THE REAL TRUTH (NO ONE WILL TELL YOU)
As former colleague of mine used to say, and I mean this in the kindest way to every recent graduate reading this column, "Listen to me very carefully." What you don't know about life, the workplace, relationships and love is a lot. Don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying you should. It takes real life, away from school and textbooks and seminars, to teach you. And thirty-five years past my own high school graduation, I'm no expert. But that's the real lesson here, the real truth that no one seems to ever tell you. No one is.
Be warned: what follows may well be your life in the years ahead. You wake up after a restless night's sleep, kill a stink bug that looks completely at ease perched on the bathroom faucet, rouse your children, ask them yet again to hang up their damp towels on the floor, remind them to put the cereal and milk away, and comb their hair before leaving the house. You start a load of laundry and drive to work, where you concentrate as much as possible on the responsibilities for which you earn your wages. You head home to prepare a dinner that may or may not include all the food groups, or all the family members, then run around in or out of the house completing the next set of agenda items, then fall asleep during Treme.
Enthralling, right? Fascinating, I know. Again, listen to me very carefully. This doesn't sound all that exhilarating but that's my point. Unless you're planning on attaining world renown of one kind or another, with just a few minor adjustments, you'll live some version of this life. My husband and I have for the past twenty-five years. So has everyone we know, and our friends and family cover a broad spectrum of ages, household incomes and lifestyles. Regardless of the circumstances that surround us or the degrees we hold, we're all living that spectacularly unglamorous life you never see nor read about in the media.
It's fabulous and it's good, and not so good, and then great and then pretty hard and then really hard and then funny and then its okay and then it makes you crazy again and then you get a stretch of calm before a storm. Jobs come and go. They can give us an enormous source of accomplishment or an enormous source of stress, sometimes simultaneously. People move in and out of our lives for reasons we may never fully understand. Children arrive and turn a couple into parents overnight. Families and friends appear and disappear, and you figure out a new way to interact with each other; a way that will never really be the same as it used to be. What I hope you'll take away from this little description is that life is rarely one unending upward trajectory toward "awesome."
Through it all, it's unlikely you'll remember the speech you heard at your graduation. You'll be busy creating a life, a home, maybe a family. G0d willing, you'll live in surroundings that bring you comfort and a bit of sanctuary. You'll pay your bills and walk the dog and plant some flowers and match up the socks that come out of the dryer and hug your kids and put away the groceries and sort the recycling. Once in a while you'll read an outstanding book, hear music that moves you or see a memorable movie or play. You'll laugh and cry with friends or family. You'll forgive and ask forgiveness. You'll raise your children and if you're fortunate, one day you realize that you'd like them even if they weren't your kids. You'll find some time to give back to your community, and share your own unique gifts with others. The days will become weeks that become the months and years that become your life.
One more time, listen to me very carefully. Please don't spend the next twenty or thirty years thinking or saying things like this: once we buy the bigger house, everything will be better. Once I drive the luxury car, it will be better. Once I get a promotion, it will be better. Once we take that trip to Europe, it will be better. We just need the 1000-thread-count cotton duvet / the Miraval vacation / the projection home theater and it will be better.
That will never happen: Don't waste time waiting for life to get better because of an event or a possession or an activity. Not one of those things will make a difference to your happiness; not one. Life gets better because of you, and what you say, and what you do; and how true you are to yourself and those around you. Once you've learned that, you will have achieved success by any measure.
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