I’ve been thinking about my senior students…pondering their futures.
They’re sending off applications, waiting on university, college & trade school acceptances…entering the work force…heading off into the unknown…
…but it’s an unknown I never knew. I enter the workforce during a booming economy, where opportunities seemed as limitless as job offers. But these days, it’s difficult to be optimistic. The economic downturn threatens the only way of life my students have ever known — I lived through two recessions, but they’ve known nothing but a prosperous comfort that’s become positively banal. Will there be jobs for them in a suddenly cruel & unforgiving world? Will the competition at educational institutions become so savage that I can’t possibly describe to them what they might be facing?
Above all…when some of them ask me what they should be…or simply don’t know what they want to be…what do I say? Lame platitudes are useless, and they hear about the stark truth on the news, over and over, until they become desensitized. What do I tell them?
Well…inspiration comes in strange places.
Sitting in the bath tub, re-reading Team of Rivals, I find the advice I’m looking for, courtesy of individual who knew a thing or two about inspiration…
“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other ambition so great as to that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.”
—Abraham Lincoln, age 23
I would say that Lincoln succeeded on this front. I would also say that any young high school graduate could take this advice to heart, and build themselves a magnificent, happy, fulfilling life…because THAT takes character…something all the money and fame in the world can’t possibly provide.
And here I thought I’d be at a loss for words of advice. Of course HE would know the right thing to say. HE was Abraham Lincoln! :D
