Category: 2012

The End of Life as We Know It

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2012Leave a comment

Dear Will:

Life as we know it is about to come to an end. By which I mean that our daughter is about to leave home. Which doesn’t begin to tell the full story.

I’ll try to make it brief: As I think you know, Bryn is a ballerina—a pretty good one if you believe the pundits who know about these things. She has danced many leading roles for her local ballet company. Last year she was a finalist in the annual Spotlight competition at the Music Center in downtown LA, and in January of this year she won gold at the YoungArts competition sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Pretty cool.

But things have gotten complicated as Bryn approaches graduation from high school in June. First she was offered a position in the second company of the Houston Ballet (a typical entry-level gig for an aspiring dancer). It was exactly what she was hoping for. But something didn’t feel right, so she turned them down.

A couple of weeks later, Bryn was admitted to Juilliard as one of only 12 female dancers who get admitted each year. After she declined that invitation due to financial concerns (it costs over $50,000 per year), they sweetened the deal and offered her almost a full tuition scholarship. Such an honor! And so enticing! But she turned down Juilliard too.

Then about a week later the unimaginable happened. Bryn was offered an apprenticeship with American Ballet Theatre in New York. Now if you don’t follow the ballet world that won’t mean a lot to you, but it’s bigger than a big deal. To put it into terms that I can understand, it’s sort of like being invited to join the New York Yankees without having to play in the minor leagues first. It’s more than she could possibly hope for coming straight out of high school, the early fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

What this means is that Bryn will have to put her hopes of going to college on hold. And it means that in less than a month, my 17-year-old only-daughter will be moving to New York to start her career. The good news is that Bryn is an exceptional young woman, with her feet firmly planted on the ground (for now, anyway) and with an abiding faith in God. I worry, of course, as any father would, about her safety and happiness. But I do not worry about her priorities. What’s that old proverb? “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Assuming that’s true, Bryn will be fine.

That’s not the only change we’re going to see around here. A couple of months ago I mentioned that my son Luke—the recent college graduate—was discouraged in his efforts to find his first real job. Well to his great relief, he has been offered a position with a small advertising agency in Costa Mesa. He starts next week. He’ll be moving into his own apartment at the end of this month. Thanks to a temp job he landed around the time that I wrote to you, the full extent of Luke’s “unemployment” was about a week. Not bad.

Meanwhile, the nervous dad is about to have a coronary. As I get ready to send two of my three children off into the world to find their way without me, I keep coming back to another passage in Proverbs that provides wise counsel to all of us—the departing children and the worried father alike: “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5 – 6).

PW

The Laborers in the Vineyard

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20121 Comment

Dear Will:

Earlier this month the Church held its semi-annual General Conference. It was a wonderful weekend of thoughtful gospel commentary and faith-building. I hope you had a chance to watch some of it, or perhaps you went online and read some of the discourses. But in case you missed it, I’d like to share with you one talk in particular. It was given by Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles during the Saturday afternoon session of the conference. I do not ordinarily send you something this long, but in this case I feel impressed to do so. I hope you’ll read it—or better yet, you can watch it for yourself.

PW

That’s It?

On By Peter WatkinsIn 20121 Comment

Dear Will:

A little over a week ago my firstborn, Luke, graduated cum laude from UCLA with a degree in Communications (Mass Communications, to be precise, with a specialization in Computing and a minor in Human Complex Systems—whatever that is). He had originally planned to go to law school after graduating, but in December it occurred to him that he was much more interested in studying law than in practicing it. So in January he began to look for his first real job.

So far, he has had a few nibbles but no job offers. Because he is bright and inquisitive, well-read and articulate (and highly motivated), I’m confident that he will find work in due course. But now that he has moved back home, he and I are both feeling anxious for him to find work, settle into a place of his own, and get on with life.

When I picked him up from Westwood last week, he told me that he was feeling more than a bit disappointed with the experience of graduating from college—like the whole thing was a bit anti-climactic. “I’ve been pointing to this moment my entire life,” he told me. “Before UCLA, it was all about taking the right classes and getting the grades necessary to get into a good school so that I could get a degree from a respected university. Now that that has happened, I find myself thinking: ‘That’s it? I went through all of that trouble just so that I could move back home and be unemployed?’”

In his current state of mind, Luke is having trouble seeing the bigger picture. He can’t see far enough down the road to appreciate what he has learned or what he has become as a consequence of his 16 years of education. He is not yet old enough or wise enough to recognize his good fortune or his exceptional preparation, to see how the last four years have helped position him to become a meaningful contributor to society. Having traveled that road before him, and knowing as I do many who have been neither so fortunate nor so bright, I know much better than he could that the road ahead for him will be brightly lit and lined with promising opportunities. Luke is disappointed primarily because he still has no real sense of what happens next.

Do you ever wonder if, when you reach the end of your life on earth, you’ll find yourself thinking: “That’s it?” Do you imagine that all of the hard work and trial you may pass through between birth and death will prove to be little more than that—a long slog culminating in a huge disappointment? Do you wonder if the difficulties of mortality will prove to be worth it?

It’s easy to get so caught up in what makes life hard that we don’t fully appreciate the ways in which our mortal existence prepares us for something much greater. Like Luke, we have trouble seeing far enough down the road that we can put this life into its proper eternal perspective. But as Thoreau said: “There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a Morningstar.” It was Isaiah who first penned these words made more familiar by the apostle Paul: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). The trick, of course, is to move forward with faith, knowing that God’s promises are always—always—sure.

In the short term, my task is to keep Luke believing in the near future, to help him believe in himself and in his preparation sufficiently to convince an employer to believe in him as well. In a few short months, I’m sure his outlook will be brighter. But until then, he still needs a job. Which reminds me: You don’t happen to know anyone who would like to hire a recent college grad who is bright and inquisitive, well-read and articulate, do you?

PW