In a letter to his younger self, Brian Shea gives the guidance of hindsight.
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Dear Me,
Graduating college with diploma in hand and no job in sight has terrified students for generations. It’s 1991, and that’s where you now find yourself. Next month will mark 23 years since I donned the graduation robes you’re about to put on during the recession of the early 1990s, wondering if I had just wasted a degree I’d be paying off for decades.
Like your descendants in the Class of 2014, you worry about the future but are eager to chase it at the same time, your life to this point feeling like an endless cycle of preparation for a future that might never come. At least, that was my frame of mind when I was you.
The 23 years that have unfolded since then have been a fast-forwarded blur. You are about to experience the same warp of time that Mom warned you about. It’s all true. You will barely have time to see, no less recognise, the moments along the way that will really matter before you are right here in your mid-forties. I know, because I’m here, waiting for you.
I don’t know that the ensuing years have made us wiser by the time I write these words to you. But I have noticed patterns in the road signs you are about to start seeing, and I want you to know what those road signs are telling you, besides the fact that your current career plan will be torpedoed by 1992 (sorry for the spoiler). They matter, because there are others your age who may not notice them, and they may depend on you pointing them out as they travel alongside you, trying to get through their days and to be happy.
Your ability to nurture your personal relationships will trump all other skills.
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First and foremost, your ability to nurture your personal relationships will trump all other skills, and this applies to your friendships. You and your classmates use the word “friend” now more than they will later. Friendships dominate your social lives now because they have yet to be replaced by what society considers more important ones; a spouse and children. When you and your classmates marry and have children, many of your friendships will fade and you will make, and seek, fewer of them.
Inevitably, parenthood will entail withering friendships in the face of overwhelming responsibility. That goes with raising, guiding, and protecting the next generation, and so it should be.
As your friends and their families grow, they will be too busy to keep in touch. But make sure you stop in from time to time anyway. They will be starved for adult conversation and one day, when their children are grown, they will be glad to dust off those old fishing rods and explore a river with you once again. I may seem very old to you from your 1991 perspective, but rest assured that I have many adventures ahead with some very old friends, some of whom you know. They are worth the wait.
You are young in 1991 and fancy yourself as principled and uncompromising. But you underestimate how much you can look past things you know are wrong. I’ve seen you do it. On multiple occasions in the coming years, you will witness injustice and not do much about it. Sometimes it will be because you fear upsetting an order established by those older and more experienced than you. You will believe you lack the credentials to question history.
You will find, however, that age and experience do not always diminish the flaws in a man. Sometimes, the very longevity of a man’s flaws is mistaken for virtue. Be not enamoured with rank or prestige; Mom also taught you that it is better to question the old than to worship it. If something doesn’t seem right, it isn’t right.
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Finally, seeking to leave your imprint on this world is a noble goal. But what you don’t realise yet is that the merit of your deeds is not measured by whether it was earned saving babies from burning buildings or inventing new energy sources. By that metric, your life will be spectacularly ordinary.
But as you take off your graduation robes and step out into the world, you will learn that to be a source of encouragement to those you know and love makes manifest all you might achieve with acts of derring-do. The reward will be anonymous but will last for generations. There will be no cheering crowds, but there will be a few more people in the world with something to cheer about, even if they don’t quite know how they got there.
In 1957, the writer Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was a superlative validation of the writer’s life and on hearing the news, his thoughts immediately came to two people; his mother and his childhood teacher, Monsieur Germaine.
Camus immediately wrote to Germaine and said the following:
“Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.
I don’t make too much of this sort of honor. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.”
As you read this in 1991, you are not fully conscious of the power of encouragement. But you will, over time, remember the faces of all those who gently pushed you forward, showing you their faith in your abilities; the teachers, the friends, the colleagues, the family. In each case, it took only a moment and a few words to usher you on until you found your path, not always remembering how you found true north. They didn’t care if you sometimes forgot how; they just wanted you to always remember you could find it.
History is always too impatient to replace us with the new.
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A moment and a few words to those who need it. If you’re lucky, that will be your legacy long after we’re both gone. After all, we’re all forgotten by history in the end. Beowulf, one of the oldest and most epic poems in the English language, was written by a poet whose name is lost to the ages. Nobody thought to make note of it. In the early 20th Century, movie stars achieved international fame who are now unknown, their celluloid stories dissolving in neglected Hollywood archives. History is always too impatient to replace us with the new to mark our lives here permanently. You must find another way.
The echoes of your existence through others will persist and be far more important than memorials or promotions at the office. Someone you can’t name invented the medicine that saved your life and once, long before that, someone else convinced them they could do it. With someone’s gentle hand on a shoulder, a painter long ago finished a canvas that you will someday contemplate in a quiet moment and find your imagination fired. Your imagination, kindled by all those who nurtured your own hope, may someday be the only reason someone yet unborn decides they can transcend their doubts after all. A moment and a few words is all you need.
I don’t know if all this advice is worth the price we just paid for our college diploma. If it makes you feel better, next month will also mark my 45th year on this planet and the college loans are paid off. I know the prospect of debt is an enormous burden for you. I was there.
I won’t lie to you, however. Your future won’t be all wine and roses and you will be tested. The writer and politician Agnes Macphail once said that you should never rely completely on any other human being, however dear. “We meet all life’s greatest tests alone,” she said. When I was you, I believed her.
But, you will come to distrust these words with time. It’s true that some of what lies ahead will tear you apart and no human will prevent it. But by the time it does, you will always have souls nearby with a moment and a few words and it will make all the difference.
You won’t have earned their loyalty because you were entitled to it. Those souls will have stuck with you because they expected you to become one of them. It’s easy to do and requires little effort, really.
You just need to be reminded from time to time by someone who has been where you’re going.
Sincerely,
-Me
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Photo: Leo Hidalgo (@yompyz)/Flickr (this image has been altered)