The real world is every day
Many children and young adults are entering the back-to-school season. My daughter is entering her senior year at the University. Today, in fact, was her first day. We spoke last night and she mentioned that she was a bit sad. This is her last year before she enters the real world. I smiled because that is how I felt then I was entering my last year of graduate school. Unlike my daughter, I didn’t have anyone to explain to me that I was already in the real world.
Fear of the unknown
My daughter, like many students who are entering their final year, is quite nervous. After graduation she will have to pay her own bills, and won’t have mom and dad to fall back on. Worse yet, what happens if she doesn’t get the job that she wants? Or, what if she has to move away from her boyfriend? She is very confident in her education and already has career prospects. But, she said that being an adult brings tremendous amounts of responsibility and she is not sure if she is ready.
These fears are grounded in the unknown. It’s not enough to tell our children who are going through these transitions not to worry. There is no way that this type of advice will magically take their worry away. Although the advice is filled with good intensions, it’s not truly helpful. What is helpful is creating understanding that there isn’t some real world that is waiting for our children. We all need to understand that every day we are already living is the real world.
Life is not a part-time job or dress rehearsal. Each moment we are breathing is a moment that we are alive. Sometimes we are leaving the chapter in our life in which we are a student and entering the chapter in which we are an employee. Or maybe leaving the chapter in which we are an employee and moving into the one in which we are a business owner. Regardless of which chapter we are in, good or bad, we are in it. In the books of our lives, we can’t skip ahead to the next chapter. We have to be present in the chapter that we are in.
Today is life
The best advice I could ultimately give my daughter was to let her know that she can’t live her life in one day. Currently she is a real student, next year she will really be in the work force. At some point she may be a real mom and be giving advice to her children. Sometimes things will work out, and sometimes they won’t. But, at the end of the day, she should focus on living each day. Planning for tomorrow, yet living today to its fullest is how we eventually string together the tens of thousands of days that make up our lives. If we can make each day as valuable as possible, we will have lived an entire life of value.