Take a Step into the World (Year 12's)

[MYVYSS]

As school days come to an end for another cycle of young men and women, Michael McGirr sends his hopes for the future in a letter to year 12s.

You don't know me. For the last four years or so, every morning of most weeks, we have shared the same train. I've been on my way to work and you have been on your way to school. I have no idea who you are and, to be honest, I'd be pushed to identify the various ties you wear. But I know they are about to become for you that celebrated Australian accessory, the old school tie.

Believe me, I have never gone out of my way to eavesdrop on your conversation. It has been impossible to avoid. Not even the advent of the iPod about three years ago, when I guess you were in year 9, was sufficient to protect the rest of the carriage from daily news of your loves and losses, your pets and pet hates.

I imagine that your fellow commuters sometimes hear more from you than the people you live with. We can all remember the years when we had plenty to say but not to our parents. Perhaps your olds should catch the train occasionally just so they can see you in action: a vibrant, loud, articulate group with a clear idea of who belongs and who doesn't. The only outsiders who catch your attention seem to be babies, and that only applies to girls and then only occasionally. Your behaviour expands to fill all the space available.

I am invisible in your world. I am middle-aged and a father. I have reached a different phase of life, one that involves refitting my dreams to the reality of what is possible so that they are neither too large nor too small. The wrong-sized dreams tend to get thrown out like the wrong-sized clothes. I am sure you will discover that, but hopefully not too soon.

Nevertheless, I am not so caught up in my own world that I don't think about yours occasionally. I have been thinking about what might lie on the other side of those train doors when you get off for the last time.

Some of you will die young. This will have a profound impact on your friends. But most of you won't. Most of you can expect to live to celebrate your 90th birthday, an achievement that would once have been considered extraordinary. Life expectancy in Australia has ballooned over the last century: since 1998, when you were in year 4, the typical woman has added 12 months to her span of years and the typical man has added 24. Only recently, with concerns about obesity, does life expectancy look like falling a bit.

The problem, as Billy Connolly once noted, is that you get all this extra time when you are old, not now. Most of you will spend at least 20 years living with some kind of illness or disability, one of the unavoidable costs of being human. The problem with old age, you may well find, is that it is wasted on the old.

There is something to think about here. You have plenty of time to do something, to do many things. It would be tragic if you reached your 90th birthday and told the story of your life as a series of things that happened to you rather than things you did. But we share a culture whose default position is passivity. One of the ways our culture makes us passive is by keeping us busy, constantly stimulated by things that don't matter, asking us to live always under a miasma of tiredness.

Being busy is a bizarre status symbol. A full diary has long been a measure of importance. This is rubbish. I hope with so many years on your side that your lives include real leisure. The people who do the most creative things are the ones who are able also to do nothing. People who are always doing something are the ones who end up really doing nothing.

Another statistic. You may not believe this, but the vast majority of you will one day be parents. More than eight out of 10 of you will embark upon this particular adventure, and the years over which you do so will be more widespread than ever before. Some of you will already be grandparents before others have their first child. Most of you will be grandparents while at least one of your parents is still alive.

Children have a habit of turning up when it suits them, not you. I hope, for your own sakes as well as theirs, that you can find it in yourself to make them welcome whenever they arrive, however awkward the moment. Of course, the statistic still leaves 20 per cent of you who will never be parents. For some, this will be a matter of choice; for others, a source of deep and bewildering sadness.

For most of you, parenthood will be the door through which you pass to maturity. There are different reasons to bring a child into the world, but doing a duty for your country is certainly not one of them.

The best reason to have a child is simply for the sake of the child. Parenthood is the most generous thing most people ever get around to doing. That is why it is so rewarding. It is the best chance most people get to escape the confines of their own self-importance. There's no point, when you are dealing with a three-year-old in the middle of a full-blown tantrum in a shopping centre, trying to console yourself with how many degrees you have from uni or how much you earned in your last job. None of it will count for much. Your children will be the best teachers you ever have. They will try to teach you, among other things, how to forgive your own parents.

I hope you sleep well. I hope you are never afraid to sleep alone. It is better to be lonely on your own than in a bed with someone who can't reach past your skin. I hope you realise that a partner who makes you afraid is not the partner for you.

I hope you read books and not just screens. With a screen, you are looking always at light. When you read black print you are looking at the dark part. It rests the eyes and stills the mind. It's a different experience.

I hope you write letters by hand now and again. The world is full of words but few of them count for very much. Our culture is being buried under cliche and verbiage. I hope you can choose your words carefully and that there will be people who savour them.

When you are 90, I hope you have a box full of special words. I suspect they won't be emails or SMS messages. They are more likely to be a handwritten scrap that your partner left on your pillow or a note your child slipped into your computer bag before you left for work. It is easier to believe the word "love" when it appears in texta rather than in type.

I hope, when the times comes, that you are good bosses. For two or three years, I have seen many of you go to school in one uniform and come home in another, the one you wear at work. I know you work hard, harder than I did at the same age. You also spend more. I have heard some of your stories about work. I hope you remember what it was like to be bullied to try to do better.

I hope you don't need canned laughter to know when something is funny. I hope you are honest, with yourselves as much as anybody. I hope you get a laugh out of your own powers of self-deception.

I hope you don't need a flag of any kind to establish your identity. At any moment, a million Australians are living overseas. Not just visiting, but living. I hope you have a chance to be one of them for a while. I hope the Third World makes a powerful claim on your humanity.

I hope you keep an interest in history, including Australian history. The study of a country's history may be advocated from time to time by people with a nationalistic agenda. Ironically, nothing will defeat that agenda more than the study of history. History involves meeting the people who went before you. People aren't ideas; no person is defined by a flag.

I hope you sink deep roots. I hope that some of the people who love you now will still be around and love you when you are 90. I hope that some of the other people who love you then would be impossible to now imagine. I hope that when you reach middle age they still have trains. I hope you will have fond hopes for the young people who can't wait to get off.

Michael McGirr's Bypass: The Story of a Road, Picador, will be a VCE Literature text from 2007.

source: theage.com.au


It would be tragic if you reached your 90th birthday and told the story of your life as a series of things that happened to you rather than things you did, BEST LINE EVER

[bob^]

I stopped reading after the 3rd paragraph. Hate to see how far kids would get with it...

[kenz]

I made it to the 7th

[XR8 Uterous]

I finish year 12 next year, i just read the whole thing. Found it great!

A book i believe ALL students about to start year 12 should read, and read more than once, is 90 minutes to success by Brian Kahlefeldt, a local Wagga businessman, barrister, chartered accounted, real estate agent, property valuer, humanitarian... the list goes on... its a very inspirational read! Brian's aim is to get the book to EVERY yr 12 student, my school is the test school, best of all he is DONATING every book, and then all profit from books that gets sold through retailers goes to charity... its a very easy book to read and only takes 90 minutes as the title suggests.

[ducky]

Very interesting read - puts into words some of the reflective thinking I have done on my own school life which finished three years ago.

Too often insight like this is dismissed by a culture which is consumed by the desire to, as the author puts it, "live always under a miasma of tiredness." Favourite line:
"When you read black print you are looking at the dark part. It rests the eyes and stills the mind. It's a different experience."

Thanks Craig for the post

[GXL078]

This is just GAY.

[gozza]

hahaha

[GXL078]

I want to bring my kid up to be a Wiggle hater and verbally abuse them in public. Ha ha have you noticed the Asian one, JEFF has NO TALENT so his ACT is to go to sleep, ha ha. I will give my kid MY TIME, not dump them in front of a video to be baby sat by a bunch of skivvy wearing *edited*

[ducky]

good for you