In my 23 years on this earth, I have learned only a handful of
truly useful pieces of information.
In my 23 years on this earth, I have learned only a handful of truly useful pieces of information.
The trig class I struggled through in high school, the torture of anatomy in college; everything I learned in school that I was certain would never really help me in life, still hasn’t.
It’s the things I’ve learned on the side when I wasn’t expecting it that have taught me the most.
And most of these things have come in the form of some type of criticism.
Attending a private Catholic school growing up, I was every teacher’s dream; a tiny perfectionist who studied until the wee hours of the morning, accrued the most extra credit out of every student and crammed that last bit of information in at recess.
But these actions didn’t derive from a relentless desire to better myself or increase my personal knowledge – it came from a deep-rooted fear of someone telling me I wasn’t good enough, that my efforts were moot because the end product sucked.
It wasn’t until I got a taste of the harsh realities of the real world, that came not in the form of bad grades, but in the form of true life tragedies, that I realized it’s OK to try something and not succeed.
Because the end product of that is life itself.
Mistakes and screw-ups are what make you better, what make you try harder the next time, what make you finally able to tell the people who tell you, “You suck,” to “Suck this.”
I recently received an e-mail from a charming Hollister resident who sent me a very detailed outline of how horrendous my writing abilities are.
Several years ago receiving an e-mail of such a scathing nature about something I try to do well probably would have made me cry, but to my surprise it evoked the opposite reaction: laughter.
This gentleman informed me that my writing abilities are so horrible, so detestable, that I should ditch journalism and try something a little more my speed – like motherhood or home cooking.
He advised me to limit my ineffectual blather to laundry lists, bank checks and school notes, while pleading with me to keep my ignorance of the English language out of the newspapers and safely in the confines of my apparently empty head.
First of all, if he thinks my writing is awful he should taste my cooking, because there is nothing about me that shouts Suzy Homemaker, believe me.
I only do laundry when I’m down to wearing bathing suit bottoms because I’m out of clean underwear, and I don’t have checks anymore because the ones the bank issues me are too rubbery and seem to bounce a lot.
And the motherhood thing, that’s a riot in itself. It was only a few short years ago that I was forging my mom’s signature on school notes so I could get out of English class.
It looks like it’s too bad I got so good at writing those notes, or maybe I would have learned a thing or two so Mr. Give It Up, Girlie wouldn’t have to go through such hell while reading my bird-brained nonsense.
This gentleman’s e-mail was filled with big words and terribly intellectual phrases such as “quasi-Socialist republic” and “sublimely evocative,” so my guess is that he’s probably smarter than little ole me.
And you know what, that’s fine. I’m not the smartest person in the world, and I’m not the greatest writer there ever was by any means.
But realizing this and working daily to improve myself and learn new things are what gives me potential and epitomizes my humanness.
If people were born perfect with honed skill sets already in place, what would be the purpose of higher education, of learning, of making mistakes, of all the things that make life challenging?
So in closing, all I can say to my biggest fan from Hollister is thank you.
Thank you for giving me even more of a reason to work hard.
Thank you for making me realize that I can take criticism and let it roll off my back like water.
Thank you for making me laugh before I finished my first cup of coffee in the morning (quite a feat).
Who was it that said, you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time?
Ain’t that the truth, dumb ass?
