The Letter

Recently a friend of mine who is still in high school asked me if I would help her with an assignment. She had to do a speech on how life gets better after high school. She just wanted to know how my life had improved after high school. 

This is what I wrote to her:

A major turning point in my life came the summer after my sophmore year. I was 16 and my mom let me go to Alaska for the summer to work.

I learned that I could support myself, and that I could get myself anywhere I wanted to go.

So the "better-ness" of my life started while I was in high school and has only gotten better since then.

First of all, I didn't graduate from high school. I moved my Junior year to a small rural school with very close-minded people. They wouldn't accept a lot of my credits, so my senior year I was going to be taking a lot of Freshman classes. I decided that I didn't need to waste a year of my life re-taking classes I'd already had. So I just went to college a year early.

That next summer I decided I wanted to go to Ireland. So I spent 2 months living with a family and working for them and all it cost me was a plane ticket. They took me to Scotland for a week. Glasgow to be exact. The whole time I was there I never understood a word anyone said.

Between Alaska, not graduating, and getting myself to Ireland, I really shattered my previous ideas of what life is like. I no longer thought that I had to follow certain patterns. I gained a LOT of self confidence through traveling by myself and through working hard and supporting myself. I saw other cultures that helped me to broaden my perspectives and understand that there are so many ways to live life. I learned that I wasn't always right. I learned that there were so many things that I had no idea about, no concept that they even existed.

I learned to be excited about the things I didn't know. I gained more confidence in the fact that there was a world of things I didn't know, but I could learn!

As I went to college, I learned to ask questions and to really seek to learn, not just to get a grade. I did the work for my sake, not for the sake of getting it done for a class or a degree.

I met a lot of people. I learned about my weaknesses and my strengths. Most importantly, I learned to be true to myself. To listen to my conscience, and to never do anything that I didn't feel was right.

I went to Italy and learned about art, passion, and excellence in your craft.
After college I went to teach English in Taiwan and I learned to be lonely. To walk in a world where you don't understand the language, the culture, or the customs. That was an incredible education. I learned about myself there, who I really am.

Then I went back home. And I learned that on my block in my hometown I could learn epic lessons from the guy sitting on the porch down the street. I learned that home was beautiful and epic and adventurous, I only needed the open mind to see it.

In short, life got better as my mind opened. I had experiences that challenged how I thought the world worked. I learned and was humbled and changed. I noticed and admired more of the world every day. I learned about my flaws as I made big mistakes, so I appreciated the people in my life more, their virtues and talents and their flaws. Life just got bigger and it all meant more.

Since getting married and having kids my life has improved exponentially. I've had to learn to be less selfish. I've learned about the choice of love. For the times when I don't feel love, but then I choose to do a loving thing or talk it out or apologize, and then afterwards I feel a new level of love because of the choice I made to be loving when I didn't feel it.

I love having more space in my head to not have to worry about boys and if a conversation meant something or not or if they like me or not. I love the confidence of always having someone who will be with me, who will always believe in me and love me.

Children are a challenge and a blessing. I have to give my all to my family, serve them and love them and do what they need, not what I want. And oddly enough, doing that gives me more joy than I ever had when I could almost always do what I wanted.

My life is better, happier, more confident, freer, and more exciting because of learning about the many counter-intuitive truths in life.

To be really happy I need to serve others, not do what I want.

To have satisfaction, I need to work hard, not have things given to me.

To feel confident I need to push the limits, go where I am uncomfortable and uncertain, not stay in my comfort zone.

To achieve success I need to dream big and fail over and over again and keep going, not do things that I know will succeed the first time.

To find love I had to love myself, know myself, and be willing to lose everything, to go out on a limb, to risk being hurt, not flirt or dress to attract.

To love myself I had to stand up against my friends and be willing to be alone, not be popular or accepted.

Sorry this is so long. I hope this is what you are looking for. I guess really, life got better when my prejudices, my patterns, my thoughts were challenged. Every person you ever meet has a lifetime of experiences that you can learn and benefit from. We all live in different worlds and share the same Earth, life gets better as you connect to more people and learn from them, as you experience different worlds. But that kind of thing doesn't have to wait until after high school.