I was attending my granddaughter’s high school graduation in late May. It’s a smaller free public charter school that draws many kids that don’t always thrive in the larger local public schools. The graduating class this year was 36 students, and the ceremony was set up to allow the student to choose a favorite teacher to call them up onto the stage, share a bit of their story, and then present them with their well-deserved diploma.
I’ll admit that initially, when I learned the students weren’t going through the traditional ceremony of having their name called and being quickly herded across the stage, I had the thought, “this is going to take a while to get through this thing.” That’s okay, I’m cool with admitting it… because it was only for a brief minute. Then, I started to hear the unique stories of the challenges these kids overcame to stand on that stage, and I felt myself becoming inspired. I became locked in and listened intently… I was suddenly an active participant in the ceremony. I heard stories of students who became reengaged in the education process through meaningful relationships with teachers, through sports, through music… school was no longer a place of failure, but a place of life for these kids.
As I listened, I heard many of the dreams possessed by the students as they looked out into their future, the visions for the course they each wanted to travel… a radiologist… a teacher… a guy working in the trades… and one that stood out to me… a young man named Juan who stated he was open to taking donations towards his first car. Many in the audience laughed… me too… but I felt compelled to track him down after the ceremony to make a donation along with the directive (which I’m pretty sure he has since forgotten) to save the money toward the car. Good job Juan! You’ll never get an answer to an unasked question.
As the ceremony progressed, I could not help but begin thinking the many thoughts I’ve held over the years now… thoughts that sometimes come out through my blog posts, but oftentimes, thoughts that remain between me and my cup of coffee, only to be pondered in the silence of a morning on my back patio.
The following morning after graduation, my daughter and I went for a 3-4 mile walk on a loop trail along a river and our conversation hit many topics, but the graduation ceremony came up. My daughter’s career to this point has been primarily working with seniors as a care manager and social worker, but thoughts I was having weave through this younger generation, my daughter’s millennial generation, and connect with my Boomer generation. I shared some thoughts from the ceremony the preceding day… the wonderful stories, the hopes and dreams the graduating seniors had… along with that one dream of Juan’s to get his first car soon.
I talked about how it seems to me that many of us have dreams when we are younger… creative dreams, inspiring dreams (not at all to be confused with practical dreams). But then, in my mind I fast-forward to thinking about the young professionals that surround me in the work we do in the mental health and criminal justice system… the millennials, and the GenX’ers.
I’m the “grandfather” in the group; I’m 25-30 years (and likely more) older than many of my work “contemporaries”. We all work in the same systems… but we hardly have the same perspectives and experiences. I see the burnout (and the turnover) that takes place in younger people around me. I see the lack of joy in the faces of so many as we connect on yet another weekly virtual meeting, and I wonder how I’ve made it through these 30-40 years working with the marginalized populations. But here I am approaching my Medicare birthday with no real desire to check myself out of the game, and the question comes… where is the joy in the lives of these 20-something, 30-something, and maybe 40-something people I work with… especially those who are on the cusp of burnout and maybe spending a bit of time secretly scrolling through Indeed.com during the day.
I flash back to the teens just graduating… I look at my 20-40-somethings… What happened? I could go in several directions with that question, but I’m going to stick on the topic of creativity right now.
WHAT HAPPENS TO UNNUTURED CREATIVITY?
All of us have creativity within us. It may be in the arts, it may be in writing, music… but many out there are creative in areas like small business ideas, inventing, landscaping and gardening, interior decorating… things like that. We have a need to express creativity, but I wonder how often the roads close going in the directions we truly want to go, so we end up taking the detours… because the signs never lie… right? Besides… detour signs are usually temporary…..
……… right?
So, because the roads are closed in the directions where we want to travel, we find ourselves funneling that need for creative expression into more practical everyday areas of our life. My employer encourages out-of-the-box thinking, and new ideas for doing the work we do is often celebrated… but I can assure you that as impactful as a new idea may feel in my work, it can’t stand up to a creative streak I experience when I’m writing… when I’m doing “my thing”. When I am operating in creativity in the things that are truly important to me… and not simply the things that I’m paid to view as important, it stirs me to my core.
So…. What does happen to that youthful energy, that passion for the future out ahead? I say that “life happens” and by that I mean the daily responsibilities of trying to stay up with the pace demanded of us if we don’t want to get left behind?
I don’t imply this speaks to everyone… it’s not my intention. In fact, my goal really is to speak with the few… those who feel a restlessness about life and are questioning if there is more out there than what we’ve been offered.
FINDING OUR WAY BACK
As I walked with my daughter on that Sunday morning, I spoke of how some of us “seniors” reconnect with the creative interests that lay dormant all those working years known as middle-adulthood. As we enter retirement, we’re no longer required to participate in the grind and our minds can become free to explore what we want to do with our time. Some play pickleball, do the BINGO thing, I see many older people on the golf course just off my back patio… but then, there are those who take up painting… take up music, drawing, gardening….. cooking… they travel more, pick up the pen and start writing… they reconnect with the creativity that has laid dormant all those years.
We enter our adult years with much enthusiasm for making a difference, then find ourselves experiencing the pressure to conform to a very wide but common standard of what “normal” should look like. We stuff all that creativity into a box somewhere, promising ourselves we will revisit it, but eventually forgetting it’s there for many years. We come home from our “Monday-through-Friday” schedule exhausted mentally and/or physically from doing the success-ritual, and try to squeeze some measure of life out of weekends and vacations. Good intentions become forgotten and we begin filling our free time with things that really don’t fill our cup… but instead offer more of an escape to the day-to-day grind.
THIS IS DEPRESSING
This sounds depressing… and it really is… but this isn’t how the story has to end for those who want to do something about it.
Like I said, I’m not speaking to a lot of people… I’m speaking to the “few”. If your life is great, I’m happy for you… keep moving.
- I’m speaking to those who know something isn’t right in the course they’re on. There’s a sick feeling in their guts that they took a wrong turn somewhere and the longer they continue on this course, the further off-track they are getting.
- I’m talking to those who are okay with feeling uncomfortable; those who don’t want to self-medicate by turning the TV on to binge-watch some show they really don’t care about; who don’t want to spend their days watching sports on TV… watching as others write their own story while we sit on our couch eating nachos…
- I’m talking to those who are ready to say, “This is unacceptable for me!” … and mean it.
- I’m talking to me…..
WHAT NEXT?
For those who want to find their way back, they must be willing to start thinking about the important questions that need to be asked and answered. I don’t have your answer… I’m searching for mine. But just like each of those graduating seniors, we all have the privilege of having our own unique story, with unique barriers that must be overcome… and we all have a unique price we must be willing to pay to get our lives on course with where we want to be.
I look forward to continuing the work with the marginalized population of people stuck between two broken systems… the mental health and the criminal justice system. I find meaning in helping people navigate through these systems successfully, and I really can’t think of anything I could be doing in retirement that would give me this meaning… but I also have things I want outside my work. I want to write; I want to hike; I want to take road trips; I want to visit breweries; I think I want to play the guitar; I want to visit the places I see on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives…
… I want to live!
What does it look like to you?
Take Juan as an example. He decided to say, “what the hell!”, and he asked for donations towards a car.
If we don’t turn down the noise around us and start asking the questions… we’ll never get the answers we’re looking for.