We all have friends for whom where they or their kids went to college is the gold standard of success. Harvard, Princeton, Williams, Stanford. WTF!
In Elegy in a Country
Churchyard, Thomas Gray counters with:
Let not Ambition mock
their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny
obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear
with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the
poor.
In last week's NY Times there was a moving obituary. "Larry Selman weighed three pounds when he was born on April
2, 1942, and was not expected to survive the day. He rallied, though, grew to
become a friendly, husky boy and attended public school until he was about 16,
when a teacher explained to him that he would probably never earn a high school
diploma because, by all measures, Larry was — in the parlance of the 1950s —
mentally retarded...."
[Mr. Selman led} an eventful and in some ways remarkable life, filled with the daily struggles of a man whose I.Q. was said to be 62 but who was determined to live independently. He managed to achieve his goal, in a sense, by taking responsibility for other people: those more vulnerable than himself.
This moving obituary is a source of inspiration and enlightenment. You may be moved to see the 2002 documentary about him, “The Collector of Bedford Street” (trailor).