10 Wishes

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Richmond, I took a senior psychology seminar from Dr. Barbara Sholley.  One day, Dr. Sholley presented us with the question:  “If I could give you a pill that would guarantee that you would always be happy, would you take it?”  Many of my fellow students thought that was a “no-brainer:  Happy every day, who wouldn’t want that?  I was the only one who argued against it, saying you can’t know happiness without knowing disappointment.  Thirty years later,  Dr. Sholley and I still debate the question when we talk, but a recent list she shared with me sums it up better than I ever have:

1. I sincerely wish you will have the experience of thinking up a new idea, planning it, organizing it, and following it to completion, and then having it be magnificently successful.  I also hope you’ll go through the same process and have something “bomb-out.”
2. I wish you could know how it feels to run with all your heart and lose badly.
3. I wish that you could achieve some great good for mankind, but have nobody know about it except you.
4. I wish you could find something so worthwhile that you deem it worthy of investing your life.
5. I hope you become frustrated and challenged enough to begin to push back the very barriers of your own personal limitations.
6. I hope you make a stupid, unethical mistake and get caught red-handed and are big enough to say those magic words, “I was wrong.”
7. I hope that you give so much of yourself that some days you wonder if it’s worth it all.
8. I wish for you a magnificent obsession that will give you reasons for living and purpose and direction and joy and life.
9. I wish for you the worst kind of criticizer for everything you do, because that makes you fight to achieve beyond what you normally would.
10. I wish for you the experience of leadership.

If you could have all these experiences, weather them, and then proceed with your work, you would be forged as strong as steel and would be head and shoulders above most people who could not survive such tests.  Life presents us with many challenges, some big, some small.  Many times those big challenges result in even bigger disappointments and we’re tempted to just give up but surviving disappointments makes us stronger and better individuals.