(AN old post brought here from scrapyoga, my old blog) With almost half the year over already, seemed like a good time to share!)
Appears in Anna Quindlen’s book: A Short Guide To A Happy Life.
I am a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know.
Don’t ever confuse the two, your life and your work.
You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.
People don’t talk about soul very much anymore. It’s so much easier to craft a resume than craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter night, or when your sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you’ve gotten back the test results and they’re not so good.
Here is my resume:
I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch.
I would be rotten, or at best mediocre, at my job if these things were not true. You cannot really be first rate at your work, if your work is all you are.
So, here is what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so much for those things if you blew an aneurysm one day, or found a lump in your breast?
Get a life in which you notice the smell of the salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.
Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone, send an email, write a letter.
Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about the goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a Big Brother or Sister.
It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back, because I believe in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that in part, by telling others what I learned. By telling them this:
Consider the lilies of the field.
Look at the fuzz on a baby’s ear.
Read in the backyard with the sun on your face.
Learn to be happy.
And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
