This year would have been my 25th high school
reunion. No sweet sisters- there was no repeat of a prom or a party in honour
of the two and half decades sine my spiral perm days. Instead I passed the time
and it simply passed.
I’ve thought a lot about what has happened since my own
graduation. This is in part spurred on by my nephew’s recent graduation from high
school. I’ve thought about what I have learned since those days of youth and
what I have become.
Last week I walked by a group of graduates dressed to the
nines in front of the Vancouver Art gallery. There they were full of youth and
promise in prom dresses that spoke more of a Miss Universe era than a high
school grad. But no matter, for I have learned that when an 18-year-old girl
has a fashion vision for her you just smile and get out of the way. Nothing
will stop her from making her style dreams a reality.
And so as I walked passed them I could not help but comment,
“Ladies, You look beautiful”.
They looked up from their smart phones and smiled. “Thanks”,
said a brunette in orange chiffon with a bodice made entirely of rhinestones.
Sister had it going on and she needed someone to let her know that although
orange chiffon and rhinestones might have been a bit too mature for an 18 year
old, she was still getting an “A” from me for effort.
My high school grad dress was indeed a recycled garment. I
had worn it the previous August for my sisters wedding. It was royal blue
taffeta with rouching for days. It had a puffy skirt and puffy sleeves with
rhinestones. It was a seamstress’s tribute to the 1980’s if ever there was. I
was madly in love with that dress as I was with the 3 pounds of rhinestones I
wore dangling from my ears. My hair, of course was a spiral perm.
I took my friends Ian to my prom. My boyfriend at the time
was living in Montreal and could not come in for the event. Ian was a lovely
substitute, save for the fact that he got bored half way through the dinner and
went to the hotel bar to drink. I did not care. I was with my girlfriends and
when you are 18 in 1989 in Winnipeg and in love with a boy in Montreal,
rhinestones are indeed a girl’s best friend.
I smile when I look back at my 18-year-old self. What would
I say to her if we met in some weird parallel universe of today? Do any of us
know what lessons we’d impart on the younger versions of ourselves? Please.
Here I go my sisters….. Waxing philosophical. This is what happens when perimenopause
hits…. You reminisce a dream sequence and get lost in the theoretical.
Well… if I must…..
I blame it on the girls in the orange chiffon and the fact
that every time I open a paper or the interweb, I am faced with another
commencement address from everyone from Condelesa Rice to Louis CK letting the
future generation know who to be and how.
If I’m honest? I’m kinda worried for this next generation.
They are indeed raised by a generation pretty close to my own and hell… we were
pretty fucked up. So to fully face my fears and for the sake of some random
teenager on the street in Vancouver bold enough to mix orange chiffon with
crystals and bling, I thought I take a moment to write my own commencement
address to the class of 2014.
Dear Class of 2014, do I say Yo? What is the greeting these
days? You see apparently I am old but when you don’t have children around you-
you tend to lose your sense of relative age and somehow you think you are
indeed still 22. That is until you find yourself looking in a People magazine
and you don’t recognize half the celebrities any longer…. But I digress… Ahem
My dear class of 2014.
I know I should give you some serious life lessons…. The
kind I would have liked to have been given when I was your age… but here’s the
thing- When I was 18 I really did not want too much advice from someone older
than me. It was not until I hit 30 that I realized I could have benefitted from
some serious advanced warnings.
So my first piece of advice for you oh generation to come is
to listen up. It’s not that you don’t know everything and its not that you are
less intelligent than a generation before you it’s just that most of you have
not screwed up enough to learn anything of meaning.
And let’s be clear- it’s our mistakes that teach us
everything. So here’ my next piece of advice to you oh class of 2014- fell free
to screw up…. Just don’t do it to badly and never more than once at the same
thing. What I mean by this is that success tends to blind us. We pat ourselves
on the back- post our pleasures on Facebook and move on. We relish in our
victories so much so that we forget to have a lesson- we forget to debrief.
Make no mistake- failure is a bitch. Believe me- I’ve done
it a few times…. This week, let alone this lifetime- and it stings like a blister
in a new pair of sandals on a hot summer day.
But failure is where you find out who you really are. When
you have fallen down with the world above and the only decision that remains is
to get up and go home or to just get up…. You find out what you are made of-
you see the potential in your own self.
Oh Class of 2014- makes some mistakes. You likely are doing
this very thing right now- but instead of just making a mistake- forgive
yourself for the mistake, learn from it and move on.
Remember when “being wrong” threw into a tantrum of sorts?
Maybe you were eight years old or maybe it was last week- but remember how a
mistake would drop you into a shame spiral and self loathing? You’d call
yourself names or emotionally beat yourself up just because of the error at
hand?
No? Well, aren’t you special.
Most of us make mistakes and it takes us on an emotional down
spiral. We chastise ourselves, we bate, and we go over the mistake in our head
and let it weaken our sense of self. But what if we took the mistake as a
valuable lesson and mentally “debriefed”- wouldn’t we learn more?
According to my medical hero, Dr. Atul Gawande, there are
indeed two kinds of mistakes.
Mistakes of ignorance are where we lack the knowledge to
make the right decision and to do the right thing.
Mistakes of ineptitude are where we indeed have the
knowledge but fail to apply it properly.
Indeed both kinds of mistakes have much to teach us. One
teaches us the information itself, the other a lesson in application.
Do we curse the heavens each time we fail? No.
Make a mistake. Don’t do it often and don’t be careless, but
ask yourself was it because I did not know or was it because I failed to apply
what I know to a situation.
In my mind- that’s how you grow as a person.
There you have it my class of 2014. Go forth into the world
and make it a better place. But don’t be afraid to screw things up on your road
to redemption- you might wind up smarter than the sweet sisters before you.
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