Thursday, July 26th, 2007
We lead lives full of input, right up to the brim and often beyond. If we are sensitive then even the smoothest and sweetest times of life may feel fraught with the wild enormity of being human, and all it entails. There are thousands of memories, relationships, interactions, and stimulus in each moment of existence, and those of one person and time engage with so many others. We get told a million different ways how to live our life. We are told by parents and school, friends and role models, advertising and lovers. Everybody’s got an opinion…and their life advice.
There is a famous writing by a woman named Mary Schmich, meant to be a college commencement address that I will paste below, and in it she refers to advice as a, “form of nostalgia.” At best, it colors our world with possibility and hope, and alerts us to curves in the road we truly might not want to take. But at its worst it binds us to someone else’s view of reality, and of ourselves.
There may be a lot of things we can’t exert the control we would like over, but who we are isn’t one of them. There is only one person who can tell you who you are, and it is you. Most of us are exposed to many influences in our lives, some great and some just plain lousy. Imagine what it would mean to your life if you decided that nothing negative someone had told you about yourself were true…
I know we sometimes need others as a barometer to show us when we actually are off track or doing something we can’t see. But so often this function is abused, knowingly or unknowingly, as a way for someone else to exorcise their own demons. The people who have given us the most trouble and difficulty in our lives may paradoxically have seen our beauty quite deeply…and been that threatened by it.
Unless someone reading this has attained some kind of mastery I don’t know about, we all care something about what other people think. Perhaps we reserve it for special people, this care, but most of us do care about what some people think. Even working too hard not to care involves caring. What we don’t want, is to live our lives or make too many of our choices based on this outcome. Because the only way to be loved for who you are is to be who you are.
Compared to the life of the Soul, this one is short…and as we detach from having to appear a certain way (which takes a whole lot of energy to maintain anyway) we are liberated to actually enjoy this life and explore the vast richness of who we really are. We stop being afraid to experiment, and make the very most out of the living, breathing artwork that we are.
Imagine, for a moment, that you could wipe the slate clean…of anything you wished to be free of around your self-image. Imagine that all the things you praise and look up to in others was something you were recognizing from within yourself, and is yours to explore and expand. You could become more of whatever you would like to be, and might find that you were all along.
Inhibitions are funny. It is good to laugh at them because they can otherwise be rather freaky. They are speed bumps inside (or reinforced walls!) that we put there at some point to keep ourselves from stepping into scary territory. To keep ourselves from behaving way too much like we actually are. To keep ourselves “normal” and not so different.
You don’t have to put it on a canvas to be an artist…you just have to take chances.
Just let your heart be your guide, and, as it is encouraged in the writing below, “forget the insults” and unveil your breathtaking beauty to the world…
Love, Jennifer
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ’97…
Wear Sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.
Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time your 40, it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Mary Schmich
