Chapmanesque—The Valuable Goodbyes
This past week I was asked to speak to some high school juniors and seniors.
I knew exactly what I wanted to talk to them about. It’s something that everyone ends up facing in their lives—saying goodbye.
Some people handle it better than others. Some ignore it while others embrace it. Some are scared of it while others recognize how necessary it is.
I know. What a chipper topic to cover with a group of kids, most of whom will be heading into college soon.
The Bus and the Plane
Here’s how I started this thing out:
“For the past 12 to 13 years, Kindergarten to your junior or senior year, everything you have been part of has pretty much had an element of everyone else is included. For you seniors, that reality of your world is about to end.”
I showed them a picture of a school bus, and then showed them their school district’s policy about who is allowed transportation on the school buses.
Can you guess who all is allowed to ride the school bus? If you guessed “every student,” then you guessed correctly.
For students in school, public and private, those involved in their educational institution have been given a fairly level playing field when it comes to opportunities, participation, services and offerings.
Because students in both elementary and secondary schools are at such an impressionable age, they are exposed to so many opportunities in order to help them discover what their future may look like.
Some students might require certain services to help with learning difficulties, so the school goes out of its way to offer interventions, strategies and therapies to help provide all children a chance to enter their futures capable of achieving their fullest potential.
But when these students graduate, a massive case of the real world is waiting to smack them across the face to welcome them to the rest of their lives.
The seats on the buses are available to all students equally. But when the finish line is crossed and that tassel crosses from one side to the other, it’s a whole new ballgame.
The seats on the buses are traded for seats on the airplanes. You see, not everyone gets a seat on the airplane—only the people who bought a ticket have access to the interior. And the seats on the airplane aren’t created equal.
Where you sit on the plane is indicative of how much you paid for that seat. First class may be extremely appealing, but that section is more expensive than the back of the plane. Same plane, different sections.
The Gamble and the Chance of a Payoff
We’re all made differently. Each person is gifted an aptitude that may set them apart from others. Some aptitudes grant some people opportunities to participate in amazing experiences.
I think of the extremely tall, athletic kid who ended up being a collegiate basketball superstar shining brightly in the basketball arena while us average-heighted-humans found our seats in the stands.
There’s the girl with the beautiful voice and incredible rhythm who made her way to New York City to chase that Broadway dream.
You’ve got the natural-born leader who is just charming enough to garnish trust from those close to him as well as strangers, making his way up the political ladder.
There’s the extremely smart and disciplined girl who was accepted into that Ivy League school. It was her first choice, and she got that acceptance letter early. That’s the kind of smart she is.
There’s that guy who got the internship in the big city, the girl who landed the assistant job with a chance to become a partner one day, the guy who started a start-up-company early, sold it to Google, and is now on his sixth start-up with promises of selling this one off too.
These dreams are lofty, and when they’re accomplished it’s nothing short of amazing.
But these dreams come part-and-parcel with a goodbye, that tradeoff many either intentionally ignore or just happen to, unfortunately, overlook.
Not everyone is promised these opportunities. It’s not the same field trip on the same school bus that it was years ago.
Sometimes—actually, more times than not—these dreams require us to say goodbye to who we know and what is comfortable.
The tradeoff is a gamble, and to win big, you have to wager big.
There’s Good in the Word Goodbye
I’m willing to bet most people don’t like to say goodbye. In fact, according to a study done by Forbes, only 38% of people are open to changes in their lives. That means 62% of people have a preference for things to stay the same…always…forever…constantly.
When we’re faced with change, I think it’s natural to experience some fear, some anxiety, and even some skepticism. The older we get, the more invested we become in the way things are. When these things change, it requires us to reposition more of our world than it did when we were kids.
But it was a group of kids that I was talking to. I told them not to be afraid of goodbyes. They can be good things. Heck, the word good is the first part of that compound word.
How can we make goodbyes good? I’m glad you asked. Here’s what I offered as advice. Like all advice, take it or leave it.
ONE: Make as much of the world as you can. It’s your life (not other people’s lives). Go live it! Milk it dry! That ride might come in a vehicle that only has one seat. Take it! If you’re waiting to follow the path that has the most number of friends headed that same direction, you’re not owning your future. Choose your path.
TWO: Cheer on your friends (even if that means cheering from afar). You probably won’t go the same direction that your bestie goes. True, you two may have done everything together for the past handful of years, but that’s not going to be the case in the future. In the same way you don’t need to let anyone else hold you back from pursuing your unique future, you don’t need to be the hindrance in someone else’s life.
THREE: The path sometimes require a restart (or two). There’s a good chance students who start at a four-year university might not come back after the first semester. It may be due to a lack of maturity and poor decisions or it could be due to a wise decision made to ensure that freshman ends up where they really want to be. Whether you’re simply changing your major (maybe for the third time) or reinventing your life, don’t balk at a false start. It takes real character to know when to pivot, when to readjust, and when to start over. Trust me, you’ll play that role a few times down the road anyway.
Hello, World!
The world we built as 18-year-olds was more fragile than a house of cards. I wonder how many of us “grown adults” would like a second chance at a few decisions we made back in the day.
Sure, we’re who we are today because of those decisions, but I’m willing to bet we’d make those same decisions still, just with a little more precision and clarity.
Goodbyes are a part of life, but we can’t leave out the other side of that coin. With our plethoras of goodbyes comes our fair shares of hellos.
When we seek out those unique paths to explore the world, we’re confronted with how massive the world truly is.
But at the same time, we knit together a valuable network that will inevitably help us connect the dots, keeping that big old world at just the right size.
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