I’m the Last in My Family Lineage and Dealing With Expectations

Going back at least five generations, I am the end of a line of women whose names I carry.

Some of these women, mostly Anna’s and Maria’s, Maria Graziana, Anna Marie, and Anna Margaret further up the tree, are no more than branches to me, settling in Brooklyn in the early 1800s from Ireland or far more recently from Italy. My mother and her mother, Anna, and Maria, are the women who raised me and who I think of when I sign a document or order a coffee.

However, they all cross my mind, these women confined to lives that might not have kept them comfortable or safe, living in times when they had no choices and focused on survival.

Their history has boiled down to Census Bureau data and ship manifests. Since I’m now 40 and unlikely to have children, that lineage disappears with me. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the expectations these women would have for me with all of my life choices.

I’m tired and don’t want to hustle

Growing up, I heard the stories of my mother hiding me in the service truck when she couldn’t afford day care at her phone company job.

She believed that her hard work and sacrifice would give me a life she didn’t have. She brought me to diction classes to take my New York accent away. We made up stories about me working in an office across the river in Manhattan and, one day, having my own home.

Every opportunity would be available to me.

She was right; they have been, and I’ve grasped them all. Any time an opportunity presents itself, I’ve jumped on it. I’ve traveled across six continents, held dream jobs, and met celebrities, politicians, and royalty. I own my own house, where I proudly display a black-and-white photo of my maternal family, a reminder of who I have to thank for everything.

But I have an overwhelming secret: I am tired deep in my bones, and I don’t want to hustle anymore.

I’d love the simple life my ancestors had

Now, I yearn for the Neapolitan castle towns and Irish fields my ancestors had. I flip through Instagram cheap home accounts, dreaming of fixer-uppers in Abruzzo, of eating fragrant tomatoes off the vine, and gossiping with neighbors in communal gardens.

I’d love a simple life. I’d love to find a slower treadmill. I crave time to absorb art and literature, see beauty with my own eyes, and meet new people. I want to be able to name every star in the sky. But if I stop climbing and achieving accolades, am I letting them down?

There’s lots of science behind the psychology of big expectations. It’s very common to feel the bruising weight of family traditions picking our paths in life. And when those relatives are deceased, there’s the added emotion of wondering if you’ve done everything you could with the time you have been given. We all want the people we love to be proud of us.

A 2007 analysis of research by scientists Todd Rogers and Katy Milkman brings this emotion into perspective with an everyday choice. Think about the mundane task of walking through the grocery store. You may aim to eat healthier, but you pass right by the apples and instead decide to treat yourself with a chocolate bar. Rogers and Milkman call that moment of consideration the should-self vs. the want-self, what should I do versus what do I actually want to do, and you can find this psychological phenomenon far beyond the supermarket.

In the chocolate bar example, instant gratification is the basic premise behind the want-self. What will make you happy right now? That feeling battles the should-self, which aims for choices we believe will have a greater future outcome. The should-self creates a mental list of long-term benefits that will provide for a better future. In Psychology Today, psychotherapist and author Nancy Colier takes this a step further, drawing a correlation between wanting to be seen as a conscientious, good person who is motivated to create a better future or being seen as someone who takes what they want now. The problem here is that a list of “shoulds” can be subjective. These “shoulds” could come from a cultural standard, like thinking we need a specific title at work or thinking we need to look one way when our body is built another way. It can even come from family traditions that are long outdated from being beneficial to anyone.

I’m focusing on what I want

Many moments of my happy, privileged life beg the question, “Am I doing enough?” Am I maximizing every opportunity presented to me? Have I scaled to the highest rung of the career ladder and become perfect in my social life? What do my ancestors think about what I’ve done with the freedom allotted to me?

But recently, and with a lot of reading and research, I’m flipping this story on its head. No more “shoulds” that make me tired and sick; I’m inviting in more “wants.” Isn’t part of having a choice accepting what I really want to do?

Being my best self is not strictly adhering to what I believe I should do to make others happy but understanding how to be happiest in the time allotted to me. And hopefully, that is exactly what would make the Anna’s and Maria’s proud, too.