During the week of graduation, I had written a column that contained bits of life advice from me to this year’s high school graduates.
In hindsight, the series of events that led to my current circumstance proved one of the points I made wrong.
In that original piece, I wrote:
“From here, you are meant to keep growing and questioning and learning.
Never stop learning.
Never stop changing.
There’s an old expression: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss.’”
Those are all true statements. What came next was something which was proven wrong a few short hours after I typed it:
“But for a stone to roll, it must be kicked, tossed, or nudged along by some outside force.
That’s no way to live, waiting around for something to motivate you into action
Humans are not stones.”
I meant it as encouragement to take initiative and to move with purpose.
But I’ve come to understand something else in the time since.
Perhaps it’s not that the stone waits to be rolled.
Perhaps it doesn’t expect to be moved at all.
I certainly didn’t expect it.
In that original column, I explained that this life on earth is finite, and we must make the most of the time afforded to us:
“It means that today, right now, is part of the story you’ll carry with you for the rest of your days.
These are the moments you’ll look back on, and they are chapters of a life that only you can write.
So make them count, not for anyone else’s expectations, but for your own soul.
The best way to honor your life is to live it as your truest self.
Don’t wait for permission, don’t rest on laurels of early success, and most importantly, don’t let people shrink you because they’re threatened by your potential.”
Somewhere in there, I introduced this:
“Terence McKenna had a great point when he said, ‘If you don’t have a plan, you become part of somebody else’s plan.’
So have a plan, or at least a direction.”
And then I closed with this:
“Chase your dreams with sincerity and ferocity.
Go out there and be something the world didn’t see coming, but desperately needs.
Congratulations on this huge accomplishment!
I am incredibly proud of each and every one of you, and you should be proud of yourselves as well.
Bye until next week.”
That original piece was never published, and ‘next week’ never happened.
Now that there has been time to think about it, and especially in the context of this new venture, I want to offer you this:
Keep everything else I said in mind, but also don’t fear the unexpected nudge that sends you down a new path.
Sometimes what looks like being knocked off course is really just the start of a better one.
Terence McKenna had another quote. It’s actually one of my personal favorites:
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted,… this is what they understood…..This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
Coming from someone who just took his own plunge off the cliff of certainty, I can tell you it doesn’t feel like free fall forever.
Eventually, you land.
And sometimes, you realize the unknown was softer than you feared.
Bye until next week.
