What does the future hold for you if you can't figure out what you truly want?
“I’ve put off a lot of
things; but now I’m free as a bird.”
“I just got the job
I’ve always wanted.”
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want—about what
I’ve always wanted. Two weeks ago, a girl asked me where I’d live if I had all
the money in the world and could live anywhere. This sounds like a generic
question one might ask on a first or second date, but I took it to heart; I
took it to heart because I didn’t know how to answer it.
Even more recently, I was riding a train upstate with two
friends of mine. One of them was talking about how he wanted to change his
career; he wanted to get out of New
York, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life
working in an office. He was bent out of shape: he didn’t know where he wanted
to live or what, exactly, he wanted to do. And I sat there and told him that it
is important to stop and ask yourself, “What do you really want?” I felt like an idiot, even though it was just a
simple word of encouragement, a piece of small-talk advice.
The thing is, I believe in that dumb piece of advice I gave
me friend. Without calibrating yourself from time to time, it’s easy to get
lost. It’s easy to forget who you were, who you are; what you wanted and what
you currently want. For instance, if I told the seventeen year old version of
myself that I would be nearing thirty, working at a book review in New York, writing
regularly, getting paid a small amount for some of it, and working on a second
unpublished novel, he might say that seems about right. But, very often, when I
look at my current position in life, I can see nothing but ruin. I get caught
up in what I should be doing or wanting and forget to ask myself what I really
want.
At the end of “The Strategy,” Don sits around a table with
Sally and her friends at a Chinese restaurant. He goes around the table and
asks all the girls what they want to do. Sally says she is tired of being asked
that question. Don tells her that when she figures it out that she should write
it down on a piece of paper, because she’ll forget what it was when she gets
older. Sally breaks out a tiny, begrudging grin. And, of course, Don ruins that
small moment with his daughter by then entertaining the flirtations tossed at
him by Sally’s friend.
As Don is putting Sally on the bus with her friends, she
tears into Don. She tells him that she does know what she wants when she grows
up: she wants to get on a bus and get away from Don and Betty and hopefully end
up nothing like them. Don is upset and he tells Sally that she is like Don and
Betty—she is beautiful. But then, composing himself, he tells her that she can
be more than that if she chooses to be.
Throughout the episode, Don is told at various points, and
very directly, the following things: that his apartment oozes failure, that he
shits on other people’s dreams, and that he has no character, just his good
looks. No matter where Don turns, there is evidence to show that all of the
attributes he once used to get ahead are no longer relevant or useful. His time
is coming to an end.
Joan’s storyline provides a mirror to Don’s. When she is in Los Angeles, Joan meets
and falls in love with a stranger—Richard Berghoff. Upon spending the night
together, Richard tells Joan that he’s made a lot of money building things, but
that by doing so he put off a lot of other things in his life. Now, however,
he’s now free to do whatever he wants. Joan tells Richard that she has to work
because she finally got the job she always wanted. Joan and her guy eventually
fight when she tells him that she has a son. Richard doesn’t want to be
fettered by children, his have already grown and he made a plan to have no
plans—he truly wants to be unfettered, to travel the world, to see the
pyramids. The two eventually reconcile when Richard admits he is a “heel”
(still one of my favorite terms—my love of wrestling aside) and says that he
doesn’t want to be rigid because being rigid makes you old.
Meanwhile, the mirroring continues when Peggy enters Don’s
office and asks him to give her a progress report. Don asks Peggy what she sees
for the future and Peggy lays out a very clear plan: become the first female
creative director, land a big account, craft a famous catchphrase, and then
create something of lasting value. Don scoffs at the idea that she would be
able to do that in advertising. Don, like Richard, is free in many ways to do
what he wants. Earlier, he lamented to Ted Chaogh that he had less actual work
to do, but more to worry about. There are endless possibilities for Don, but he
doesn’t even have a plan. So, in his existential pondering, he inadvertently
(and selfishly) “shits all over” Peggy’s dreams (just like Richard did to
Joan)—a fact that he instantly recognizes in a bit of amazing, subtle acting by
Jon Hamm. That classic Draper “gentle twitch of the forehead combined with a
remorseful bulging of the eyes” is what I will perhaps miss the most when this
show is over.
In Peggy’s case, having a plan is good—it gives her life
meaning and purpose. Though, it may be what also causes her to seem older than
she is. In Richard’s case, having a plan makes him seem rigid. Without a plan,
Don doesn’t seem flexible or open-minded (he shoots down the more creative
Peter Pan pitch for the more traditional one); he just seems lost.
At the end of the episode, he has entered an agreement of
sale for his apartment, but instead of being excited to start again, he seems
bewildered. “New Business” covered how
difficult it is to start again. Does Don have the imagination to start over?
Did he ever? What does his future look like and what does he want? These are
the questions Don needs to ask himself. And they are the questions we have to
constantly ask ourselves. We are afraid of being trapped in a life we don’t
want, but very often we’re even more afraid of being given the complete freedom
to go after what it is we truly desire.
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