In Five Years: So be it. So let it be.
Title: In Five Years
Author: Rebecca Serle, narrated by Megan Hilty
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audiobooks
Pages: 255
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐ and a half
Who will like it? This book is picture-perfect for a type-A millennial who wears Reformation to date nights at cityscape lounges and sips her wine red. A proud overachiever, who aces everything at her dream job and lives life in saturated colours while balancing everything life throws at her.
I picked up this audiobook on a whim, and the first paragraph drew me in and paved way for the next 7 hours. In Five Years reminds me of this other book I read seven years ago now, called Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell, where a little girl has got her entire life planned out for the next decade, Ph.D. and Pulitzer Prize included.
Back to In Five Years. Dannie Kohan is a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, and she has a life literally as perfect as a girl could dream, every second Insta-worthy. And as Dannie plans out *almost every minute* of her life, I imagine she would be strategically editing her photos and scheduling out her grid, beating the algorithm in no time. She has an affectionate boyfriend David, a high-status job she is passionate about, and a whimsical and spontaneous best friend Bella from Paris (who behaves like a stock character valley girl, but as patient readers, we’ll go with her character).
Dannie knows exactly where she would be in five years. She visualizes the future in her head with so much clarity — in 2025, five years onwards from December 15th, 2020, she’d be married, an associate at her firm, living the life. That’s her fluid answer at her interview, a stepping stone towards her dream career. Little be knownst that on December 15th, 2025, her life would be inside out and absolutely nothing like how she pictured it to be.
The difference lies in how at different stages in life, we have different internal conflicts. Overachieving 16-year-olds think about ambition in terms of scoring all 5s on AP exams, while late 20-year-olds dream about acing their job interviews at prestigious Manhattan corporate law firms. But in her late twenties, Dannie also juggles love amidst it all — is it enough to love someone without being in love with them, so that you are moving down parallel tracks with them just arms length apart? When you are busy achieving your dreams on your own track, fearing that if you reach out and touch them, you both will be thrown off course — but looking at the same horizon and simply moving forwards, never colliding, is that enough?
What is love? Taylor Swift once said, “I’ve learned that you can’t predict [love] or plan for it. For someone like me who is obsessed with organization and planning, I love the idea that love is the one exception to that. Love is the one wild card.” We are young, carefree, and spontaneous, but also type-A, obsessed, and organized at the same time.
Love is spontaneous and unpredictable and that’s what makes you fall into it, instead of step into it with calculation. Life is not a straight road that you can stare down. A better metaphor is having blinds on and figuring your way out through it, groping in the darkness at what is to come. So you don’t have to visualize to every pixel who you are in five years. So be it. So let it be.
Slow dance somewhere beautiful. Buy colouring books, your favourite ice cream, and invite someone just to spend timewith you. Walk around the city all night and find a place to eat breakfast at dawn. Strike up a conversation with a stranger! Life is full, moment by moment.
You mistake love. You think it has to have a future in order to matter, but it doesn’t. It’s the only thing that does not need to become at all. It matters only insofar as it exists. Here. Now. Love doesn’t require a future. (- “In Five Years”)
