I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece Dangerous Minds and came upon this paragraph dealing with how psychics can appear to be so accurate in so many of their statements:
“The Jacques Statement, named for the character in ‘As You Like It’ who gives the Seven Ages of Man speech, tailors the prediction to the age of the subject. To someone in his late thirties or early forties, for example, the psychic says, “If you are honest about it, you often get to wondering what happened to all those dreams you had when you were younger.”
Is this really true?
I found this passage to be rather heart-warming and life-affirming. Apparently, it is common for someone in their late thirties and forties (like me) to be “wondering what happened to all those dreams” they had when they were younger.
This really isn’t the case for me.
For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher and a writer. When I was young and still working toward these goals, I would often say that someday, I’d like to “write for a living and teach for pleasure.” This was code for saying that I wanted my writing career to be successful enough to allow me to teach without constantly looking over my shoulder, worried that I might not be following the rules and meeting some set of absurd expectations.
Even this aspect of my dream has come true. I’m not exactly known as a rule follower, but it’s all worked out quite well. Twenty-two years of teaching in the same school, most of it in the same classroom, with great success. Even better, it’s been my writing that has allowed for so many other things in our life, including allowing Elysha to stay home with our children for the first ten years of motherhood.
Teaching and writing. Both dreams have happily come true.
Others have as well. About thirty years ago, I apparently wrote down a list of goals with my friend while dining at a Papa Gino’s restaurant in Attleboro, MA. I have no recollection of this event, but my friend has the list, scribbled in my handwriting. Prior to our wedding, he found my list in a shoe box and reviewed it in preparation for his best man toast.
Apparently I’ve done quite well.
Thirty years ago, I dreamt of playing poker with friends on a regular basis. Oddly enough, I never played a hand of poker until about 15 years ago, but today, I participate in regular games quite often, including one that I host in my own home.
Thirty years ago, I dreamt of owning season tickets to the Patriots games. Today I attend games on a regular basis thanks to my season tickets.
Thirty years ago, I dreamt of owning a successful small business with a friend. Today I own a mobile DJ company with this same friend, and we’ve been in business since 1997. Elysha and I have owned and operated Speak Up since 2013.
Not the most earth-shattering of goals, I know, but it’s good to know that even when I was nineteen, I was still looking forward, setting goals, and dreaming of a better and brighter future.
It’s even better to know that those things actually happened.
But it’s been my lifelong dreams of teaching and writing that have meant the most. Coming from my background, I had my doubts if any of this would ever happen. Lacking family support, funding, knowledge of how college worked, and even a home for a while, the prospect of putting myself through college in order to make these dreams come true seemed like nonsense.
Impossible beyond belief.
When you are kicked out of your home after high school, living in your car, sharing a room with a goat, awaiting trial for a crime you didn’t commit, and surviving off the generosity of a family of Born-Again Christians, dreams tend to take a backseat. There was a long period in my life when attending college seemed impossible, and publishing a book seemed like a pipe dream.
Both were like distant, fading pinpricks of light in the night sky.
And I can remember the immeasurable sadness that I felt in knowing that I would probably never teach or publish as a result. The thought that I had one life, and it would never amount to much.
It was almost unbearable.
In my experience, there is nothing worse than the loss of hope. It’s crushing.
So if Gladwell and the psychics are correct and most people in their late thirties and forties find themselves wondering where the dreams of their youth have gone and are experiencing even a fraction of the sadness that I once felt, I cannot imagine how difficult life must be for them.
I hope it’s not true. I really do. I hope Gladwell and the psychics are stupidly, ridiculously wrong.
I hope that most people approaching middle age can look upon their life with joy over where they have landed and hope in their hearts for all the dreams still yet to come.
I really, I really do.
