By Rawlins Gilliland
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-919804.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Most students across Texas returned to school this week. For those attending college here or someother state, some advice from commentator Rawlins Gilliland.
This time of year, many young people leave for college. After which speakers rhapsodize to those receiving diplomas that the time has come to be herded off to labor camps repaying huge student loans. Where, I wonder, is the encouragement to pursue individual paths in life following any formal education? May I offer some personal food for thought as an option to the fast food advice others habitually serve our malnourished young adults?
The first time I had a post-graduate professional gig was at 31 because, after prolonging college, changing majors quarterly, I set out tramping around Planet Earth until I was pushing 30. I did win a National Endowment for the Arts two-year grant as Poet in Residence. But still, while everyone else was making lucrative inroads in their advancing careers, I had yet to begin. Returning from time travel in a separate galaxy, I was functionally irrelevant networking with the materially ambitious.
By the time I truly entered the business world at 35, I was hopelessly behind my peers who were moving into upper management. Now, the good news. I'd been learning more about life than they could imagine. I was still young; eager to "sprint" when they were tired of running. So, even though I began on the sales floor instead of the executive training program, I took early retirement 16 years later as the Director of Sales & Product, far exceeding many friends and colleagues who ran straight from college into marathon work weeks.
Collaterally, I also skipped the middle-aged-crazy "mid-life crisis" that is requisite among other 40-something males who never cherished the real gifts of being young. True, I'd been dangerously addicted to romantic adventure. But they were strung out in the lethal rat race maze that crushes youth like grapes in a vat. As a 50-something executive in New York City on business, I remember one night riding in a limousine, dressed to kill, driving past the Central Park area where, in the second half of my 20s, I sometimes camped out on summer nights. At once, both sides of life's coin glimmered.
My best advice to someone young: Dare to swim your own race against the current rather than going with the crowd's flow. Reject all presumption when anyone attempts to define you. Indulging perverse temptations may be a youthful rite of passage but making perversity your drug of choice is not. Don't drink alcohol too much too often for too long. Dating booze but never going steady with it gives anyone an upper hand. Acknowledge what I call "alternative realities," something only possible when you learn to fully grasp life experiences unlike your own. And cash this check from the senior citizen memory bank: Beware of spending too much time with friends and family who like you "just the way you are." Those who love you most can discourage your hunger to evolve into the person you need to be because they're afraid you'll fail. But other loved ones may discourage your dreams because they're afraid you'll succeed.
Rawlins Gilliland is a writer from Dallas.
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