We are in the midst of interviewing new families enrolling students for next year. It is one of the joys of my job to sit and get to know so many interesting people, each with their own unique story to tell. I glance over their applications and can form a mini-judgment before I even see them. Then we meet, and I usually have to discard those expectations as I see someone totally different walk through the door. Even my first impressions upon meeting are often thoroughly shaken by listening to their life stories unfold.
I am learning again and again not to judge a book by its cover. How often it is that I see someone I think worthy to admire, yea, even envy, in terms of their personal polish, achievement, position, marriage, and wealth. And then I learn of great personal burdens they bear or great pain they have experienced. There goes that picture perfect family. I have come to wonder if there is such a thing. Just when I think I have met the Ozzie and Harriet ideal,* someone loses a job or a close loved one, is struck with a debilitating illness, or faces other untold catastrophes. I have seen just about everything so far here at CFC.
Apart from learning caution in making judgments, what do I take from this? For one thing, I surely do not ever dare envy anyone ever again. I have lived a relatively simple and obscure life up to this point. Very few have ever been able to pronounce my name let alone be impressed by it. Financial security was never a “given.” Our first couch came after 4 years of marriage, cost $10, and had a good sized cigarette burn hole in the middle. We never had to worry about our children’s eligibility for “gifted” classes, but all made us proud, eventually. Both of us contend that the other got the worst of the bargain in marrying into families of class and status. I have never been voted “most popular,” “mister personality,” “most handsome,” or “most valuable player” of any group, class, or team. I was always picked last in sports and had a lock on right field when I could get it. I felt trapped in dead-end jobs most of my life where recognition was a finite and rare commodity. Yet, I now know that I have been blessed beyond all measure and would not trade this hum-drum life with anyone.
When tempted to compare lives, I look around and see that none of the precious fences of status, accomplishment, privilege, or wealth have ever been able to keep out random agony or tragedy. The first high school classmate of mine to die was a relatively ordinary girl who had metamorphasized into a college homecoming queen. Stalked by a madman, she was shot five times at close range as she sat with friends in the student union. My boyhood friend parlayed a piece of fairly worthless property into a million dollar windfall, surely the envy of many who did not know him. Stricken with cancer, he took his own life within weeks of the sale. And if ever I really get to feeling sorry for myself, I think of my cousin, Eugene Nordmoe, whose young life was ended by a Japanese bullet before he ever got off the landing craft at Iwo Jima.
These are the extreme cases, but nevertheless, they are potent reminders of how precious and blessed is my mundane and average existence. Discussing the highs and lows of the life of Chistopher Reeves this last week with one of our 7th graders, I posed the question: “Which would you rather be: someone who was stage-beautiful, a celebrated film star, rich, well married, but paralyzed at 43 and dead by 52? Or to be a completely unknown, relatively poor person living an ordinary life well into old age?” She chose the latter. I could have saved myself a lot of morose introspection had I come to that conclusion at her age.
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