novelty vs. tradition

I have been younger before than I am now

I am not yet fretting about my fading youth, but ultimately, being alive and on the cusp of thirty means spending a good deal of time watching people be younger than me online. My algorithm is full of Gen Zers—some college students, some full time content creators, with a median age of about 19. Many of them, I am sure, are earning more money on their YouTube videos and social media accounts than I make in a year—but I remain a decade richer in age. One of my regular YouTube girlies took their boyfriend back to their hometown over spring break. The trip was full of delightfully ordinary activities: getting boba with friends, shopping at Target, going to the antique store. At the antique mall they wonder over colored glass bottles and ceramic goose figurines—the kind of vintage detritus that can be found for a few bucks at any secondhand shop in the country. But they are delighted, this ordinary junk interesting and novel to them. And of course, it is novel and interesting to them. Most likely, they have had their driver’s license for less than three years, have only had a few dozen months to visit any of the locations that exist beyond their parents’ regular radius. Driving themselves to a Target and buying whatever they please is still a new, exciting adventure.

The first two decades of life are defined by novelty. Everything is constantly new. Life is an unbroken string of milestones happening so continuously that they feel less like achievements and just like days. One day you support your own neck for the first time, and then another you are walking, and swimming, and flinging your body through the air—each developmental step that preceded it erased by progress. There are the firsts that worthy of Christmas ornaments or baby books—first tooth grown, first tooth lost, first day of fourth grade, but also so many other firsts that pass without being date-stamped. First time using scissors unsupervised, first time operating the toaster, first sleepover, first field trip to the science center. The world is full of untasted foods and unseen sights. Even the things that are not actually firsts can feel like firsts under the distorted short term memory of a toddler.

When novelty is commonplace, tradition becomes precious. Confronted with low grade novelty fatigue, children crave the routine comfort of familiar meals, the expected order of operations of a bedtime routine with no skipped steps. 

Growing up I loved traditions, whether they be cultural, or familial or the silly invented traditions of young friendship. Tradition—the black tie version of routine. Every year my family would trek downtown the day after Thanksgiving to watch the parade. Afterwards we would all go to Macy’s (or as it was known at that time– The Bon Marche) to pick out Christmas ornaments before taking the bus to Chinatown to eat dim sum. I loved the coziness of the tradition, knowing exactly what we would do on one specific day, every single year. It is reassuring, sweet even, to know how that ritual will feel. I like tradition because I have always been someone who likes to know how something is going to go ahead of time. The history of feeling a certain way in a certain context, and the expectation of feeling that way again is in part what manifests that sensation year after year. I loved these family traditions so much that I started creating more traditions for me and my friends. Slurpees on Friday nights in my mother’s borrowed car. Sunday morning pancakes in college, bleary eyed meetings to split cups of yogurt before 8 am classes. Creating ritual was a way to create meaning, creating routine in a new state surrounded by new people and new responsibilities. Traditions were a way of forging commitment between these new fledgling connections, a promise that these moments would be repeated.

Now in adulthood, my life feels more rooted in routine than tradition. So much of the novelty of young adulthood has worn off. Firsts are less frequent as an adult, more tied to the Big Milestones of house buying, marriage and babies. Everything that was once new—each unfolding freedom and responsibility of independence, is now a norm. Swiping my credit card at the grocery checkout, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, meeting a friend at a bar—it’s hard to remember that these too were firsts, once. I will not go so far as to say it is drudgery, but it is mundane, in the way that life was always intended to be. But as the scales of my life tip away from novelty and towards the routine, the part of me that once craved tradition has quieted. I am now a moth drawn to the flame of novelty, seeking the stimulation of something new: a new restaurant to try, a new hike with a new view. Maybe that’s why so many people cite travel as their primary passion, jetting off to a new city or country is the surest hit of novelty you can get as an adult. Perhaps, too, that is some of the underlying reason to have children: to witness a second lifetime’s worth of firsts, again. 

A life of novelty is dazzling, and exhausting. It is why we go to the carnival for the day but do not live there full time—even the most exciting sights can become rote if you see them everyday. Newness is defined in contrast to what is already expected, what is usual. Novelty exists as the inverse of routine—without one, the other is meaningless. I guess what I’m trying to say is that novelty makes us feel alive, and tradition makes us feel like being alive means anything at all. Every year I feel like I am rebalancing, trying to find the perfect mix of novelty and routine, socialization and introspection, goal-setting and hedonism—as if contentment is like solving for z in an algebraic formula, where z is the mythical horizon of the ideal self. I worry I am not that different from the tech bros I mock that are trying to biohack their sleep schedule. 

A life consisting mainly of routine can experience the joy of novelty in smaller moments; a novelty centered life will perhaps experience grander joys. But the amount of happiness derived by both of these lives is probably equivalent. Sometimes the preciousness of tradition prevents us from growing bigger. Sometimes the endless hunt for novelty prevents us from loving what we already have. Last year I leaned into a life of weekly novelties. New restaurants, weekend trips. But in the end it felt like a smaller year. This year I want more extremes. I want to experience bigger, brighter, novelty, and I want that, in part, to feel expansive in contrast to a quieter, smaller, day to day existence.

Forgive me, I don’t quite know how to end an essay anymore, I will relearn. My writing has atrophied from lack of use. I am always so tempted to end everything with a lesson, even if the moral is that it doesn’t matter how you choose to live your life. How trite, how patronizing, how deeply annoying! As if it’s somehow my job to discover the meaning of life every time I write six paragraphs in a row. But maybe that’s all life is: saying “that’s how life goes” after the same basic realizations, over and over again. I missed writing, I missed the way it forces me to sharpen my thoughts into paragraphs. I fear I have gone a bit fuzzy in the past year, my observations foggy and soft. Anyways, I will see you soon– I promise.

xoxo

Nicole

---

Housekeeping: I am dragging myself back into my writing practice but it has proven difficult and slow-going. Paid subscriptions will remain off until I get back into a more regular routine– I’ll let you know when that changes. Thank you for sticking with me, and for reading, as always.

If this was forwarded to you by a friend, maybe sign up for the free list?