Anna Quindlen - A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Contents

For Janet Maslin

Im not particularly qualified by profession or education to give advice and counsel. Its widely known in a small circle that I make a mean tomato sauce, and I know many inventive ways to hold a baby while nursing, although I havent had the opportunity to use any of them in years. I have a good eye for a nice swatch and a surprising paint chip, and I have had a checkered but occasionally successful sideline in matchmaking.

But Ive never earned a doctorate, or even a masters degree. Im not an ethicist, or a philosopher, or an expert in any particular field. Each time I give a commencement speech I feel like a bit of a fraud. Yogi Berras advice seems as good as any: When you come to a fork in the road, take it!

I cant talk about the economy, or the universe, or academe, as academicians like to call where they work when theyre feeling kind of grand. Im a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is really all I know.

Dont ever confuse the two, your life and your work. Thats what I have to say. The second is only a part of the first. Dont ever forget what a friend once wrote to Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator had decided not to run for reelection because hed been diagnosed with cancer: No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office.

Dont ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: If you win the rat race, youre still a rat.

Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of theDakota: Life is what happens to you while youre busy making other plans.

Thats the only advice I can give. After all, when you look at the faces of a class of graduating seniors, you realize that each student has only one thing that no one else has. When you leave college, there are thousands of people out there with the same degree you have; when you get a job, there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living.

But you are the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on the bus, or in the car,or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

People dont talk about the soul very much anymore. Its so much easier to write a rsum than to craft a spirit. But a rsumis cold comfort on a winter night, or when youre sad, or broke, or lonely, or whenyouve gotten back the chest X ray and it doesnt look so good, or when the doctor writes prognosis, poor.

Here is my rsum. Its not what my professional bio says, proud as I am of all that:

I am a good mother to three good children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make my marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them I would havenothing of interest to say to anyone, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre, at my job if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So I suppose the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the largerhouse. Do you think youd care so very much about those things if you developed ananeurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast while in the shower?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your regular phone, for that matter. Keep still. Be present.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you.And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time I look at my diploma, I remember that I am still a student, still learning every day how to be human. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your mom.Hug your dad.

Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night.And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Careso deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take the money youwould have spent on beers in a bar and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Tutor aseventh-grader.

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.

Live by the words of this poem byGwendolyn Brooks:

EXHAUST THE LITTLE MOMENT.

SOON IT DIES.