The 'Always' and 'Never' Life of Sylvia Plath

I shared the article with my DD13, who strongly identified with Plath's description of the curse of multipotentiality (described in The Bell Jar):


Oddly, my DD found it comforting that someone who understood this from the inside out had articulated this dreadful existential puzzle so clearly.

Your DD does understand that women have gained more opportunities in the workforce and more ability and tolerance from society to balance work/career - yes? It's not perfect but certainly better than Sylvia Plath's generation.

Yes, this is certainly true-- it is better.

However, it is also true that for anyone who has multiple passions and extraordinary ability--

everything does still take time to do right. So choosing "some" means losing the others, and that IS still true.

She sees examples of this in her everyday life. The only people she sees "having it all" are only fooling themselves into thinking that they do, by and large (and often irritating the heck out of others who have to pick up the slack when they flake out or are overcommitted to the point that they CANNOT do it all).

It's still true that you can choose authenticity/depth-richness... or you can choose appearance/superficiality. They may look alike on the surface, but there really isn't a way to be a great parent on only a couple of hours a day. There isn't a way to be a great anything that way. You can lie to yourself and try to 'hurry-hurry-hurry' others into "fitting it all in," but that just doesn't work for some of the things that matter most.

I remember doing that when my DD was a baby, and my life still includes some of my peers who have kept living that way even after I took a giant step OUT of that lifestyle, so I do have some idea what I'm talking about there.

Another difference is that most people set aside their dreams of being a musician and a writer and an astronaut in favor of.... becoming a wife, {insert career here} and mother because those tend to be what they have the greatest potential at. With multipotentiality, it's hard to set aside half of the dreams, because they are all more or less equally viable until you do that. How do you know in your teens what you SHOULD set aside and what you shouldn't?

You don't. The problem is that even indecision is making some of those decisions FOR you as life rolls on whether you're ready or not.

I'm reminded of the DEVO classic Freedom of Choice.

People who have high IQs, musical talent, athletic talent etc. have the greatest genetic potential to have children with the same attributes, so it is important that they have children.

I couldn't tell you what my "greatest potential" is.

Eventually you have to pick a career out of the career vending machine and just kind of go with it because you have to make money somehow to not starve and not be exposed to the elements.

Well, that and if you don't have children civilization would grind to a halt.

I am curious as to what is going to happen in South Korea and Japan.

Exactly. My DH and I are still wondering "what if" about some of the things that we opted to 'let go of' in order to get on with the business of becoming grown ups.

I'm not so sure that DD feels like much of a winner in the genetics lottery, by the way.

She's got plenty of genetic quirks that she would just as soon NOT have received as lovely "gifts" from her parents. Here, have TWO copies of highly atopic genetic material! You win the bonus "asthma" prize! But wait, there's more! Idiopathic ANAPHYLAXIS... Behind this curtain, we have future diabetes! Look, behind door number two, it's.... scoliosis! Oh, yay!! Look what is behind door number three-- it's our good friend 'schizoaffective disorders' in close relatives! Wheeeeee! But not to worry, because you get 50 bonus IQ points for being such a good sport...

Just saying. (That's by no means a complete list, either-- this doesn't even get into some of the really ODD hereditary stuff that we know about, and nevermind what we don't. KWIM?)

I'm sort of thinking that any eugenics program would have weeded DH and I out. Unless they were looking to breed for the study of eczema in patients with melanoma and asthma, or something. We definitely don't see ourselves as some kind of genetically superior specimens. LOL.

Well, with diabetes the relevant question is "did they lose their feet?"

I just had a case improve itself when a client lost a toe.

HK if we knew then what we know now about our genetics I don't know that we would have had children at all, let alone three, no matter how bright they are. The youngest two we know haven't inherited some of our worst fun times, but there's plenty still in there to make their lives "interesting" (and already actively doing so).

And above replacement levels!

HK, one or my dearest friends and I have gone back and forth on this topic over the years. To sum up, she's a dabbler and I'm a doer. She sits on the sidelines worrying and deliberating. I jump in with both feet and change course often. It's a feature of our differences in optimism and risk appetite.

I'll be honest: I think Sylvia's piece needlessly dwells on opportunity cost at the expense of opportunity gained. If I may, I'd like to share with you my self-talk in this area, because I struggle with it too.

As a polymath, it's easy to dismiss inaction on the grounds of great potential: "I could be X, Y, or Z... if only ." But really, true potential isn't founded on mentally masturbatory couterfactuals, it's based on some function of action and ability plus a random variable.

I don't plan on ever growing up, having a fixed career path, or charting the course of my life. I'm not an unconstrained optimization problem. A constrained something amounts to much more than unconstrained zero. I do plan on following my heart, failing miserably at some things, succeeding wildly at others, and having a hell of a good time along the way.

So while Sylvia laments her lost figs, I've hired a crew to collect those which are still on her tree and bake me figgy pudding.

Great topic.

Assuming that the carrying capacity of the earth is actually 10 billion people.

The random variable generally being some sort of mentorship, as well as being in the right place at the right time. Also 5 to 10 years of some sort of effort.

In any event, potential isn't a function of action, but success is a function of action.

I think that your point is that you only legitimately get to posit counterfactuals if you have actually tried actual action in an actual direction.

You're optimistic about the pool of talent, I see.

Generally yes!

I think my writing could have been clearer. I was speaking about potential but should have said "propensity to action" instead of "action" because the former colours future outcomes and is intrinsic to the individual.

My main point was that dreaming in counterfactuals is a largely useless activity. I have a general distaste for counterfactuals because they seldom have any basis in reality. I have some "would-be greats" in my extended family who are so caught up in their king/queen of the parallel universe status that they often forget to collect their welfare...

Last night, my daughter and I had a conversation that reminded me of your original post. At 12, DD is highly aware that she bears the blessings and curses of multi-potentiality. She was reflecting on an anti-bullying seminar that they had had at school. She acknowledged that she lives a privileged and somewhat sheltered existence -- she has family that is together and (mostly) gets along -- she does have siblings so there are limits , she doesn't have a parent with alcohol or substance abuse problems, her family is not rich or poor, but she never has to worry about whether there is food, she has had the opportunity to pursue and abandon interests and most importantly, at this moment in her life she says that she is incredibly happy. She acknowledge that today she realized that most kids in her middle school don't have things so good and lots have self-esteem issues that surprised her. So far so good.

Then, she said that she sees this as a "break" because high school will be the beginning of trade-offs -- continuing with her music or taking another AP whatever class; taking art or taking a language (not an interest right now) or something that seems more "productive" and might look better to a college admissions panel; and overall balancing her needs for herself versus the ghost of college admissions future. She realizes that she is good at so many things but not all of them make her happy and that some of her choices will disappoint various mentors who she loves and respects. She spoke with with equanimity and poise. I marveled at her depth of insight and mourned a little for the weight she already feels.

Somehow I missed this thread and I haven't got time to post everything I wanted to say, but I did come across this quote recently which I quite liked. It was on Linkedin - mostly the crappy platitudes people post on Linkedin infuriate me, but for whatever reason this one struck a chord - "You don't have to be a high achiever, being a wide achiever is an equally valid choice". I liked it because doing a whole lot of different things is often seen as underachieving in this time of specialization. Yet in my work I often see how this increased focus on specialization presents a range of other risks (obviously there is a place for it in medicine, IT, science, law etc, but there are also benefits in having generalists in all those area, and in business I find people with a breadth of experience across industries or products often bring more to the table; they have a greater capacity for innovation, have a better understanding of the likely implications - positive and negative - of their decisions, are better people managers etc). It's one of the reasons humanities grads always pique my interest when I am recruiting. The idea that being a 'wide' achiever is not actually underachieving but simply a different kind of achieving really appealed to me, especially as someone who has always felt I wasn't doing 'enough' in any one area - "should I specialise in x so I am top of my field?? - but then I might not achieve what I want to in y!! But I want to be there for my daughter too. Any way I look at it I won't have done enough! Ahhh!" Let's just say the quote has given me some peace of mind!

" "You don't have to be a high achiever, being a wide achiever is an equally valid choice". I liked it because doing a whole lot of different things is often seen as underachieving in this time of specialization."

I'm going to be as much of a generalist as I want to be.

I mean, I already am a profound underachiever, so threatening me with the social sanction of underachievement is, well, useless. Since I'm already there.