Some assembly required

When the instruction manual is not forthcoming

Your Five-Year Plan is a newsletter about embracing life’s profound uncertainty.

Maybe your own plans went up in flames; maybe you’re considering a big, scary leap. This is your trusty companion while you’re writing the next life chapter.

Welcome to the conversation—and to the adventure that unfolds when your plans go sideways. This is letter #42. ✨

Some assembly required

Chairlift at Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, captured on Kodak Portra 400 film

Nick stood in my kitchen, hat in hand, looking sick to his stomach. “I hate to have to do this,” he said, “but we need to rip everything out and start again.”

Two months ago, I discovered a small issue in my shower—the first domino that led from plumber to water mitigation team to insurance claims adjuster to general contractor. Last Tuesday was supposed to be the final day of this involuntary renovation project, a day I’d been eagerly anticipating.

As stressors go, these had been the first-world, American Dream-type ones of a homeowner: the roar of industrial-sized air scrubbers, the stench and omnipresent dust of construction, a revolving cast of characters walking the corridor of plastic sheeting that had become the newest design element in my home.

I made the best of it, mostly because any other approach seemed like a waste of energy. I locked myself in the quietest room with my laptop and a gaggle of unhappy pets. I told myself that focused, productive writers can work with tile saws running in the background and cats crying at the door.

But when the project manager told me that someone had failed to properly water-seal the shower surround, meaning they’d have to start from scratch, something broke inside me along with his news.

I don’t enjoy rolling with the punches. Fortunately, I’m self-aware enough to know this, which is why I bought a home with as few obvious problems as possible.

Naively, though understandably, I wanted to concern myself with picking out the right shade of gray at Sherwin-Williams (Evening Shadow, in case you’re wondering), not overseeing large-scale construction projects I didn’t understand.

When it comes to the big stuff, I really prefer having an instruction manual to follow.

That’s how it works when it comes to assembling flat-packed furniture, right? Insert dowel A into hole B, then consult your Ikea-provided booklet for the next step.

Yes, you need to have some basic level of spatial reasoning skills, but if you squint at the manual long enough, you’ll be able to make it from beginning to end without (too many) tears.

When it comes to assembling a good life, a lot of us received—at least implicitly—the same messaging: take specific steps, and predictable results will follow. Make good grades in high school and you’ll get into a good college. Make good grades in college and you’ll get a good job. Get a good job and a good life awaits.

Once we’re set free from our educational confines, though, we discover that “living a good life” is…actually, a pretty vague goal? So we look for instruction manuals at every turn, clamoring over how-to listicles, and following influencers and self-proclaimed gurus who hold the secrets to getting rich, hot, successful, and satisfied.

The problem is that—as with my ill-fated bathroom rehab, a project far more complex than assembling an Ikea bookshelf—too often we’re looking for a comprehensive set of instructions where one cannot reasonably exist.

I learned that my mom was sick while my boyfriend was out-of-state at his sister’s funeral. That weekend, it felt like cancer was contagious.

I told him my news after picking him up at the airport, as we were driving home together. I was behind the wheel, sobbing, aware that I couldn’t cry too hard lest I lose sight of the dotted white line dividing my lane from the neighboring one.

I’ve since thought about that version of myself, and conducted a thought experiment: knowing what I know now, would I go back in time and debrief her about everything that was coming next? Would I prepare her better, if I had the chance?

As much compassion as I have for my past self, as much as I want to alleviate her impending pain, I don’t think I would.

Sometimes, it helps to know the end at the beginning. When you’re building an Ikea bookshelf, visualizing the fully-formed Billy or Hemnes or Kallax helps you make sense of the cheap fasteners and particle board at your disposal.

But in life—like a well-written novel—flipping to the last page flattens something nuanced and complex into a rote list of plot points.

Plus, at least in my experience, life transitions are rarely discrete. Maybe we could issue instruction manuals for them individually, if that’s how they tended to unfold: neatly and one at a time.

Just as often, though, transitions overlap and interact with each other in a process author

Bruce Feiler

calls a “lifequake.” When that happens, your transitions wind up in deep conversation with one another.

Even lifequakes, though, are big challenges composed of many smaller ones. They usually get tackled in a series of unfolding days, not all at once—so seeing a list of all the problems you’ll encounter eventually can feel more overwhelming than empowering.

Plus, it’s the act of fumbling your way awkwardly through each step that prepares you for the next one.

At the outset of any life transition I can think of, you’re supremely unqualified for the job at hand. If you knew just how unqualified, you’d land in the fetal position, not the driver’s seat. Your only saving grace: unparalleled on-the-job-training that—with the appropriate mental framework, resources, and support—can actually forge you into a stronger version of yourself.

It is that process, the one in which you’re forged into a more capable person, that allows you to proceed without any kind of instruction manual and still end up with sturdy-enough construction on the other side.

Am I sincere when I stress the importance of learning to embrace uncertainty? Yes.

Am I—writing to you today, as a new problem threatens to extend the timeline of this obviously-cursed construction project—inches from my own uncertainty-induced breaking point? Also yes. As Walt Whitman wrote, “I contain multitudes.”

There is nothing wrong with me, or you, for craving the comfort of an instruction manual, even when we know it is not forthcoming.

Managing projects that we don’t fully understand—the bleary-eyed overwhelm of new parenthood, the aforementioned horrors of home renovation—is, in some ways, our Sisyphean lot in adult life, and will leave us desperate for the security of a step-by-step playbook.

If you buy a Billy bookshelf, you’re pretty damn sure that the cardboard packages you bring home from Ikea will unfold to reveal…the exact components needed to assemble a Billy bookshelf. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing unpredictable: how reassuring.

In life, when we stop seeking that kind of certainty, we find that we can use the random jumble of materials at our disposal—skills, dreams, connections—to build anything we want. Traveling into the unknown without a map is freeing; it’s also disorienting.

But even as we’re pulling our hair out trying to make things work without a blueprint to guide us, we might find a bit of cold comfort knowing that whatever we’re building is genuinely, uniquely ours.

💬 What do you think?

I’m curious to hear from you. Tell me about the last project you embarked on without an instruction manual.

Had your own plan-in-flames experience? Taking a leap into the unknown? I’d love to hear more. Just hit “reply” to get in touch, or introduce yourself here.

Warmly,
Maddie