All you hear lately are reports that the economy may not rebound for some time yet. What if unemployment is still up and the economy still down in 10 or 15 years? That will mean that just as our kids are about to head out on their own we will be ready to retire so they had better be capable of living on their own because I don’t want them under this roof when I am leaving my teeth in a jar all night and watching Murder She Wrote all day.
Lots in the news about the cost of education, the amount of debt incurred getting it, the lack of jobs once done with it and whether or not schools should be more accountable for the vast amount of money kids have to spend to be educated and unemployed.
So what should we do? Teach them the value of hard work. That's what. And if they end up working hard doing something they love well then they will have hit the jackpot.
I didn’t go to university. During my gap year I fell into what ultimately became a career in radio. I learned everything I could about the creative end of the business, I worked hard and have always made a decent living. I have been unemployed just once, last year, and have to say I quite enjoyed kicking back for awhile but it was good to get back to work.
Donny, on the other hand, went to prestigious schools and got an English Lit. degree that he never used but easily admits that wasn’t his intention when he picked it for his major. He was at school to acquire knowledge, learn how to organize his life, be places on time, get the work done by the deadline and get along with people with whom he would otherwise not spent any time. He knew that to be successful at whatever he landed in after graduation was going to require hard work.
Loving what you do and working hard at it - that's the formula. Seems simplistic perhaps but his and my path, however different from on another, both show the same results, we did well because we were willing to work hard.
But...it really doesn't feel like work when you love what you do. That old adage is very true.
I listened to Dustin Hoffman speaking with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC a few weeks ago and Dustin said he had always been very passionate about his work. That he loved to act, love every aspect of it and throughly enjoys being with other people who truly love what they do.
This morning Jian had John Taylor on from Duran Duran, a band I never really liked much but having listened to John this morning, it is now a band I admire.
He talked about dropping out of school and dropping into music. He immersed himself in it. Not just playing but analyzing the bands he liked that had become successful. He soon saw there was a clear path to success and he set about making sure that Duran Duran's trajectory to fame was precisely planned. There were irrefutable steps that had to be taken to get the band to Madison Square Garden and they did it. He never doubted that they would make it because they worked hard and loved what they did.
My mother, Pat, now 92, loves maps. Drop her blindfolded in the middle of the desert and she can tell you which direction she is facing and, more than likely, where on the planet she is standing. When she was in school she had no idea that you could make a living loving maps. I recall her telling me, “Had I known there was such a thing as a cartographer I would have been happy being one my entire life.” I can assure you that had she known such a job existed we’d all be looking up things in a big map book called the Patlas and online in something called Pat Maps.
So load up their RESP’s, encourage them, advocate for them, let them take the computer apart, sit in on an App building class at a college, have a chat with an Egyptologist, use the video camera or make a meal from scratch. Open up the world to your kids and sure, tell them they can be anything in the world want, regardless of the economy - but they have to really WANT it and they have to be willing to WORK for it.
Like Jimmy Dugan said in "A League of Their Own":
“If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great.”
