Famous Last Words Week 10

Here's a thought for you.......

Night Sower

Most of us are either graduating in a month or on our way to graduating. I only bring this up because I am probably one of the oldest people in this class. I’m surrounded by young people all the time so naturally I feel young, well that is till I look into the mirror and I see this old dude staring back at me. I just wanna say to the younger people, congratulations, you are what we call “Ahead of the Game.” Now if I could give any of you some advice, and please forgive and old man for becoming a bit preachy, it would be that along your journey into the real world you are going to come across a ton of people that will look at you with jealousy and envy. They will attempt to make you feel bad about your success and pity their lack of success. Don’t let them do that. You have worked hard to get to achieve your goals and a college education is just one step in that direction. That is what makes you different than other people you will meet in life.

See I have been extremely lucky in life. I have never had a hard time finding and keeping a job, and at most of my jobs I was lucky enough to be given plenty of opportunities. For the most part I took advantage of these opportunities as best I could. I say as best I could because I wasn’t prepared for success all of you will be, so I was only able to fake it as long as I could before my lack preparedness showed me the ceiling on my room of success.

 I have had a high paying job as a Manager for one of the largest Chevy dealerships in the nation when I lived in Chicago. I have owned a small town restaurant. I was a bartender that saved his money and when the moment came was able to purchase the lease on a failing bar and turn it around. I had a mid paying job as a front of the house manager at a steakhouse. Those are just the highs of my work. There have been a ton of lows. I have worked in a nursing home, at the service desk at Wal-mart, and even now I just work as a server for a restaurant. What all this has taught me is that there is a ceiling. For the jobs I had there was no requirement other than a high school education and a willingness to put in a ton of hours each week. Even though a few of those jobs did pay well, once they were gone there was no guarantee that another similar paying job would be available. That is why I went to college, so that I never have to worry about that night to night, pay check to pay check life again. Even if the jobs we get out of college are low paying, at least there is a direction for our lives, a path to happiness.

What I mean by people detracting you along your way is that the person you are today, is much different than the person you were, and while people will see you with a nice house, car, and job and may think that you had it easy, what they will never be able to understand is all the hard work and sacrifice you have made to achieve those things. They will look down on you and think that you don’t have the same hard work ethic they do, when in fact, not only do you have a great work ethic, but you also have self control. Because as a young person it is easy to want things, and to chase that money so that you can have those things. Who doesn’t like to go out and enjoy life? But the truth is that you have put all those things on hold so that you can not only have those nice things, but also insure that those nice things will never be taken away from you. I have to commend you because as a young person I was one of those people that showed less than respectable self control. I wish I had the same mindset as you younger adults. Being here at this GREAT UNIVERSITY has taught me that you truly are an amazing group of people.

Two last bits of advice, not wisdom, but advice and then I will be done with this rant. Never allow someone’s excuse for their failure force you to make an excuse for your success. You have earned it. Remember these four words wherever you go in life….. I, LOVE, YOU, AND SMILE.

As I look back at that man in the mirror with the aged face and gray hair I am flooded with memories of my youth. And really, while a great job, money, and nice things are important, the most important thing is the memories. Some memories make me sad, and they will always be there, but what overwhelms them are the memories of when I told people “I LOVE YOU,” and all the times  when life made me SMILE…….






Picture Attribution
By OUkid (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 us (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/deed.en) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons