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The Postmates Cart of Your Life
The author Jedidiah Jenkins recently posted an anecdote on Instagram about his close friend, the actress Sophia Bush. I found it to be a perfect metaphor for our times.
Sophia was ordering Postmates for dinner and I saw that she had 33 things in the cart. ‘Who is all that food for?? There’s just two people eating.’
‘Oh I just add everything that looks mildly interesting. The menu is too huge and so I add anything that I might want and then I go through the cart and whittle it down. It’s more manageable that way. And in the cart, I can see clearly what I really want.’
This is an excellent strategy. The menu of being human is sometimes too large. Collecting friends in our twenties, anyone who might be around or fitting for a moment, and then whittling it down to who we really want in our lives. We don’t know who will be right for us, so we collect. We don’t even know who we are or what we need. We try out. We settle. And then time and experience reveal and trim.
Collecting odd jobs and skills until we find what we’re meant to be doing.
Collecting heart-breaks and mistakes and vulnerabilities and embarrassments and kindnesses, until we’re ready to be with someone right and be someone right.
Just throw it all in the cart. Anything that’s a ‘maybe.’ The menu is too…
