trust me on the sunscreen

In 1997, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schumich wrote the article, "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young". With the tone of a commencement address, it offers the kind of wisdom that I appreciate more and more with every passing year of life experience. I discovered the piece set to music on Baz Luhrmann's 1998 album, Something for Everybody, which my mom and I loved to listen to in the car on our daily commute. I didn't realize how much I had internalized the song's lessons until I caught myself dispensing the same advice to friends. I say things like, "the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young" or "your choices are half chance; so are everybody else's" or "don't expect anyone else to support you" without consciously trying to quote Schumich. And the older I get, the more I see these things are true.

I think taking time to reflect on the Suncreen Song is a small step toward living with more simplicity because it is an exercise on perspective. As a business student I enjoy mapping my goals according to academic and material attainment - a CA designation, an MBA, a Burberry trench coat, a Birkin bag, a cottage in Muskoka,the ability to donate money to my alma mater and to the arts - but it's equally important to plan for how I want to feel once I have these things. When the CV is polished and the closet stocked with luxury goods, what's left is the everyday living. Being close to the people I love... taking care of my body... having a garden... appreciating all the possibility of being young because I too will get old eventually... maybe life really is that simple.