A Long Walk Home

Human beings have two choices. The first is to expand their greatness beyond the galaxies and the far reaches of time itself; the second is to contract into spaces so small and so tightly, they have the snails and hermit crabs envy them. Most humans will fall somewhere in between those options and some never consider the choices to be options at all. 

It is a conundrum to be a human being. We are encouraged from very young ages to reach for the stars, the planets, the moon above our heads because that is where our ultimate goals lie. When we find life is too much, too excessive, too complicated, we restrict ourselves to the things that can be achieved with as little effort as possible, into shells and corners that protect us but leave little room for growth. Even snails and hermit crabs leave their shells behind to try and fit into more comfortable and safer circumstances, so why do we humans insist on staying tightly wedged into conformity?

In the seventies and in the early eighties, educators and other people emphasized the need to have a degree to be successful, to earn the money of the rich and famous, to be on television or in the movies. It was celebrity, it was notoriety, it was rock and roll and didn’t you want to be among the beautiful and affluent? Wouldn’t be the most amazing thing to be able to be interviewed because of your achievements by someone like Barbara Walters, Mike Wallace, or some of the other talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey as she was starting out? You could even be on Johnny Carson! A writer, an inventor, a genius everyone loves and adores and you can have all of that with your fantastic degree. A pretty, shiny thing any child could possibly want for their security and happiness lies in that thing called a degree. Oh yes, we want a degree!

Get a degree! Get it from the biggest institutions around- you make more going to the University of Virginia than you would at George Mason and it is more impressive to have credentials from a Division One Atlantic Coast Conference competitor. A backwater last chance college in Fairfax, that barely classes as a Division Two National Invitational Tournament second thought entrant, well that will never get you on a fellowship to Oxford! Go to Georgetown, go to Howard, go to American, go to the University of Maryland, go to William and Mary, go to Virginia Tech, even Old Dominion isn’t half bad either, just go and get that degree to be somebody people will be impressed by and know you got a great education. It is the key to your easy living and debauchery with your money!

Oh yeah, I did mention that didn’t I? How quickly fame and fortune turns on us when we see we have it good. We go and get that degree and now we have debt. We paid to go to the University of Virginia and now we have to flip burgers and make beds down the street from George Mason, because that is all we can do since we don’t have the experience our great and impressive degrees have bestowed on us. We resort to tribal living in apartments with roommates and friends with benefits. We infiltrate our parents’ homes after four, or five, or even six years away in a dorm, to beg for the basement or our old bedroom and bargain for rent. We run to the cities where we find new friends and lives, only to see we still have to call Mom for money when our tribes move out and disappear on us. Some of us even go into the military, to alleviate the pain of the hovering bottom line we couldn’t transcend with a G.I. Bill. Wow, to be a college graduate, isn’t that the best? 

By the way, that guy in the limo who waved at you, when you were walking to your fifth interview for the day? He graduated from George Mason, while working at the same burger stand you work at and he pulled extra shifts, helping the folks making beds at the Holiday Inn too for extra money. Yes, that guy from the two-bit college you wouldn’t consider is tooling around in a stretch Lincoln. You aren’t even close to getting hired at the firm you believed would take you on Day One, because you got your degree from the University of Virginia. You can’t even stretch a dollar to put gas in your late nineties Honda Accord you got from Cheap Al’s Cream Puffs and Sketchy Auction Buys and you went to the University of Virginia- hurray for you! We slowly come around to see we were had and they have our fortunes in hedge funds and personal monopolies. 

Coffee and ramen noodles are now those dream meals we carelessly thought less of once we had our first steak dinner, which is now scheduled when we get out new dentures from Medicare at the great age of seventy-two. We were expanding, becoming our greatness, reaching for the stars and we wound up padding someone else’s bank account. We want to crawl under the proverbial rock and hide. Sometimes we even want to leave this world under that rock and not acknowledge that we hadn’t put that pretty shiny degree to good use. We tell ourselves that the degree can stay under the rock, while we go find that delicious cup of coffee and ramen noodles we crave after the collapse of our fifth interview of the day. Screw the guy in the stretch, we have a degree from the University of Virginia and we will have that jacked up to Jesus Tesla SUV any day now! We tell ourselves this story and declare it to the sky above us, clenched teeth bleeding from scurvy and overdue for a dentist, fist thumping at the clouds as if that degree is right there in our grasp. All the while, the long walk home awaits us, where the coffee is on the counter and the noodles are in the cabinet.

The longest journey is often said to be from the head to the heart. When we see that we were cavalier in our approach to our greatness, we find the true patriot in our soul. Merely having that degree only proves that it really is just a piece of paper, unless you make an effort to move from that tight space of the dream to the broad vista of the reality. It takes more than just a brand, more than just a name, more than just the shell on your back you call home, to expand greatly into who you are. Often it is a long walk home that brings us to the point, where we see in all this time, there was so much more we could be doing. While we were learning, we could be experiencing and putting to use what we were taught. While we were working, we would be harvesting abundance in the networking and finances that we were securing for our future. While we were succeeding and enjoying our efforts, we could appreciate others and acknowledge them as they too worked for their good. We all are on this long walk home, this beautiful journey of heart. For some, it is a longer walk than anticipated but it is fruitful and it manifests in the clarity of the travels. For others, it is a quick walk right into the space that fits well, the love of the heart wrapped around the intellect of the mind as one great and amazing force of life.