A quick series of scenes reveals that some of Daniel’s peers are, in fact, more ambitious, more focused, more cutthroat. The sequence culminates in a shot of Daniel’s “first friend” stopping by Daniel’s desk to drop off a stack of files for processing. The camera closes in on a clock on the wall, the hands of which start spinning faster and faster until they blur and then come to a stop at six o’clock. The camera pulls back to reveal Daniel at the same desk but in his early thirties. Another pile of work to be processed is dropped off by a different colleague, who is noticeably younger than Daniel.
It wasn’t lost on Sam that as these scenes unfolded, Daniel was still smiling. But his smile was now a little weary, a little apologetic, perhaps even a little embarrassed. It was almost painful for Sam to watch.
Later that night, Daniel arrives home at the same six-story walk-up. He climbs the stairs and enters the apartment, which is cluttered with a bike, a crib, toys. Dropping his backpack on the floor, he enters the small kitchen, where his wife has one child in her arms and another at her knee. There is suddenly loud, thumping dance music coming from overhead. Daniel looks at his wife as a tear of exhaustion falls down her cheek.
Cut to the following morning in Century Tower, where Daniel walks past the warren of cubicles, enters the corner office—now occupied by his old friend—and simply says: “I quit.”
The music swells with the sound of cellos or violas, Sam wasn’t sure which. But it was definitely the swelling of strings.
Daniel and his wife are in the same old station wagon, but this time with their two children in the back and their belongings on the roof. Heading in the opposite direction, they cross the same bridge, which leads them to a highway and then a series of increasingly rural roads. Again, Daniel and his wife lean forward to look out the windshield, but now it’s to admire the foliage. In a small town—somewhere in Vermont, perhaps—they pass a white church and a firehouse and then a local elementary school, where a posted sign reads NOW HIRING. When they climb out of their car in front of a modest little home, Daniel puts his hand around his wife’s waist as their two-year-old toddles across the grass.
Fade to black.
When the lights came up, HT was already looking at Sam.
“Terrific, right?”
Sam didn’t know what to say. His head was reeling a bit. Maybe it was the gin. But there was also something profoundly unnerving about watching thirty years of a life—of your own child’s life—condensed into a matter of minutes.
“What was that?” he ended up asking. “A law firm? An advertising firm?”
“Does it matter?”
“Doesn’t it?”
HT spun in his chair to look at Sam more directly as he clarified his remark. “It’s not like we have a crystal ball, Sam. This is just a projection—a carefully engineered and statistically supported projection—but a projection nonetheless. It’s designed to give you a sense of the contours of Daniel’s life, not the exact specifics. So is it a law firm or an ad firm? We don’t know. But given his genetic makeup and likely upbringing, we’re fairly confident that, after attending a competitive midsize liberal arts college, this Daniel would become a young professional in a leading urban center. So, yes. Working in a law firm or ad firm or consulting firm. In Chicago or Atlanta or San Francisco. These are basically variables, and regardless of which ones Daniel chooses, he will probably end up with a similar life experience. But let’s not get too bogged down in the weeds. What did you think more generally?”
“It was very satisfying in the beginning,” Sam admitted after a moment. “I liked the picture it painted of him. But it was hard to watch him reach his thirties with so little to show for his efforts. Professionally, I mean.”
“Sure,” said HT, nodding and shifting his expression to a sober acknowledgment. “It’s a classic second-act setback.”
HT kept nodding.
Sam furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“You know. A second-act setback—in which, having started confidently along a particular trajectory, we come face-to-face with our own limitations.”
“Is that necessary?”
HT shrugged in the manner of one who didn’t make up the rules. “To some degree it’s unavoidable. We’re all born with certain strengths which, ideally, are fostered by our parents and positively reinforced through education and peer interaction. But our strengths don’t serve us well in every circumstance at every phase of our lives. As we grow and enter new contexts, our longer-term strengths can suddenly hamper our worldly progress, which in turn can create dissonance at home. When we find ourselves in that situation, eventually we have to confront the fact that the way we’ve approached life in the past is not effective in our current situation. Just as Daniel has to recognize that his good-natured predisposition, which served him so well in his youth, may not serve him as well when he is an urban professional in a competitive field.”
HT’s tone shifted back to enthusiastic.
“Now, there are some personalities who, faced with this realization, might try to transform themselves into someone they are not. What I love about Annie’s choice is that, in this version of Daniel, he embraces who he has been from the start. Rather than changing his behavior, he changes his context. He picks up his family and moves to a world where his virtues are more closely aligned with a path to happiness. We are who we are, right? There’s no point in pushing our personalities uphill.”
Pushing our personalities uphill…
Upon hearing this pithy phrase, rather than thinking about it in relation to Daniel, Sam found himself thinking about it in relation to his wife. Annie had attended a competitive midsize liberal arts college—not unlike the one depicted in the projection—where she had majored in English and written a thesis on divine ambiguity, or something, in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. And though she had gone on to graduate from law school and land a position at a white-shoe firm, recently she seemed to be taking more pleasure in her pro bono work than her corporate practice. In choosing this projection, was Annie expressing some sort of regret about the life they had chosen to make for themselves in the city rather than in some small bucolic town?
HT was watching Sam, studying his expression. “What do you say? Are you ready for number two? Or do you want to take a break?”
“No, I’m good,” said Sam. “I’m ready.”
“Great.”
When the lights dimmed, Sam drank the rest of his gin and tonic. Once again, the Vitek logo receded and the name Daniel appeared, then the projection began. This time the narrator was a man.
From the day he was born, Daniel marched to the beat of his own drum…
After a shot of a swaddled baby with a furrowed brow, there followed a series of clips. At the age of four, Daniel explains rather earnestly, as if he’s put some thought into the matter, that he doesn’t actually need a nap right now. At the age of fifteen, Daniel asks his English teacher: “Isn’t the only reason we’re reading Tom Sawyer and The Great Gatsby in high school because you read Tom Sawyer and The Great Gatsby in high school?” At the age of twenty-two, Daniel is in the office of a college dean who wants to know why he missed his political science exam.