A fresh high school graduate was talking to some middle-school kids recently about being a firefighter cadet and acknowledged that
while some might recognize him from calls he responded to with the local fire
department, they might also have seen him mopping and emptying trash cans. “Yes,
I am the evening janitor here.”
That was cool.
I so admired him for saying that. Because while at his age I
was also still in my hometown working a job that others might look down on while
most of my classmates had gone off to college, I was nowhere near secure enough
in my situation to point it out to a room full of twelve-year-olds.
But he was. While still in his teens, he already appears to know
most of us struggle our whole adult lives to absorb – you shouldn’t let what
others might think of you affect how you feel about yourself.
We all know how to be happy with ourselves from the start.
But then we change. Usually right around the time we start school.
For me it was slumber parties, where I was trapped with
girls from another planet who made it painfully clear that everything about me
was wrong – the way I dressed, the way I acted and especially what I wanted to
eat.
The hostess of my first slumber party wasn’t like that,
however, and she started things off by bringing out a big bag of Starburst for
us with a huge smile on her face. Since I wasn’t allowed to eat candy at home,
I wanted nothing more than to return her huge grin and reach into that bag and
pull out as many of those squares my hand could hold.
But the other girls all shook their heads and waved the bag
away. And when the hostess offered it to me, I let their judgment fall on me
like a net. I shook my head at the bag, her smile vanished and I looked down, both
of us now miserable because I let those other girls decide what I should want.
I don’t remember anything else about that party, only how it
felt to deny myself something and upset that sweet girl because of
what some strangers would think. It seems too ridiculous to even fathom now.
But that scene played out again and again in the years to
come, each time with stakes much higher than me not getting a handful of
Starburst and a young girl not understanding why her guests didn’t want the candy
she bought for them.
When I was the age of the fire cadet, I was working at a
pizza place in my hometown to put myself through community college.
Most of the
time I was pretty happy with myself. I was already living on my own and paying
all my bills, something my classmates wouldn’t do for years, maybe decades. But
when they came home during school breaks and I stood behind the counter from
them in my sauce-stained apron, I let what (I imagined) they thought of me
affect that satisfaction.
And my finally moving away didn’t solve that problem,
because by the time I transferred to a four-year school most of my high school classmates
had finished college and were on to the next stage. As proof, one of them
showed up as the fresh-faced professor of one of my history classes.
I was mortified. And while a younger me would have dropped
the class in shame, I remember deciding to not resent her accomplishments but appreciate
them, and maybe learn something from those accomplishments.
And I’m glad I did, because she was a great teacher – the
kind you get a lot from because they also expect a lot from you. She impressed
me. And, funny enough, I managed to impress her, too.
Because at the end of the class she told the rest of the
students that we had grown up together, and that she wanted to commend me for
handling an uncomfortable situation with humility and grace.
I started the class proud of her, and ended it proud of
myself as well. Because I knew I was learning what was really important – making
yourself and the people who matter happy, and ignoring the people who don’t.
Oh, and when someone offers you Starburst, or something else you want to eat. just take it!
