The Tragedy of "I was happy and I didn't know it"

As people are finishing up their final exams and many friends of mine are graduating or rolling on to the next phase of their careers, I’m seeing a lot of facebook posts from my fellow students that say things like, “One more final exam and it’s no more exams ever for me,” “one more week and then I move on to ___ phase of my studies where I’ll never have to do _____ again,” or “_____ days until I’m a _____.”  

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to celebrate the end of finals and to commemorate the end of an academic career.  What’s dangerous, though, is to believe that when you get through the phase you’re currently in and move on to the next thing, suddenly everything will be like riding a cotton candy bicycle while being tickled by buttercups.  Sure, you’ll be done with final exams when you move on from college, but trust me, you’ll run headlong into a dozen more things that suck even worse.  I wonder how many college students get out to their first job in the real world and ask themselves questions like, “Hey where are all the young, cool people?”,  “You mean I have to be in here at 8 a.m. every day?”  and “What do you mean I can’t wear Tempo shorts to work?” (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001752859644)

Jim Ganceres and I worked together in Iquitos, Perú in 1998.  We were driving around town one evening and we passed by a restaurant we hadn’t seen before called “Los Chingones.”  Well, I’m not going to get into what it means (don’t bother looking for it on Google Translate), but it’s a distinctly Mexican word and down on the Amazon River in Perú we were a long, long way from real Mexican food.  So Master Sergeant Ganceres, very proud of his Mexican heritage and a big fan of Mexican food, said, “Oh, we’re eating there tonight.”  We went into this place and it was a real hole in the wall, and a hole in the wall in the Peruvian Amazon is not the end of the world but you can see it from there.  Poorly lighted, dirty, not many people.  But it was “Los Chingones” so we had to eat there.  Well you can guess what happened.  His meal made him sick as a dog.  He was down hard with the “Amazon Weight Loss Plan” for about a week (thank God I ordered something different).   Was he tricked by his own expectations?  Even after he saw that the place was filthy and not many people where eating there?  There were hundreds of good restaurants in that town so it’s not like the decision was made in extremis.  

How many times do we let our expectations of the next-great-thing-that’s-got-to-be-better-than-this-sucky-thing cause us to make, and then stick with, a poor decision?  I hope nobody I know is walking into a bad job or place to live just because they were in a hurry to latch onto the first thing (or the best-paying thing) coming out of college.  Sometimes you do that and it can’t be helped.  But a lot of times it can be avoided if you’re careful and you manage your expectations.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m a little over a year from graduating (again) and there’s just about no place on the planet earth I have written off as a possible place to look for employment as an adjunct or associate professor.  We'll entertain just about any possibility and we’ll go wherever it looks like the job, quality of life, location, etc. is favorable.  But we’re not going to move to a place and a circumstance that matches up with someone else’s expectations or answers some imaginary template. 

 I guess it was about ten years ago when I visited Paraguay.  I saw some bumper stickers down there that had the name of a former dictator and then below the name the sticker said, “Yo era feliz y no lo sabía” which means “I was happy and I didn’t know it.”  This is not a commercial for dictatorship – far from it –but to me the phrase is tragic: to look back and see that you wasted a chance to be joyful in whatever your place and circumstances were is to realize you’ve squandered happiness, maybe years of it.  I knew Marines my whole career whose two best duty stations were always the previous one and the next place they were going.  Every place except where they were: that was the place to be.  As a result they were perpetually unhappy.   

So I’ve resolved to make the place and the circumstance I’m in now the best place I’ve ever been.  I’m aware that the church where I’m currently a member may be the best church I’m ever in.  I may never have better friends than I have right now.  I may never ride bikes with a better group of people than the one I ride with now.  I may never live in as nice a house with neighbors as friendly and helpful.  My kids may never again be as close to me.  My wife and I have our health and each other and neither are guaranteed to us tomorrow.    

Don’t catch yourself wishing for the good ol’ days.  Make now the good ol’ days.