Random thoughts for CNMI grads

I have studiously avoided requests (as flattering as they are) to offer wisdom to the CNMI’s recent graduates. So such a column isn’t in the works.

Despair not, though: Wisdom isn’t usually much fun anyway. But random observations are, so let’s go with that gig.

Meanwhile, this year, like last year, like the year before that, and the year before that, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the “limited opportunities” for the CNMI’s graduates. This is dove-tailed, of course, with lofty platitudes about how dreamers will always soar to great heights and that success is guaranteed to those who have pure hearts. This is such a tangled web of self-contradictory nonsense that I’d rather walk around it than through it.

If you want my opinion, here it is: Life can’t take away what you’ve done, but it can take away what you have.

So, furthermore, here’s my personal philosophy: Do a lot. I don’t claim that this will guarantee anybody success, but, on the other hand, not doing a lot won’t guarantee success either.

Yes, in life, you are what you’ve done.

That’s all you are.

You’re not what you talked about doing.

You’re not what you said that everybody else should do.

You’re not what you wanted to do.

Nope. You are entirely, exclusively, and irrefutably what you’ve done.

On this note, I have a built-in bias in favor of the underdog, so I want to address the elements of the CNMI graduating classes who come from families of humble means.

To them, I say: Yes, the CNMI has a very stratified society, as does much of the world. But shake off this fact, and instead re-zero your sites, and concentrate everything on the next 10 years. Hey, that sounds like pompous advice, but I’m being a nice guy here! Ten years! That ain’t much. Really. It ain’t.

So follow me on this: Hang in there, keep your eyes open, and you’ll notice that the princes of patronage who were strutting around like roosters become visibly embittered and strident when they see age 30 years coming at them. While they’ve been preening in the mirror of public attention, their more talented classmates, even those of humble means, have had time to quietly tally some genuine accomplishments.

For example, I knew a really poor girl in my high school class who had to clean subway cars in Chicago with her mother at night in order to earn rent and food money. She wound up graduating from Stanford before she was 25. I’ve known a few guys of very humble means who became jet pilots before age 30.

Indeed, what’s interesting is that things usually sort themselves out when you’re age 28 or 30 or so. By that point, the smart and talented people start earning respect, and the silver-spoon punks look like, well, what they really are. “My daddy got me a patronage job” might carry a lot of weight in the beer-belly dart league, but “B.S., Engineering, Stanford University,” carries weight where it really matters.

For CNMI graduates, the good news in life is this: You’re only young once. So you only have to define yourself once. A decade after graduation is all it takes. By that point, in most cases, you’ll have become a success, or a tedious mediocrity, or a pathetic bore, or an interesting person, or, well, whatever it is that you really are. If you’re looking for optimism, or even justice, in the grand scheme of things, well, there it is.