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| Grandpa's specs, letter, Grandma's diploma, and sculpture of Grandma |
Over winter break, I started sorting though boxes again in an attempt to further dehoard my space and I found gold, a 4-page handwritten letter from my grandmother. There were postcards from people who were on another continent, a slew of letters from friends (again, before e-mail), photos I took as a child (mostly of animals), a mix of childhood items with my name on them, but the letter was the treasure, the gold. There is no date on the letter, but from its content, I suspect I am in my sophomore year of college. It is 1993 or 1994 and I am confused about what to do with my life. My grandmother passed in 2004. Finding this letter was like hearing her talk to me again and hearing her say, "I love you," as the written word pulled me back twenty years in time.
In the same little box of memories I found a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's commencement address to MIT from 1997. He offers lots of excellent advice to new graduates, but one quote resonates:
"Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't."
After reading both documents, I thought, I should have listened more to my elders. They knew best. However, I was young and ignorant, as if often the case with youth. I had to be bull-headed and make mistakes on my own. But the truth is, that is how we learn, by making these mistakes. And what I learned is ... wait, Kurt Vonnegut has advice for that too:
"Enjoy the power and beauty of youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine."
