Growing Old: A Life Lesson from the Community Finale (Contains Spoilers)

This emotional climax of the series finale of my favorite show came last week, and went something like this:


Jeff: I don't want to be fine. I want to be 25 and heading out into the world. I want to be able to go sleep on the beach at night... I want to be able to stay up all night by accident. I want to be able to get out of bed in a white t-shirt and not look like I forgot to get dressed.

Annie: Well, I want to be able to live in the same home for more than a year. I want to order wine without feeling nervous, and have a resume full of crazy mistakes instead of crazy lies. I want stories, and wisdom--perspective. I want to have so much behind me, I'm not a slave to what's in front of me. ... There's pressures in front of me that you just don't have to live under--if you just accept that you're older and let the kid stuff go.



Here, as usual, Annie had a point.


Growing old, in some ways, isn't so bad.


Life is filled with so much pressure when you are young: Where to go college, and what to major in, and then, what about grad school? Who should you marry? What job should you have, and in what city should you start your life?


And once you do, it's a race to curry favor with the people who hold the power in your job or city, in hopes they give you a place at the table. Also, you might need to buy a table.


The most important decisions of life are often made in a span of just a few years, so every day feel magnified, marked with exaggerated importance, like the entire trajectory of your life might depend on what you choose to order for dinner Saturday night.


I don't miss that.


I don't miss feeling like everyone around me is constantly engaged in a never-ending measuring contest of life accomplishments.  I'm glad I don't have to drag myself out to a loud party or to a networking happy hour, for fear that my future wife might happen to be there or that otherwise the partners at my firm won't like me. I am thankful to know enough about what I like and don't like so that I can usually avoid uncomfortable situations these days.


The foundations of my life no longer shake with the consequences of my decisions, and it's a refreshing change. Last weekend, my biggest choice was whether to go to the new movie with the Rock, or stay home and watch baseball. (I watched baseball, which might not have been the right call, but the consequences aren't exactly dire.)


Getting older is good that way. But Jeff was on to something nonetheless.


Those moments when life suddenly, unexpectedly feels like pure joy don't happen as often once the routine of professional life begins, even for those of us enough lucky to like our jobs. If work were always filled with such things, they wouldn't have to pay us.


It's easy to feel good when surrounded by close friends and life obligations haven't piled up to prevent good times. Once your friends marry, have kids and scatter across the country, those times don't happen as often. You can constantly seek out a new generation of younger friends to keep living it up, but the streams of life invariably flow the same direction, forcing the process to repeat. And one of the hidden secrets of growing up is that making new friends gets harder as you age, at least until you hit the retirement home party and shuffleboard circuit.


So I can relate when Jeff wishes he had more choices about his life circumstances and the freedom to do more stupid things without looking foolish. Or at least less foolish. And I can relate to Annie wishing she knew more about the world and had already had the chance to make enough mistakes to figure out who she was, because I used to be there too.


But I also like how the story ends (at least until the movie), with 24-year old Annie moving away to grow up, while heartsick 41-year-old Jeff takes Annie's advice and stays to find substance in the life he apparently decides he is finally ready to settle into.


Community was a show about a group of strangers who enroll at a community college to begin redeeming their previously wasted lives. Both the group's efforts at personal growth and the episodes themselves are notoriously hit-or-miss, but the finale absolutely nailed the final message:


The worst parts about growing old are counterbalanced by the opportunity to have lived long enough to figure out your passions and priorities, and by knowing these things well enough to at least have an idea how you can use them to go after your dreams effectively.


Whether it's family, a career path, or changing the world, you get to go to bed each night knowing that your day's efforts brought that vision at least a little bit closer. Or if not, at least you know where to start again the next day, when things might go more smoothly.


Life's possibilities are fewer in one sense, but its meaning is greater in another.  In a roundabout way, that means life's possibilities are bigger after all, because the end goal, although harder to realize, is so much more impactful than the things we chase earlier in life.


Community ends with Jeff meeting his remaining friends, toasting the end of the school year, and celebrating having a safe place to blow off steam about their failures and petty annoyances and to recharge for whatever possibilities come next.


It's a nice ending, no matter what your age.