Once, I was complaining to an elderly man. He, a veteran of World War II and a thoroughly well-traversed fellow, stopped me in mid-sentence to say, “Alex, it doesn’t matter.” With a kind, whimsical look on his face, he knew more than I ever would.
I was dumbfounded. He was right. Whatever was bothering me really didn’t matter, as I obviously can’t even remember it now. Ever since, his words stayed with me.
If you’re looking for something to bitch about, you don’t have to look too far. The economy (or lack thereof) is a grand target. Your lame hourly job (or lack thereof) is another. So is that obnoxious neighbor of yours who’s under the impression everyone likes Matchbox Twenty as much as he does.
Or, one of my personal favorites: the insular and self-congratulating crap-train that is academia.
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly enjoy learning … I just don’t enjoy schooling. I don’t enjoy sitting in a 200-person lecture hall listening to an uninterested professor repeating information readily available on Wikipedia. Nor, conversely, do I enjoy “class discussions,” otherwise known as intellectual glad-handing between a few hyper-interested students, while everyone else looks on in bored, loathsome dismay.
A college education is a privilege, and there’s nothing more irritating than the feeling that you’re being denied the full use of that privilege by those who are supposed to facilitate it. Nothing rains on an educational parade more than institutional apathy and intellectual elitism.
This used to kill me; in fact, it actually drove me to drop out of college after two years. I have since returned, finding my low-paying
service-sector job to be somewhat wanting (imagine that!). Fully expecting to return to the same old story, I prepared to hold my nose as I peeled back more layers of the academic onion.
But as the barracks song goes, “Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.” The limitations I used to endlessly rant about simply aren’t that big of a deal anymore. They’re undeniably still annoying, but they aren’t nearly as infuriating as they once were.
Hearing a professor drone on has become somewhat entertaining, and standing up in class to give little speeches of my own (often wholly unrelated to the topic) has become a savored pastime.
Yes, academia still has its all-too-eager students and blowhard professors, but I no longer feel that they are a stain on my educational tapestry. Instead, they’ve become woven into that tapestry — and are among its brightest colors.
I’m not sure if the change in my mind came about after living the working life, or just by getting older and not sweating the small stuff so much. Either way, real adulthood provides you both experience and perspective. Complaining may help identify a problem, but it certainly won’t solve it. There will always be things you don’t like about life, but after a point, either work to change them or accept them as they are.
Even the self-righteous jackass sitting across from the wise old man knew as much.
Alex is the old man in class, and can be reached at alexander.petrusek@asu.edu.
