The wisdom I forgot in my 20s (and 30s)
“The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.” - Mary Schmich
Like all good advice, sometimes it takes a while for wise words to truly sink in, but by the same token I also think that sometimes perhaps you lack the context for the wisdom being imparted to you when you are young. This is certainly true for the wise words of Mary Schmich, whose hypothetical graduation speech was popularised by Baz Luhrmann’s song “Everybody’s Free”, released in 1997.
I was borderline obsessed with this song when it came out, and I still love it to this day. I listened eagerly to the words and, as much as possible, I tried to take them in. At the same time, I had a copy of Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata plastered on my bedroom wall. I read it hundreds of times. I wanted to be wise, and I wanted to be zen. Then I turned 18.
I’m honestly not sure what happened, but I suspect that in my attempts to remake myself, as I think everyone does, into a Real Adult, I swept aside the trappings of childhood and these two texts seemed to go along with them. I got onto the hamster wheel of the expectations of adulting, because that’s what you do. I went to university, got a degree, got a job, got a couple more degrees, and got married. I had done the thing. I had successfully followed the road signs to destination Happy Adult Life.
But then, as cool as a lot of my life was in Taiwan, it turned out that I was in the wrong place. I got divorced, and I had to rebuild. So, again, I diligently retraced my steps and took a different route to what I assumed would be happiness. But again, I wasn’t quite in the right place. Lots was right, but there was something that was consistently nagging at me. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, there was an annoying little voice asking me: “Is this really what makes you happy?”
In the end, I think the two cornerstone texts of my childhood have had more of an impact than I realised. You see, they sparked in me a desire for joy, freedom and not taking life for granted. It just took two decades and some context for the wisdom to percolate through and pop back up in my mid-30s as something I could grasp, and act on.
Finally, I’ve had the courage to listen to the whisper in the back of my mind, throw out the Adulting Road Map and decide to instead follow the path that makes me happy. It’s scary, but it feels so much better to do what I feel is right rather than what I think I should be doing. After all, the race is long, and if it’s with myself then I can choose the race course… right?
