Over winter break, I watched the proshot of Merrily We Roll Along in theaters with one of my best friends and a former college roommate. Watching the film was one of the few times I allowed myself to do something purely for fun with friends for the entire break. I spent the rest of it writing dozens of cover letters and applying for over 100 internships. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working on my portfolio for the graphic design program. I had spent my month home focused on my ambitions rather than really spending time with the people I loved. Sure, some of it was from necessity, but at a certain point, it reached compulsion. And Merrily We Roll Along checked me on my compulsion to succeed for 2 hours and 25 minutes.
The show hits you early with a line that sounds like encouragement until it starts to sound like an interrogation: “Dreams don’t die, so keep an eye on your dream.” I couldn’t stop mulling it over in my head. Was I keeping an eye on my dream, or was I actually letting it consume me? Was I actually trying to follow my dream, or was I letting a growing desire for success slowly sneak in under the disguise of a dream? Those two things do look strikingly similar from the outside; they both look like hustle, like dedication, like someone “working hard.” But only one of them feels like a life you’re building on purpose.
And then Merrily warns you what happens when you don’t notice the difference soon enough. “And before you know where you are, there you are.” That line scared me more than anything in the show, because it’s not dramatic. It’s simple. It’s the kind of truth that sneaks up behind you. If I left this unchecked, where would I end up? Would I let ambition blind me until I opened my eyes and didn’t recognize the life I’m living? Or was I going to snap out of it while I still had time to choose differently?
One of the parts that hit me hardest was when Frank said something to the effect that his biggest regret was all the times he said “yes” when he meant “no.” That’s the kind of regret that sounds simple until you realize how many people live inside it, including myself. I’m a chronic people pleaser, and I’m terrified of missing out on opportunities, so I say yes to everything: leadership roles, jobs, tasks, clubs, events. Not always because I truly want them, but because some anxious part of me cannot fathom the idea that if I don’t take it, someone else will. That’s such an ugly motivator because it turns your life into a constant audition, like you’re constantly proving you deserve to be here. And once “yes” becomes your default, “no” starts to feel like a moral failure instead of a boundary.
The night before watching Merrily, I sat in my living room, with the rest of the house long asleep. The only light was coming from the Christmas tree. I remember staring at it and thinking, “Why doesn’t it feel like Christmas?” It used to feel like something, right? But Merrily had already put a lyric in my head, one that makes you feel both called out and seen: “That’s what everyone does: blames the way it is on the way it was, on the way it never ever was.” Maybe what I was missing wasn’t Christmas: it was being younger. Maybe I was missing a version of the holidays that only exists because memory edits things until they sparkle. Everything looks perfect in the rearview. I can’t expect the present to live up to a story my brain has polished into something impossible.
And then there was the lyric that made me want to laugh, cry, and throw my Nerds Gummy Clusters across the room: “Growing up means admitting the things you want the most. Can’t pursue every possible line.” Earlier that week, I declined playing video games with my siblings to work on a portfolio. I sat in my room writing page after page of reasons to hire me while my brothers played Twister in the next room. In a harsh moment of realization, I knew I had chosen work, validation, and my own ambitions over family. I can’t pursue everything, and that realization left me paralyzed from fear, shame, and helplessness. Because once you admit you’re choosing, you also have to admit what you’re not choosing, and I hated the list of what I’d been putting second.
From that paralysis, I was letting the things I truly wanted go to the wayside: time with friends, time with family, a life outside of my desires. A life outside of proving something.
There was a lyric later that I still can’t stop thinking about: “It could have kept on growing, instead of just kept on.” It’s sung while two friends drift apart, and it’s so quiet you almost miss how brutal it is. “Kept on” is what happens when you’re busy. “Kept on” is what happens when you mean to reach out, but you don’t. “Kept on” is what happens when passion starts acting like permission to neglect everything else.
And the worst part is how easy it is to justify “keeping on.” I had been motivated in headstrong ways, whether by wanting to be the most successful of my friends, trying to set a precedent, or striving to prove to my family that I was doing this first-gen college thing right. So yeah, I was letting friendships slide. “Not tonight.” “I need to leave early.” “Sorry, I missed your text. I was farming for internships until 3 a.m.” I was burning myself out on work, friends, art, and family all at once, and calling it ambition like that made it noble (spoiler alert: it didn’t; it just made me a lame friend).
Winter break was supposed to be a reset. It was supposed to be the time I actually watered the friendships and family relationships that usually survive off scraps during the semester. It was a chance to let things grow, rather than letting them just keep on. But I caught myself doing the exact opposite, acting like being “the friend who can go months without talking and be fine” was something acceptable. No. What was I doing?
And yet, for all the conviction, Merrily doesn’t leave you in shame. It ends with a kind of hope that feels almost startling because it’s so simple. “Someday just began…gives you the shivers, makes you think there’s so much left to sing.” It’s three best friends on the roof of a college dorm, looking out at an eclipse, literally, but metaphorically at a future that still feels like it belongs to them. And sitting next to my freshman year roommate, the two of us bursting with dreams, I felt tears on my cheeks. I was reminded that ambition isn’t a dirty word. Dreams are beautiful. Wanting things is beautiful. The fact that I can recognize the pitfalls of being a dreamer at my age is a gift, even if it stings.
My someday just began. There is so much left to accomplish, to live. And it doesn’t all have to be done right now.