Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Making fun of this phrase is the trend now, but when Dr. William A. Ward first said it the culture was less jaded.
I knew him personally, before his aphorisms were heard or read beyond the small following of his column in the local newspaper. I was a youngster starting out in public relations for the University where he worked.
Even then, the president of the university made fun of Bill and his sayings. The president had to be the smartest person in the room, and my guess is he was jealous of Bill’s small following.
The prez came into my office one day, looked at a saying posted above my desk and asked sarcastically,
It was a kick to inform him it was Camu.
Bill was not Camu, but his positive attitude and kindness got me through some tough times working for someone who was much less kind and positive. While most of the staff groveled for this president, Bill and I sailed above his temper by not allowing it to affect us or reacting defensively.
My only defense came when my immediate boss told me the president was worried about my attitude. I answered,
People under the impressions I got assertive and cranky in my older age didn’t know me then.
I was 26, being divorced by the my first love and lover, who was leaving me for another woman. He left only a few months after I started the job at the university, which was also a complete career change from being a teacher.
In that context, Bill’s quote,
was particularly potent for me. I had thought my life was settled. It couldn’t have become more unsettled. After being married since age 19, I hardly knew how to start living my own life.
When I heard the phrase, I heard the emphasis on “your.” My early adult years had been overshadowed by my husband’s choices.
While he finished college with me after he returned from Viet Nam, I switched majors to follow an idea of something he and I thought we wanted to do. We didn’t.
When he was in Seminary, we had small churches where I was not the stereotypical preacher’s wife. Still, I was a preacher’s wife.
When he left the Seminary to become a photographer, I went to work with teaching with my new degree, supporting us and his new dream. The majority of our friends were originally his friends, or were attracted to us as a couple by his charisma.
The night I discovered he was out with the woman with whom he was having an affair, I realized I only had one close, female friend I could call for help. That itself was a wake-up call.
The day I moved out was, in every respect, the first day of the rest of MY life. My grown-up, individual life.
The phrase wasn’t trite to me, and the man who coined it was a kind and caring support during that time.
Having looked to love, marriage, association with a wildly charismatic individual, teaching, and other outside validating sources for happiness, this saying became my mantra in therapy. Therapy led me to find myself and to find the happiness that comes from embracing and nurturing your inner child and teen, and your adult self.
It took time, though, for me to even accept what was happening, and entering therapy would make it real. Therapy would mean accepting my marriage was over.
I was the optimist hoping the wind would change. Hoping my husband would return to me and bring back my status quo, and my job of being his support system. I was sailing unknown seas in desultory wind and my boat was dead in the water.
Bill and my therapist, Carol Stark, helped convince me I could move on. I could adjust the sails and map out and seek my own horizons.
I wouldn’t say I became a realist — I’m an eternal optimist— but I did face my reality of the time. I adjusted my sails. I did it without becoming jaded about love, men, or life.
As for the president of that university who thought he was so much smarter than Bill? His is a tiny footnote in history. You can find him on the internet, but you have to do a very specific search. As for William A. Ward? His internet presence, even after his death, is ubiquitous.
Jaded is overrated.
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This post was previously published on New Choices.
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