenta in Fiddler on The Roof was enough to make it big. You could have been living in Hollywood now, being a bartender or a barista, going to auditions at night. Struggling or thriving as an actor. Who knows how the cookie may have crumbled?
Remember when you wanted to be a ballerina so badly that you wrote your parents a 3-page letter in Microsoft Word on how this was your life’s passion and you would die if they didn’t send you to the most expensive and exclusive ballet summer camp? It only took two weeks of intensive practice, alone at the homemade basement bar, to realize that you didn’t love ballet enough to devote your life to it after all. You loved the idea of being a ballerina, but not the day in and day out. The endless loop of classical music and the ticking sound of the metronome. The pliés and fouettés. The raw skin and leaky blisters. The soft, blackened nails under the perfectly pink, starchy, pointe shoes. The tutus and the stage lights, glossy hair coiled around your head like a cinnamon bun.
Remember when you thought you might become a chef? You stood over the hot stove constantly, testing and trying and tweaking. Using tweezers to delicately situate edible flowers on top of fresh spring peas because you saw someone do it on TV. You applied for reality TV shows like Top Chef Junior. Your dad recorded you making Russian blini in the kitchen, gently dolloping each pillowy pancake with a dollop of daisy.
In college, when you ran a catering company out of your parents basement, searing hot lamb at 3AM for a stranger’s birthday party in New Jersey. Around 10PM, you begged some friends to come over and help you peel carrots. It was a hot August night; the four of you sat in the backyard, stripping away the layers of dirt. Carrot shavings dropped to the floor, sweat ran down your back. Your friends didn’t understand why on earth you were doing this.
Remember when you studied abroad in Tel Aviv and became enchanted with religious Israeli women? Remember when you could see yourself living on a kibbutz, making fresh honey-goat cheese, wrapping silk scarves around your head, speaking Hebrew. Welcoming the Shabbat every week, the candles flickering, your hands waving around your face to cover your eyes. Shopping at the shuk for fragrant spices that would stain your skirt and your countertop.
Remember when you started a frozen pizza company called Scraps, having absolutely no experience in frozen food, in sustainable supply chains, or in running a business? You just up and did it. Remember how you and Jess baked pizza at midnight in a commercial kitchen in Long Island City? You were eight months pregnant slinging dough, making pesto, flash freezing pizzas, and driving them around in your Volkswagen the next day. You begged stores to stack your product on the shelves, in exchange for a smile and the promise of happy customers. You were an entrepreneur and no one, not even a baby, was going to stop you.
Remember when you thought that at eighteen years young you knew love and you knew life? You thought that you understood the world so perfectly, with such clarity, but why? How? You believed that there would be one magic bullet that would slice through your uncertainties and boom. Once it struck, everything would fall into place and you would finally have it all figured out. Bibbity, bobbity, boo.
11 years later, as you write this letter to yourself, you know that there is no “figuring it all out.” No one has it figured out, especially not the grown-ups in the room. At twenty nine, you believe that the lesson is: there is no lesson. The lesson is to do and to be the best you can, day in, and day out. As cheesy and predictable as it sounds, the many seemingly aimless paths you weave down are what your whole life will consist of, and those paths, and the pursuit of them, is ultimately what makes you who you are. They are infinitely pointless and endlessly pointed, with no start or end in sight. The trails themselves are what will ultimately create the tapestry of your life.
The questions and the ideas will never stop coming, and you realize, finally, that it’s a good thing? It’s a hard thing, but it’s a good thing, and it’s what makes life worth living. The never-ending quest to figure out who you are and the simultaneous realization that you will never truly figure out who you are. Nothing is set in stone, no matter how badly you want it to be. Change is the only constant, and the sooner you accept it, the easier things will be.
Love you,
Jane