Recently my daughter hosted a baby shower. She planned it, I paid for it, and those there were friends of the honoree’s family. I was seated next to a woman who goes to our church. Whenever we are at the same service and she’s seated nearby, I notice that she has a lovely voice. Somehow we started talking about “dream jobs.” She confided that her dream was to be an opera singer. It wasn’t until she auditioned in front of an opera star at college that she realized that she did not have the level of talent needed to be part of a top-notch opera company. Teaching or the other uses of a music degree held no charm for her. So she changed her dream. It wasn’t easy at first, especially when she had so much invested in the dream. She said it took some searching around and trying new things. She recently retired from a long and respected legal career and we laughed at how life sometimes hits us over the head with the reality that dreams are just that – dreams.
When does one give up on a dream? How does one give it a makeover into another dream? How does one deal with setbacks, major or minor? What happens when it’s time to go to Plan C, D or Z? And how does one acquire resiliency, “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”? Does one need to practice it when young or does it magically appear when it’s most needed? How can we give our children that skill? And is the ability to “pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again” even valued anymore?
Sigma Phi Epsilon Theodor Seuss Geisel had 27 publishers reject the manuscript to his first children’s book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. Had he given up after the first or second or even twentieth rejection, the world would likely not know Dr. Seuss. Bess Streeter Aldrich, the subject of a recent post, is said to have had every story she wrote published; if it was rejected she would rewrite and rewrite it until it was accepted.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1925, while a student at Dartmouth (courtesy of the Dartmouth College Library)
Does the need to appear perfect prohibit today’s college students from learning from their failures? Instead of looking at failure as a challenge – an opportunity to grow and learn, has it become an end and a dead-end at that? Suicide, the elephant in the room, is one of the top causes of deaths for college students, (second for students 24-34, and third for 15-24 year olds, according to the American College Health Association) after accidental deaths. Many more college students have considered suicide.
Now You Know, a song from Merrily We Roll Along, written by Beta Theta Pi Stephen Sondheim, fills my head as I walk the dogs around the neighborhood. Merrily We Roll Along was, in the Broadway vernacular, a flop, maybe the biggest flop of 1981. It closed after 16 performances. But it and its songs have made it through the test of time. Best thing that ever could have happened is a line from this song, and the title of a documentary about the show, The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, is a take off on that. The documentary which is available on digital platforms and is worth the time to watch “draws back the curtain on the extraordinary drama of the show’s creation – and tells the stories of the hopeful young performers whose lives were transformed by it. Directed by Lonny Price, a member of the original cast, the film is a bittersweet meditation on the choices we all make, and the often unexpected consequences of those choices — through success and failure.”
As semesters come to a close and as graduates look towards their future, I suspect that there are some who are floundering and feeling like abject failures. Asking for help is often the hardest first step there is and voicing out loud that there is something wrong can seem impossible. As members of Greek-Letter Organizations, we are each other’s keepers and I hope that we can offer assistance to our members and help to those who need it. As Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
