The Referendum - By Tim Kreider

Recently an editor asked me for an essay about arrested adolescence, joking: “Of course, I thought of you.”

It is worth mentioning that this editor is an old college friend; we’ve driven across the country, been pantsless in several nonsexual contexts, and accidentally hospitalized each other in good fun. He is now a respectable homeowner and family man; I am not. So I couldn’t help but wonder: is there something condescending about this assignment? Does he consider me some sort of amusing and feckless manchild instead of a respected cartoonist whose work is beloved by hundreds and has made me a thousandaire, who’s been in a committed relationship for 15 years with the same cat?

My weird touchiness on this issue — taking offense at someone offering to pay me money for my work — is symptomatic of a more widespread syndrome I call “The Referendum.”

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt. The Referendum can subtly poison formerly close and uncomplicated relationships, creating tensions between the married and the single, the childless and parents, careerists and the stay-at-home. It’s exacerbated by the far greater diversity of options available to us now than a few decades ago, when everyone had to follow the same drill. We’re all anxiously sizing up how everyone else’s decisions have worked out to reassure ourselves that our own are vindicated — that we are, in some sense, winning.

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I'm thinking of printing this article into hard copy. Then I have something to hand over whenever my friends (and those not-oh-so-friend) ask me that question once and again. Really, I think happiness is different by the way people choose to define it. So is contentedness. Many of my friends always wanna know how I manage my "lonesomeness". Contrary to their opinions, I've never thought of my being without a relationship as a lonesomeness. I have my family, my friends, my so many hobbies that leave me not much free time as they have the tendency to think I have.

Then about those hobbies. One of my friends once asked me a question very much alike what Mr. Kreider was asked: "What? So... you still not a grow-up or what? Hanging up with all your childlike hobbies." What's really wrong with all childlike hobbies? What's wrong with wanna stay up late for a match of my favourite club or cheap and oh-so-nonsense novels? Or what's wrong with all my trips? What's wrong with living your life the way you really want it and do no harmful to no one?

What can I do if I want to take a trip to somewhere in the middle of nowhere and my supposed-other-half thinks that it's not safe and doesn't want me to just leave things behind like I always did? Just think of that and I know I value my "lonesomeness" the way I always do.