You Learn By Living

Since I found out that I was going to get laid off, I decided to find a book that will hold me steady during these uncertain times. I found not just a book, but an inspiration, in Eleanor Roosevelt's "You Learn By Living". I figured I'd read this book before her autobiography because it is, as described on the cover, "the distillation of Ms. Roosevelt's life experience."

I am over the shock of being jobless again. However, I still have not overcome the fear of uncertainty. Where does this experience lead? Where will it take me?

But as Ms. Roosevelt says, the process never ends until we die and ultimately, we are responsible for our own choices. Perhaps that's one of the things I need to learn from this whole ordeal. There is no such thing as a perfect and perfectly predictable life. We each have our own struggles and demons. We are all besieged with doubts, fears and misfortunes. To expect life to be seamless and free of problems is to expect the impossible. No one can ask to be exempted from reality and failure.

I remember my early 20s when I was going through a rough patch. It's no secret among my friends and family that back then, my life had spiraled downwards. Very slowly and painfully, I decided to pick myself back up and applied for a job in a magazine publisher. As I was waiting in the lobby for my interviewer, I came across a quote by Ayn Rand: "Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

These words had such power on me back then as Ms. Roosevelt's lessons do now. It was my fault that I have allowed my fire to go out. In my early 20s, I allowed that to happen by hurting people who cared for me. I was obsessed with fun and parties. I was obsessed with myself. This time, my mistake was, I was obsessed with my job, that when I lost it, I was decentralized.

Ms. Roosevelt is teaching me that I have to open my mind to life's lessons. Life doesn't ever stop, it just keeps on turning. A stumbling block like getting laid off, is not a stop, but a turning point.