i got a fantastic email from a young friend the other day. she is in her first year at university, and from all reports, enjoying herself tremendously.
when i was talking to her mother, she wistfully said, "well, these will be the best years of her life."
looking back on my existence, i disagree. like frank sinatra, just about every year has been a very good year since university, and PARTICULARLY the last dozen. better than university, even.
my young friend was quick to mention the FREEDOM that university affords her. and her parents aren’t jailers, i might add. but i remember what she means. the freedom to linger, the freedom to eat paratha eight nights in a row at island experience because the guy who worked behind the counter was cute, the freedom to make the right decisions and feel good that you were doing them not because you had to, but because you wanted to. the freedom to make bad decisions and know you had the right to make them.
listening to debates in one end of a hall, while a struggling band played at the other. in the days before you could register online, standing in a queue trying to land tuesday thursday wednesday classes, that would leave you monday and fridays free. getting involved in a cause. either because you thought the fellow running it was cute, or because you were really interested in it. i remember back in 1989 i helped get a fellow my age get elected the student body president. we upset the current president and she was fuming. truth is, we ran a better, slicker campaign and we made it fun. his name was sandeep dhir. our poly sci teacher gave us tips, and was enchanted when we made it happen. now take it further, he said. and i think we have.
friend’s mother, if i had to live university or high school over again, i gamble and take high school. (thank you pithy boulder). and hope i do a better job. i know college was pretty good (except 1996), but despite the craziness, the causes, the cuteness…i would grab a can of final net and head back to high school, and see if i could trust myself more to say what i really believed. and if i didn;t, i know that i eventually wised up and the story has a happy ending.
after i received my young friend’s email, written to me from the crest of happiness, i decided to share the good news and responded,
"the good news is, that life keeps getting better."
sure, "real life" steps in, jobs & taxes aren’t fun and those little crepey folds of skin under my arms are no laughing matter either. but we’ve all lived enough to know someone who has died. it was someone from your english class, a loved relative, a friend. they would have paid their taxes happily if that chemo had worked…if that plane hadn’t crashed….if that car had not hit them.
reality sometimes isn’t fun, but overall, life is. and it is also good.
class over. go enjoy yourselves.
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I think if I could talk to my younger self and clue myself in a bit (if I’d listen), I’d say, “Find yourself, then be yourself.”
Not that I wasn’t doing either, but if I’d lived that mantra more fully, I think there would have been more joy, more fulfilling choices, less doubt & more chances taken.
Life hasn’t been rife with or absent of any of those things, but steering a course that is true to one’s self, always, it seems to my now, sadly, older self to lead to better versions of each opportunity that life presents.
Strangely – if I had to choose one over the other – high school or college – to relive and do the same way, I think I’d select high school. I adored most of college, but I think high school had a current of youthful indulgence, self-confidence, and life-long friendships forged that I remember with fondness. (Not to mention the music!)
Which would you choose?
boy, this entry hits hard today. today is sagan’s birthday. happiness, bouncing around playing with his balloons, no school today. two days ago an old friend died suddenly of a heart attack. a gentle giant. he was younger than marshall. sadness, grief, worry for his wife. it’s been a weird weekend.
yes, overall life is good. even john’s death reminds me of that. i met him when i was a messed up teenager. he was in his early 20’s and had been a messed up teenager himself. he is the person who let me know that life does get better. john, life did get better. thanks.
I am heading out the door as I write this to go and write my final exam for my NURS 391…..
coincidence?
P
Do you mind if I copy/send this off to my daughter, who is also in her first year at university?
I agree with you, I would choose high school. Class of 1984
Interesting. Both college and high school were fraught with tension and drama, but I think I’d pick college. High school was just really hard emotionally- college was too but I was on more solid ground.
I remember reading a magazine article years ago- this woman had been paid by the magazine to go back and pretend to be a junior in high school again. She was all prepared to be her confident 30-something adult self mascarading as a teen, giving the other kids life lessons in the “just be yourself” school of thought. And she found that in going back, the social conformity required in high school was hard for her even as an adult, and that being around other 17-year-olds made it all too easy to slip back into her 17-year-old insecure self. It was an interesting essay- not at all like one would think going back to high school would be.
I would definately go back to highschool in the late 80’s and not just to relive my days of giant hair, neon clothing and blasting WHAM on my ghetto blaster. I would want to go back knowing what I know now and give it another shot….give people that I judged back then a chance….who knows what may have happened had I been a little more open minded?!
I am going through the teenage years with my daughter (15) as we speak and I am not sure I would want to venture into the folds of highschool melodrama in this day and age!! Times certainly have changed and teenagers seem to have so much more to think about….I am fairly confident that she will be thinking the very same thing while mulling over motherhood in the future.
Thanks for the opportunity to digress a little and Congrats to your friend!! I wish her the very best that freedom and education can offer!!
“Long live the Mullet!” LOL