Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, But Don't Forget to Stop and Smell the Roses

My boss at the Planning Department at the City of Los Angeles recently asked when I graduate. "In May." I replied. "Wow, that's what, three months away?" he observed. Well, technically, four, but yeh, soon.

Besides the heart-pounding palpitations that the thought of graduation invokes, I have also been thinking what have I learned in grad school and what is still missing.

My brilliant friend E, who can pilot a helicopter, drive a race car, make a ten course French meal with one hand tied behind her back, tie speaks or can read 5+ languages, and sew wedding dresses while writing computer code or snapping beautiful photography once said that she is often tormented with all of the areas of knowledge of which she is ignorant. I laughed at her pointing out all of her accomplishments, many of which a vast majority of people will not never come close to mastering. She was unconvinced, but Socrates said that "the beginning of wisdom is the admission of one's ignorance."

As I review my resume I wish that my hair were long enough to chew on. There are so many things that I wish I knew. This, that, gah! x, y, and z! It's enough to render a person catatonic.

But if I am honest with myself, even the director of planning of the City of Los Angeles doesn't know evvvverything about planning. If he did, we would live in Utopia, not Los Angeles. We are always learning, always ever evolving, all of us.

I know more than I did when I first started grad school, some valuable lessons and others are hard-won truths. But I will know more two years from now than I do now. And even more two years from that time.

One of my favorite poems in high school was Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins Make Much of Time." This was due in no small part to Robert Sean Leonard's tortured role in the movie Dead Poets' Society, perfect for an angst-ridden teenager in the Midwest, in which this poem played a key part. Being a perfectionist I am often consumed with thoughts of what am I missing?! What don't I know!? Time nips at my heels! I must round out my wheelhouse! Instead, I need to sit back, take a breath, and now that while my drive for perfection will serve me well in my work mode, not to let perfection be the enemy of good. Focus on what I know how and know well and be sure that future employers are made aware of these attributes.

As another favorite poet, T.S. Eliot soothed in "the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions

And for a hundred visions and revisions

Before the taking of a toast and tea. "

{stanzas 23-34}

OK, it's doubtful that Eliot would be highly sympathetic to my plight. He came off as rather stingy emotionally and more than a little pretentious. But it is gratifying to know that there is "time yet for a hundred indecisions/ And for a hundred visions and revisions/ Before the taking of a toast and tea"

And although it is unrelated to anything in this post, it is another poem about time and one of my favorites by Henry van Dyke,

"Time is too slow for those who wait,

too swift for those who fear,

too long for those who grieve,

too short for those who rejoice,

but for those who love, time is eternity."

Here is Herrick's poem in its entirety-

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer,
But being spent, the worse, and worst,
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.