G’Quon wrote, “There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities; it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us.”
G’Kar — Babylon 5
Those words and the many more that will follow were written long before you were even born and are perhaps the most important words I will have the honour and privilege of sharing with you with the hope that you may find some measure of inspiration for that as yet undefined future that awaits you.
J Michael Straczynski describes his writing process where he is a scribe writing down the words that the characters in his head are saying. Writing this blog post for you on the day of your graduation from high school, I think I understand his wisdom born of experience far more than I ever have before.
You’re standing in the midst of a great moment of transition but you are not alone.
As you are now, those of us who came before you also stood at the edge of that scary precipice called “adulthood” not knowing what our future may hold or having to worry about things we never had to worry about before: working a job just to watch that money earned fly out seemingly just as quick for rent and the myriad of bills with very few dollars still left in the nest. Worrying about what our future educational endeavours might be and where they might lead us.
It’s OK to find this more than a little bit daunting if not outright scary! We totally get it…finding ourselves having to stretch our wings and fly toward our unknown and uncertain future. Been there, done that!
But most importantly, we survived it…and so will you.
I wish I could tell you that it will be easy but then you’d know it for the lie it would be much in the same way as the Army recruiter trying to sell you on how much of a Shangri-la you will find at a mythical place known as scenic and lovely Fort Dix. I don’t think you have to really stretch your imagination all that much to figure out the mighty steaming pile that characterisation of that place (or places like it!) is but at least you have the benefit of being warned in advance! 🙂
The hardest part is that we often have no clue what exactly we want to do with our lives. If we had that revelation, life would be a whole hell of a lot simpler…want to do A which is at point B and here’s the trajectory to get there.
I rather naively thought I knew exactly where I was going and what I was going to do when I got there when I was much younger than you. I was absolutely convinced I’d be flying Boeing 727’s for Delta Airlines. Then when I got to university having given up on being a pilot because I thought they required perfect vision (which is required to fly MILITARY planes but isn’t for COMMERCIAL planes), I was absolutely convinced I would double major in Computer and Electrical Engineering. But then came the depressing realisation that I really didn’t want to endure 90 credit hours of crap I truly hated but was essential to be a successful engineer to get to the 40 credit hours I actually found interesting.
It didn’t help the engineering courses a whole lot for me to see guys with advanced engineering degrees not able to get their dream job at the Rocket Shoppe at Kennedy Space Centre…that’s how I ended up switching to Computer Science and never looked back for a decent 25 year run.
Now I find photography and video editing and building/maintaining the websites far more fulfilling than many of the things I did in IT.
Now just think how many times that absolute certainty of what you wish to do with your life has changed in just the past 18 years alone. You’ve certainly changed your mind on more than one occasion along the way and I’ve only got one thing to say about that:
It’s perfectly normal and OK to change your mind from time to time!
I love that you’ve certainly seemed to find your passion in automotive repair when you finally got a consistent teacher of the subject at Enloe. That day you got into the Traverse so excited at having used the machine to pop a tyre off the rim and then re-mount and balance it on the machine…I couldn’t help but be excited along with you. And when we recently visited Wake Tech and saw that breathtakingly amazing brand-new facility with all of the brand-new tools and equipment you’ll have to learn on, you looked like a kid in a candy shoppe!
I truly believe if you seize this opportunity for what it is and let your passion flow through your heart to your mind and your hands to do good work, you will be successful.
It won’t be easy and there will likely be some stress along the way. Nothing worth having in this life is ever easily attained even when it looks like someone else has done just that or had all of the breaks.
All we’ve ever wanted for you is to find happiness and fulfillment in whatever you do. A job that ignites your passion and enjoyment is one to be treasured…the old adage is quite true that “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life!”
The path of your destiny is unique to you as will be the challenges you will encounter along the way!
But you are not alone in your battle against the darkness…you have an army of light in your corner. All it takes is the wisdom to overcome pride and ego to accept that one rarely can do everything by themselves.
I’ll admit that I’m not all that hot at doing so myself…a lot of that comes from the “with your shield or on it” mentality I grew up with. Be better and smarter than I was…accept and use to the fullest the help that is available to you to be successful at whatever you do.
And if you decide down the road a bit that turning wrenches isn’t what you’d thought it’d be, then it’s perfectly OK to find something else to do that does reignite your passion for doing good work and serving the needs of others. The beauty of this country is that one can truly do whatever they wish with their lives as long as they’re willing to do the hard work it takes to get where they wish to go.
Change isn’t necessarily the enemy and it isn’t something to be feared but rather embraced as the gift from the universe it is even when it may not seem so.
Those of us who love you dearly will be with you all the way.
Always! 🙂
