What now?
If you're wondering about what comes next in your life story, Ann Patchett (鈥淏el Canto鈥� and 鈥淩un鈥�) has some words to smooth your worry lines. What now?, an extended version of a commencement address she gave at her alma mater Sarah Lawrence College in 2006, has all the kindness of a good friend patting your hand saying, 鈥淭here, there.鈥�
Drawing from her experiences, Patchett delves into this question that shadows all of us 鈥� even though wearing a mortarboard cap and fluttering gown seems to be the only time we are allowed to acknowledge it openly.
Some people charge into the perpetual unknown yawping, 鈥�Yahoo!鈥� For deeply ponderous folk, such as Patchett, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 next?鈥� is an annoying drumbeat that awakens one from an otherwise blissful reverie.
The pressure behind the question 鈥� even though it stems from the loving curiosity of family and friends 鈥� can stir loneliness, doubt, and indecision. Patchett has stumbled through them all.
But how she responds to those moments of feeling utterly lost is what makes 鈥淲hat now?鈥� a volume of charming wisdom.
Throughout life, Patchett hasn鈥檛 rebelled against the lessons of her Roman Catholic-school upbringing. Instead, she has embraced them. To fight her loneliness as a college freshman, she used 鈥渄o unto others鈥� as the impetus to bake cookies for her adviser. A broken dorm oven led her to naively knock on the new president鈥檚 mansion door with the edge of a pan full of unbaked cookes. This led to baby-sitting for the president鈥檚 daughter and later catering dinners at the president鈥檚 house. That experience in food service enabled her to stay afloat as a T.G.I. Friday鈥檚 waitress armed with a graduate degree. Her advice: Stay graceful and brave in the face of change. A sense of humor can only help.
鈥淪oon after I started working, the district manager came from Memphis to present me with a tiny gold-toned pin in front of the entire assembled waitstaff. WOW, it said. I was the first waitress to score a perfect 100 on her waitressing exam. My six years of higher education had finally paid off.鈥�
Through the waiting and wondering of 鈥淲hat now?鈥� Patchett learned how to become an observer, a skill that transformed the ordinary job of dishwashing into 鈥渃louds of steam smoothing everything around me into a perfect field of gray鈥� and tellingly laid the foundation for what she would become: an award-winning novelist.
She also uses the lessons from these quieter, humbler moments to challenge the traditional commencement address command of 鈥済o forth and lead鈥�:
鈥淚t is senseless to think that at every moment of our lives we should all be the team captain, the class president, the general, the CEO, and yet so often this is what we鈥檙e being prepared for.... It turns out that most positions in life, even the big ones, aren鈥檛 really so much about leadership.... For the most part we travel in groups 鈥� you鈥檙e ahead of somebody for a while, then somebody鈥檚 ahead of you, a lot of people are beside you all the way. It鈥檚 what the nuns had always taught us: sing together, eat together, pray together.鈥�
In a hard-edged world shouting, go! go! go!, sometimes that鈥檚 just what we need to hear.
Kendra Nordin is a Monitor staff editor.
