You Can Get What You Want or You Can Get Old.
“You can get what you want, or you can get old.”
When I was pregnant with my first child, I attended the law school graduation of someone near and dear to me, my mother. She had begun law school straight out of college, at the young age of 21 and completed 2 out of 3 years before realizing that she “didn’t want to fight with people”. At that time, she took a leave from school. She followed her heart and began studying painting, which she continues to this day. Her heart was screaming for art, color, vision, and beauty. The logic of law appealed to her but she realized that her program, for a variety of reasons, wasn’t serving her needs. It wasn’t feeding her soul and it certainly wasn’t making her happy.
My mother was about to turn 60. Three decades after turning off of the “law school path”, she decided to complete her degree. There was a nagging sense of unfinished business, something left unfulfilled. The challenges of going back to school are many. Her initial two years wouldn’t count towards her degree so she had to begin all over again, this time in an online program which would span four years straight, with no summer vacations or holiday breaks. The courses were more rigorous than a traditional “bricks and mortar” school.
Up until this point my mother was far from computer literate. Operating the phone answering machine was a big accomplishment. She began using email only when I traveled abroad, out of a mother’s necessity to keep in contact with her child. Suddenly, she had to transition from using an old fashioned type-writer to the computer age, not only attending courses online but learning the savvy technicalities of in-depth legal research via the computer.
This, for someone who still uses a yellow legal pad to write out her ideas, memos and thoughts. This, for someone whose idea of research is walking into the library, consulting the reference librarian and card catalog. Suddenly, she had to master log-ins, passwords, all part of the highly secure law school system. Her courses were entirely computer-based and, more importantly, her exams were computer-facilitated, leaving little margin for error and lots of room for technical difficulties.
Witnessing her walk at graduation and receive her diploma, 36 years after beginning this venture, was one of the proudest and most inspirational moments of my life. This was a challenging path for her in many ways; in large part due to the lack of clarity she was feeling as to how she would use her degree after graduation. She has been bombarded with the question “what will you do now?” In my own experience I find this question extremely unsettling. As a culture, we are obsessed with “doing”. “What do you do?” is the second most popular question after “What is your name?”
One of the biggest challenges we face is when our expectations aren’t met. We may have very clear expectations or we may have a vague sense of some sort of feeling we will achieve from the experience. So many times we embark on a venture with an expectation of what we will achieve or experience at the outcome: financial rewards, recognition or happiness and fulfillment.
Sometimes, fear of not having our expectations met leads us to avoid embarking on an enticing journey or path. We decide ahead of time that the result won’t meet our expectations so why bother? We are experts in creating excuses for ourselves. Some of the most popular being “it’s too late,” “there is no money in it” or “I won’t be any good”. In doing so, we deprive ourselves of the experience we might have. Who knows where the journey might lead? How will we know what successes, learnings and rewards we might experience if we do not take the first step in the journey? Embarking on the journey leads to possibilities. We must not be too attached to our expectations. The most important piece is to take the journey anyway.
“You can do what you want or you can just get old”. Life is a journey. Whether you follow your heart, indulge your dreams or keep yourself in a box, we all age. Life is time limited. It is never too late to try something new, change your path or indulge your dreams. What are you waiting for?
Exercises to get you started:
1. At the end of your life, what will you wish you had done?
2. What dream are you harboring?
Write them down and look at them once a day.
3. Notice how easy/uneasy you are with acknowledging this dream. Do you nurture it or dismiss it? What are your favorite excuses for not pursuing this dream? Write them down.
Tamar
