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Wednesday, March 30, 2005
To A Young Man Starting Out
Dear John,
With regard to your plaint about not knowing what direction to take after you graduate high school next spring, I submit to you that you're at exactly the right age, and in exactly the right frame of mind, to chart a course around life's largest and most threatening shoals. Granted, it can be very difficult to feel great confidence when you don't know where you're headed, or what sort of tools you'll acquire in these next few, critical years. However, there is knowledge available, accumulated from our national and racial experience, that will serve to guide you -- if you'll allow yourself to be guided.
The great failing of the typical American youngster is "know-it-all-ism." As the saying goes, when we get to about fourteen, our parents get really dumb, but they gain amazingly in intelligence and perspective as we approach twenty-six. Most of the seminal mistakes are made between those stops. Accordingly, if you'd like to learn from the experience of others rather than repeat those mistakes, now is most definitely the time.
Let's survey the hazards that will loom in the near term. There might seem to be a lot of them, but they can be categorized neatly into three bins:
- Physical hazards,
- Emotional hazards,
- Financial hazards.
You are young and strong. Your body brims with energy. You feel the propulsions of recently activated glands, as you will never feel them again in your life. Those urges were built into you to insure that you will embrace your Neanderthal role as protector and provider, and that you will not fail to propagate your genes into the next generation. But we're not Neanderthals these days, and those urges must be kept tightly in check. You must learn restraint.
Likewise, youth impels you to all manner of exposures of self that can have devastating consequences not easily foreseen. You are more vulnerable emotionally than you think. In part, this is because of the crudity that has generally overtaken American life, but in larger measure it's because of the same forces that urge you to "scatter wild oats" upon every fertile young woman who crosses your vision. You need to learn to protect yourself against both external and internal emotional barbs.
Third, you live in the richest society the world has ever known. Its bounties call to you multifariously, in voices of unctuous promise. But we both know that several of your contemporaries have already gotten into serious debt by chasing those bounties. Modern credit merchants target your age group specifically, because of its well-known susceptibility to entanglement in debt. It's a whirlpool that drowns many a youngster before he gets a fair chance to get his feet under him.
Yet opportunities beckon on every side. Your task is to learn how to exploit them without succumbing to the dangers that lurk behind them.
Here are my recommendations.
First, resist the suggestion that you immediately go to college upon graduation. Yes, I know that's the way it's usually done, but I've seen so many young people crash and burn from it that I can no longer believe it's the best course. You're bright and curious; when the time comes, you'll get into the school of your choice, and it will take you where you want to go. But if you enroll straight out of high school, it greatly increases that chances that college will take you somewhere you don't want to go -- somewhere you'll bitterly regret having wound up.
Second, remain a virgin. If you've already lost your virginity, resolve to keep yourself to yourself henceforward. (Until when? We'll get to that.) Most emotional problems among American youth stem directly from too early an acquaintance with sex, and too heedless an attitude toward its consequences. By all means, date and socialize; there's no other way to become comfortable around young women. But stay chaste. Among other things, you won't believe what a standout it will make you among the ladies.
Third, get a part-time job, of whatever sort you can, and start a savings account. Put every cent you earn above the bare minimum you need to commute to that job into your savings account. I'm serious: earn, but do not spend. Your parents will see to your physical upkeep at least until you graduate high school; therefore, this is a perfect time to start your "nest egg" and learn the special discipline of saving. The well-to-do don't save because they're rich; they're rich because they save.
That's enough of a program to get you to next spring unscathed. But what then? If you're not going to college right away, what ought you to do instead? Yes, I have recommendations for then, as well.
If you reach graduation sound of body and mind -- and why shouldn't you, if you accept my suggestions above? -- then enlist in the armed forces. I suggest a four-year enlistment, but even a two-year hitch will bring you many benefits. You'll learn things available in no other course of study. You'll be under the tutelage of men who've proved themselves in ways you've only read about. You'll acquire organized habits and work disciplines, and earn a great deal more confidence in yourself than I could possibly convey to you. You'll earn a salary you'll have no need to spend. Try the Army if you'd prefer to remain geographically stable, or the Navy if you'd prefer to "see the world" -- though I must caution you, much of "the world" looks a whole lot better from a distance.
If you decide not to make a career in uniform, then will be time for college. You'll be four years older and much more mature than the typical college entrant. You'll have far better skills and habits than the eighteen-year-olds around you. You'll have seen more of the world, and have fewer naive illusions. You'll be physically stronger and bear yourself with much more confidence than they. You'll have learned how to express yourself far more clearly than they, as well. Admissions officers will notice. Professors will notice. Young women will notice, too.
Speaking of young women: keep dating, but remain chaste. It will be hard. The modern sexual ethic is approximately "anything goes." Other young men will deride you -- probably, owing to your military experience, behind your back. Quite a lot of young women will think you must be homosexual. But there are immense benefits to sexual restraint, not the least of which is that no girl will have to wonder whether your attentions toward her are motivated solely by the desire to get her panties off -- and you won't have to wonder, either. That will make it far easier to find and woo your wife-to-be. When she arrives, and you commit yourselves to one another, that first embrace will be burned permanently into you, body, mind, and soul. Even if it strikes you as inept, clumsy, and unsophisticated, you'll remember it forever as one of the shining high points of your life.
Incur not one penny of avoidable debt. If you maintain that financial restraint through college, it will pay off handsomely afterward, when you're straining to afford a house and, hopefully, a family.
Graduate, marry, and choose a place to work. Given the seriousness and thoroughness with which you've conducted your affairs up to then, you'll have your pick.
Sounds a bit rigorous, doesn't it? The typical young American male of twenty-six has followed quite a different route. He's single, has no serious life experience, may or may not have a college degree (and if he does, it might or might not mean anything), has squandered large sums on fripperies that did him little good and possibly a great deal of harm, has dissipated the strength of his body and his body's desires on cheap diversions and fast women, and has made at best a stuttering start on a career. He's barely begun to get his wheels on the track. But you would have a life partner and a budding career, you'd have seen and done enough to have mature perspective, and you wouldn't owe a dime to anyone.
Take a year to think about it.
All my best,
Fran
Comments
Excellent advice in my opinion.
Posted by Heather on 03/30/2005 at 11:45 AMOh, that I would have had such sterling advice, or even a fraction of it. Would I have listened? Hmmmm, perhaps, with access to such a mentor as needed. Maybe that’s what PARENTS ARE FOR!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/30/2005 at 12:17 PMStart a IRA as soon as possible.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/30/2005 at 12:40 PMhell, I GOT that advice. And, like a lot of other people my age, I ignored it.
The good news is, that if your parents did their jobs right, you get past that point in your life. I know dozens of boys that ignored ALL of that advice, and still grew to be fine men, husbands, and fathers. Because they had a good foundation. Being able to take this advice at 18 or 22 would be nice, but there’s nothing like being taught those values from birth. THAT is what gets you past the rough spots,(cough adolescence) IMHO.
Posted by og on 03/30/2005 at 02:05 PMWhat Og said, in spades. From one who chose the Navy (even before graduation) and left for basic training at the end of summer after graduation. Had the good foundation, and ignored it for a number of years (til about 25), then realized it was time to grow up and start acting as an adult.
Posted by GuyS on 03/30/2005 at 02:21 PMAnd avoid credit cards, and if you cant, use them to buy gas for your car. when the statement arrives at the end of the month, pay the entire amount that month, and pay within three days of getting the statement. You’ll save yourself any amount of hassle doing that.
Posted by akaky on 03/30/2005 at 03:03 PMI might have listened…at least, I would have if someone had come to me after my first year in college. But then hindsight is always 20/20. I comfort myself with the thoght that I am going to handle my daughter differently than my parents did with me.
Posted by Sharon Ferguson on 03/30/2005 at 04:04 PMBrilliant!
The age-old problem, and there is no bigger truth, is wrapped up in the simple fact that boys lose the function of their brain around 14 or 15 years, and do not gain it back until 25 or so. Just as you have stated, Francis, I too have discovered there is a cranial burp, a long one, during the prime of our lives. It is a rare young man who can stick to your wisdom and gain from it, but those young men are the finest of them all.
Posted by Head on 03/30/2005 at 09:55 PMI like to think I’d have listened to that advice, had I heard it from someone I trusted at 18. And even though putting off college would have gotten me thrown out of my mother’s house the very instant I turned 18 and joining the military would have literally seen me disowned by my entire family and most of my friends, I still suspect my 20s would have turned out rather better. I certainly wouldn’t have spent so much of the last decade being hounded (and stolen from) by student loan collectors (who I am compelled to suspect get their training from mafia loan sharks), living in the kind of rathole apartments available to those with blemishes on their credit, and fantasizing bitterly about the “good life” that seemed permanently closed to me because of the collossal mistake of going to college straight after high school.
The good news is that, as long as you don’t actually manage to kill yourself, you can recover from even a mistake that serious, and if you work at it be back on your feet before 30. At 29 I feel like I’m really late getting a decent start on my life, but then again, I know plenty of people way further behind than I am…mostly because it took them longer to actually learn the lessons that life experience was trying desperately to pound into their heads.
Posted by Matt on 03/31/2005 at 01:46 AMI sincerely wish I’d gotten such advice - particularly the part about military service before college.
Posted by Russell Wardlow on 03/31/2005 at 05:22 PM
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