Dreams vs. reality

I'm not so good at keeping up with the email I get on Facebook, but it's been fascinating hearing from people I haven't heard from in years. One of them used to work with me on the (non-world famous) Wheaton College Record. She's now the religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, and has a book coming out--Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace, by Cathleen Falsani (I guess she's dropped the "Cathi").

But that's not what I'm writing about. In looking for the book to order, I came across her name in another book, written by a colleague of hers at the Sun-Times, Neil Steinberg. I saw he'd written a book with an irresistible title: Complete & Utter Failure: A Celebration of Also-Rans, Runners-Up, Never-Weres & Total Flops. That's part of what makes the web so great--the serendipitous stuff you find while looking for something else. It's out of print, but I found a copy and read through it quickly. It's amusing and profound, and a refreshing look at success and its opposite.

One of my favorite passages comes at the end of a chapter, setting us up for the author's disappointment in the next chapter, but it in some ways describes us all pretty well:

"The last day of my participation in any sort of organized educational institution came on June 19, 1982, when I graduated from Northwestern University, nearly seventeen years after that first day of kindergarten at Fairwood School. The college had issued us the standard black robes and mortarboards, and I was so impressed with mine that I wore it the entire day, even during the break between commencement and convocation ceremonies, when I strode into the Pali Kai Lounge, a cheesy bar on Davis Street I frequented at the time, and let the barflies buy me drinks.
To an impartial observer, I must have seemed like a character from Eugene O'Neill--the young idiot in a bar spouting socialist philosophies and railing at the world. Only I didn't even have misplaced, pent-up anger to spout at the world. I sat happily at the bamboo bar and soaked up the booze, confident that the spheres were in order. Properly fortified, I toddled off to get my diploma. On the way to the auditorium, I broke into a run, holding onto my mortarboard, rejoicing in the feel of my academic gowns flowing around me in the wind. I thought myself a wonderful creature, blessed by education, separated by an enormous gulf from the pedestrian workers tossing me a gape as I flew by. I thought the world was about to be jolted by something new and fresh and fantastic, and that the difficulties of life which face most people would dissolve in deference to me. I thought wrong."

He goes on to describe his obscure jobs and eventual success, which of course was not as "new and fresh and fantastic" as he expected. This early 20's hubris takes a while to get over, but it's part of the aging process discussed in my last entry. The older folk who think it's only part of this generation are suffering from selective amnesia, and today's young'n's will shake their heads at tomorrow's know-it-alls with a strong sense of entitlement.