Making the pieces matter

In my last column I mentioned the time I tried to introduce my (nonstudent) friend Shelly to some of my IU friends, with disastrous results. Shelly grew up in Bloomington and went away to college. A few years ago she decided it was time to change careers and came home to stay with her parents while she considered her options.\nOne of the reasons that evening went so poorly was that Shelly felt the students were judging her, if not as a "townie," at least as an unemployed twenty-something living with her parents. She told me at one point, "I just want to shake a couple of them and yell 'Life doesn't always work out like you plan!'"\nTell me about it. I am the poster girl for that particular concept.\nBack when I was a 19-year-old college student I actually worked with a 28-year-old divorced college student named Elizabeth. Once she confided in me that most of her old friends had fabulous jobs in exciting places. In comparison with her friends, she was sometimes embarrassed by her current situation in life. \nI sympathized with her, but inside I was thanking God that I was far too clever and focused to end up in a situation like hers. Not me. I had it all planned. No straying from the beaten path for this girl. I wasn't going to wind up stuck in the Midwest struggling to play catch-up.\nOne day Elizabeth handed me her driver's license. "I got a new one," she told me. "I thought you might want this one." While I appreciated the gesture, I never used the ID. It seemed ridiculous. I certainly didn't think I looked 28.\nBack to the present, and the joke is on me. Here I am, the person I thought I could never be. I'm a divorced, full-time college student and I'm, for a while anyway, stuck in the Midwest. My good friends here are all years younger than me. I feel close to them. I feel accepted. But I wonder sometimes if they look at me and play their own version of "I'll never end up like that!"\nI have honest sympathy for Elizabeth now. And I understand why she gave me her ID without even considering that I might not want it. I'd offer mine to someone now. I don't think I look that much older.\nI've concluded that it's all a matter of perspective. At 19, I looked at Elizabeth as an example of who not to be. I thought that any diversion from the traditional progression of life was catastrophic. But at 30 I realize that nothing I've endured is catastrophic. \nAt worst, I'm a bit behind. That's all. I'd even go so far to say that I love my life at the moment. I have good friends and good times. And best of all, I finally feel like I am accomplishing something. Years later than I expected maybe, but accomplishing something, nevertheless. \nSo I'm a bit more understanding with the students Shelly was so angry with. After all, it's taken me basically a decade to learn that, no, life doesn't always work out like you plan. Sometimes the best-laid plans are smashed to bits through no fault of your own. But that doesn't matter. It's what you do with the pieces that matters.