My Life is in My Hands

I saw an episode of Seinfeld tonight where George Costanza, who was in between jobs and deciding what to do for a living, said the above pearls of wisdom.

When I was in high school, I made friends with the ESL students, (English as a Second Language). They were students whose families came to America from foreign countries. They had to take the ESL class, in addition to their regular classes, to improve their English. There were a few kids from Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong, and maybe one from Europe. But the largest number of ESL students were those who came to America to escape the turbulence in their home countries. There were several Iranian students whose families had fled Iran because of the revolution a few years previously. When asked where they were from, they would say "France," because that's where they had originally settled after leaving Iran (as many Iranians did after the revolution). They were afraid of being perceived as "the enemy" once they came to America. There were also many students from El Salvador because of that country's civil war of the early 1980s. I used to hang out in the ESL classroom during my studyhall periods, helping the students with their reading, and becoming their friend. I learned as much about their cultures as they learned about mine, plus I got to know them for the people they were, not the way perhaps most people in my school saw them: the kids who couldn't speak the language - you never noticed them, and you didn't even know their names.

One of my friends from ESL was from Hong Kong. Her name was Vivian. Although still in high school, she was already a pro at the ancient art of reading palms. One day in the ESL classroom, she read mine. Her predictions for me, based on the lines in my palm, were as follows:

1. I'll have a lot of trouble with my job.
2. I'll get married.
3. I'll have three kids.
4. I'll be rich.
5. I'll live to be very old.



Twenty-three years later, the only prediction that has come true so far is number one. But boy, was Vivian right on the money with that one! At the time, I took her prediction literally, thinking that, my first job out of college, I'd hate my boss or something, but that I'd get another job and everything would be swell. No such luck. Looking back at my work history, I've had a series of jobs that I either wasn't happy at, didn't do well at, wasn't satisfied with, or was simply frustrated by a lack of progress in. And at the moment I am without a job at all. But that's okay. Like George Costanza, I, too, am in a transition phase. And I hold out hope that, because Vivian was so accurate about my employment situation, her other predictions will come true too. Is there still a chance of me getting married and having kids? That sure would make my mom happy. Will I be rich? That'd be awesome. And will I live a long life? I hope so. That means I still have plenty of time to find my niche in this world.