A Yale graduate (Marina Keegan) wrote to her graduating class about the sense of possibility that grabs/consumes us when we’re young. Do you remember it? It changes form as we grow from toddlers fascinated by grass, bugs, running water, and cartoons into young adults envisioning love stories, far off places, and fabulous lives full of fun and wealth and accomplishments. Its form is unique to the age we are, and the sum of our experiences. What have we already seen? What have we already done? And what still looms before us with heart wrenching appeal, calling out to our souls to chase it with abandon?
Over the past week I’ve heard a lot about Marina Keegan and her passion for possibility. I listened to NPR contributors lament her passing, amazed at her potential that was bound to affect The New Yorker where she had secured a job for after graduation. I read articles and columns talking about how her words to her graduating class resonated with each author. The widely common quote was some form of, “…we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over… We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
Every person I know has a different level of passion about any number of things. Their spouse or their job, their children or their freedom, their guns or their laws banning those guns, their drugs or their clean living, their body or their intelligence… so often a fascinating combination all of the above. Through my life I’ve experienced countless phases of longing for that passion. My husband will likely tell you that I am passionate. My friends, depending on the city in which or time at which they met me, will likely describe a similar person who varies only in specific interests or job titles. But if I were to describe myself, I would droop at the reality that I lack the same passion I felt when I was 18. When the possibility of AMAZING consumed my every day. When my answer for, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” was always answered with, “EVERYTHING!”
Perhaps the reality for us all is that certain things teach us to stifle that passion.
Responsibility. Working a job to earn enough money to feed your family when it’s the last thing on earth you want to be doing each day in the early afternoon, when your morning coffee has worn off and you still have 3 hours until it’s time to leave.
Compromise. Giving up pieces of your time every. single. day of every. single. year. For your kids’ games and school events when you just want to read a book. For your spouse when someone needs to fold laundry or cook dinner and you don’t want to eat what they want to eat and if you have to match those socks ONE MORE TIME!... For your duty to America when your taxes need paid or license needs renewed when it feels like you JUST took care of it, you swear, JUST the other day!!
Humility. Seeing someone you love get sick and wanting to help by cleaning and cooking and driving which feels so insignificant when what you want to do is rip out the cancer with your bare hands.
Even as I’m writing this I feel that familiar draw to possibility. I see that even the examples I gave about responsibility, compromise, and humility contribute greatly to the health of the passion we already have and the greater passion we long for. When we’re young, possibility looms in front of us in bright colors and quickly moving scenes in our imagination. We run so fast because we think we’re missing it! As we age, that possibility should evolve into richer and deeper colors, with scenes that are timed perfectly with knowledge and experience. We know that we can pace ourselves and let some of that AMAZING come to us, instead of franticly pursuing it.
The risk in this, of course, is that we will not pace ourselves. That we will stop running all together. That we will ignore those moments of longing for passion and possibility because we’re afraid of what it will do to our life. Inspired by Marina’s words, and the short years she was able to pursue passion and possibility, I think I’ll go ahead and treat those moments differently. I will see them as opportunities to excel, not hide. And I hope to be rewarded each time with the uplifting renewal of not quite knowing how the story will end.
