March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

It was nearly 30 years ago when I stood behind a lectern in a crowded high school gymnasium in the small town where I grew up. It was high school graduation, and I was the senior class president, delivering what was in effect a “farewell address” to my classmates, teachers, and the assembled underclassmen. It was my lot to share with them, to impart to them if possible, the sum total of my 12 years of education and 18 years of life experience.

As I recall, I talked a lot about involvement. I told them that the greatest rewards come from effort and participation. In academics, in sports, in music, or any other endeavor, I told them that the greatest pleasure, and the path of happiness and success, lay in getting involved in everything possible, and working as hard at it as you could. “The way to enjoy school is not by avoiding it, but by participating in it” I told them. Perhaps then, as now, elective office encouraged platitudes. I’m not sure that I was totally wrong, but I am absolutely certain that I was totally irrelevant. I have been thinking lately about what I would have said in that speech, given a little more education (which isn’t much help), and a great deal more experience.

If I were honest, and had but one theme to impart to my young listeners, it would have to be this:

No matter what you think, no matter what you plan, your life will not work out the way you expect. Period. Most of you will fall deeply, madly in love with someone you think you can’t live without, and you will marry. More than half of those marriages will end in divorce, leaving you with an intense dislike, if not outright hatred, for the person who had once made your life worthwhile. A very few of you will luck into happy and long-term marriages, but even these will not function in the manner you think they will. You may just be lucky enough to change yourself at about the same times, and in the same directions, as your partner. A few of you will fall in love, marry, fall out of love and divorce, fall in love, marry, fall out of love and divorce, over and over again like a perpetual motion yo-yo over which you appear to exert no control. God help you.

When most of you leave here you will either happily begin a job or career, or you will happily pursue education and training that will lead to a career. Thirty years from now most of you will not be doing what you left here to do, and those that are will probably not be happy about it. In 30 years many of today’s jobs and careers will no longer exist, and those that do will be hardly recognizable. I don’t know what the statistics are on the present viability of the hottest job prospects of 1963, but I’ll bet they’re no longer quite so hot. Quite possibly, some of the most sought after people from that time are now waiting on tables or driving cabs while they look for work “in their field.” “Their field” may not even exist anymore, or it may have quite happily become waiting on tables or driving cabs.

A few of you will go on to make a lot of money. These will probably not be the brightest among you, because the ability to make a lot of money is less a function of intelligence than it is a function of having an intense desire to make a lot of money. The brightest of you will have other things to think about. Some of you will make a lot of money and lose it, ending up flat broke, maybe through bad decisions, and maybe through circumstances entirely beyond your control. How you will deal with this will depend on you. Some will rise to riches again, some will find alternative pursuits, and some will spend the remainder of their lives in bitter recrimination against circumstances that treated them unfairly. The latter observation may indeed be true. Life isn’t always fair. How you will deal with obstacles, problems, and setbacks will depend on you. The fact that you will have to deal with them is inevitable.

The point of this discussion is not to paint a dire future filled with pain, regret, disappointment and despair. You will probably not get what you think you want, but what you think you want today is probably not what you will want tomorrow. No one can guarantee you love, money, a satisfying career, or anything else; not even you. The only guarantee is change and unpredictability. Take a minute to close your eyes and imagine what your life will be like in 20 years. Think about where you will be living and whether you will like living there. Think about your job, your salary, and your satisfaction with them. Imagine your spouse, if not exactly who, then at least what he or she will be like, and how you will feel about them.

Now that you have this picture firmly in your mind, try to keep it there, because the only guarantee in this world is that your life won’t in the least resemble the picture in your mind right now. Changes in the world over which you have absolutely no control will alter your life, for better or for worse, over and over again. Changes in yourselves, also perhaps without your control, will do likewise. You will never know when or how your life will soar with unexpected happiness or plunge into an awful hell that seems without escape.

You just can’t predict it. And that, after all, is what the real adventure is all about.

Brent Slater is a lawyer who practices in Bangor.


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