Mishap Misapprehension
Matthew Ryan Fischer
“And the kids drink too much and all they do is think about sex...”
The parents worried about the wrong things.
“I don’t know, if I had met the right person maybe I’d be working
in Chicago and never would have moved to Los Angeles.” The wrong things were
blamed or the wrong import given.
“I don’t blame them. I mean, if I were younger I would probably
think they had failed or weren’t trying or something. But yeah, life is hard. I
totally get what they’re doing. Low energy, steady job. It’s just enough. We
all have to think about insurance and saving for retirement. I get it. I do.”
The wrong judgment led to the wrong assessment which led to the
wrong resolution. There was no lesson learned, no new application attempted,
because the parameters were misidentified in the first place.
“I always thought my father would have said something. We didn’t
really have money for college. All he had ever known was that store. He probably
thought that was it. For him. For me. I mean you were always going to go to
college, that’s just the way it was.”
“Yeah maybe. Really my dad was a little jaded because he didn’t get
to stay in school and get a PhD. He had to work. So yes, we were all going to
go to college, but really he wanted us to have the chance to try things because
he didn’t get to. So we all had a lot of freedom to pursue whatever we wanted.
Not that that was a great idea. But it felt like he respected our choices or
something. At least at the time. Now I kinda wish I had studied something more
practical.”
“Well none of us used our degrees. If we had been smart we would
have tried to publish something or create a small business but get the school
to pay for it. We could have called it a class and tried to prove we were
learning something.”
“That… would have been so smart. I didn’t even think about that
sort of thing.”
“They had all the tools – printers, computer software. There was the
campus newspaper. We could have started something and proven we could do it.
Really, I learned more working at conventions trying to talk to sales reps than
I did in that entire last year of college. We were in it, right in the middle
of things. That’s what we should have been taking advantage of.”
“Yeah I never met anybody good at college. Well, one or two people
really made something of themselves. I probably blew it with them. But most of
the people were…”
“Poor.”
“I… what?”
“That’s how I felt anyway. I felt poor. My friends were poor. That’s
why they liked me. We were all in the dorms and you go to know the people on
your floor, but it was easy to be friends with someone like you. The rich kids?
The ones that were going to make it? We were in the dorms and they had their
apartments and frats and they networked with other rich kids who had contacts
who were going to get them jobs someday. We had no chance.”
“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I can see what you’re
saying.”
Some people think there is one path, one chance, one way to get to
where you want to go. I like the what ifs. The moments of choice and doubt
where it could go either way, work out either way. I like the inflection point.
Take it, twist it, make something new, and see where you end up.
You can drive yourself mad, all day, too many choices. Infinite
options. You can get lost if you’re not careful.
The truth is, there are very few moments that matter. Very few
people you are going to meet that are going to change the course of your life.
Once or twice if you’re lucky. All those other what ifs are just a matter of
degrees. You’re pretty much born into it nine times out of ten. No one is going
to build it or make it or change it for you. You probably can’t either. Not for
yourself. Not for someone else.
“Really when you think about it, you’re about to embark on a whole
new adventure. Very few people are going to have a chance to do what you can
do. You’re single. No kids. You’ll sell that house and get that inheritance and
then you can really go anywhere and try anything. So I’m actually really
excited to see what happens to you.”
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