drivel
/Since no one has asked me to deliver a commencement speech—an obvious oversight—I’d like to offer the advice I’d share if ever called to whittle down life into one neat package.
Forget the top ten. Who has time? How about the top one? What’s the one thing you’d say to every anxious, confused, hopeful, promising young person that would help them sail through life a little taller, a little happier, maybe even a little longer?
After sifting through layers of wisdom painfully earned and heroically recounted by speakers to future generations, I’d like to add this to the conversation: Stand up and be counted. No matter how wacky you are.
The thought reared its sagacious head after one shy grad complained about a difficult classmate she couldn’t confront on a final school project.
“I have a hard time asserting myself,” she admitted. “I just don’t know how to do it.”
Welcome to the club.
After trying to have a peaceful lunch while sitting next to a phone-shouting, table-hugging guy, I felt her pain. Although I was there first—I called it first!—I was unable to suggest he take his silly nonsense somewhere else, like Indonesia. I, too, on that day, was unable to stand up and be counted.
The same thing happened a few days earlier when I did not know how, couldn’t quite get the right tone of voice, when I tried to react to a grump who didn’t acknowledge my friendly greeting in a hallway. Such a tiny thing, yet it stuck in my chest like mud.
I wanted to say, “Excuse me, HELLO!” but I didn’t.
The moments of not standing up mount. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.
My advice: Get it over with. Start young to claim your itty-bitty plot of earth. I didn’t say that to the shy grad though, so I need to yank it off my tight chest and say it to you.
Instead of blabbering to some poor family hostage about all the things we coulda said, how about keeping it light, direct, and easy from the start? How about “Get a room,” which I wish I’d delivered to an amorous couple at the gym hot tub. Or “Could you shrink over one seat, Lincoln?” to a tall gentleman who blocked my view in a movie theater. Or “Of course you can eat all my spring rolls, but first let me douse them in hot sauce.”
Something sweet and caring.
If the words are trying to bust out and you won’t spark an international incident—which is not a given but maybe you have to try anyway, because chest tightness could lead to something quite serious—gather up your courage and SAAAY IT!
But I didn’t tell this to the grad because, well, because I didn’t. Because sometimes, even as a full-fledged adult, in the moment I just don’t know how.
But short of starting a riot, I should have suggested she experiment. Start small. Send back bad food at a restaurant; face a stranger who cuts in line; confront a grungy roommate unless that’s you. Then see if you can move up to speak to the friend who dissed you, the lazy coworker, the lame boyfriend or girlfriend, the mean boss.
Sure, there may be times to avoid, to put on sunglasses and earphones, for safety’s sake, for time’s sake. But when you truly have something on your mind, I should have said to the grad, you better stake out your rightful plot of earth before someone else builds a house on it.
Start young. Stand up. Be nice. Be polite. Be fair. Be counted. Duck when necessary.
Look, maybe the one piece of advice you’d give wide-eyed young people is rejected as drivel. That may well be the case. But at least—for one brief wondrous moment—it’s not their confused, tormented, agonizing drivel that we listen to again and again and again.
Amen.