Do We Ever Go Back?

Advice for the Young

I spent the afternoon at a friends house admiring her new deck.   She has a tiny little Chinese girl visiting her this week. This petite little visitor is 27 years old and next year will get her Ph’d. In artificial intelligence. She is in the process of writing her Thesis. Now that is a lot of writing. A lot of planning, thinking, organizing, discipline, and writing.    A part of me was very envious of her position, the other part was thinking, “thank God it’s not me.”    When I wax nostalgic I think of the days when I too was all about getting an education.   My every waking moment was concerned about classes to take, not to take, to drop, to change.

Then, at some untraceable point, life sneaks up on you and puts everything on hold.   Marriage, kids, pets and responsibility all combine to form an invisible barrier between you and university.   Many Moms do go back but many more don’t. By the time the little ones are big ones we are older, tired and have lost a lot of our confidence in our ability to learn.   In other cases the money is no longer available and the costs out of our reach. We aim instead for a job that will provide extra and much needed income so that we can make sure our children go on to higher education.

Over the years I have freelanced a bit, sold some art, published some poetry and a children’s picture book. For a few years I wrote a weekly humour column for a local weekly newspaper. Life is what it is and for every day that I have a life to write about, I am grateful. It is not the life I wanted when I was 20 but it is the life I yearned for at 30.   Looking back I have no regrets. If I had done anything differently I wouldn’t be at this place in this time and I like this place. My only change would be to have done it all the same only earlier.

For the young ones out there still trying to decide on goals and what to do about education, I would like to offer a bit of advice.

Go to school now, while you can and get all the schooling you want or need. Focus on your career while you are young and have the stamina to have a career. If a family is in your future, don’t wait till it is too late and you are too tired to have one or to enjoy fully once you get them.

I started writing this post with a purpose in mind but during the process I have answered phones, enjoyed a wild, crazy storm, made supper, watched a weird movie called Nothing and moved the computer into the bedroom where I am now enjoying NCIS and trying to decide what it was I wanted to say because that thought has been lost amongst the everyday trappings of life.    Instead of trying to find the thread of that thought I will leave you with a quote from one of my favourite quotable folks, Bertram Russell:

"Most people would rather die than think, and most people do."