The Best Advice I Ever Received

In a scarred, red leather folder, I keep a letter that my father wrote to me when I was 16.

It’s typed, tightly spaced on both sides of a piece of standard, white paper. It was his response to a weepy phone call asking him to extricate me from a miserable work situation to which I had, at first, happily agreed. I know now there was never any chance he was going to say he was on his way to rescue me. But, he didn’t want hear me crying while he explained why I had to see the job through and how it would make me a better person if I did. So, he wrote it all down. I still have the letter. I still read it.

My best friend and I got the chance to stay at camp for the whole summer if we ran the dining hall. Sounds great – beach, friends, work only three meals a day. I’d already spent a month at camp (my eighth season at a place I still consider “home”). But, the director had to let some of the kitchen staff go and he was in a bind. He promised us that if we ran the dining hall (for 500+ people) then, when we returned as counselors, we would have our pick of any activity area. He was true to his word. We went on to head the sailing and waterskiing programs for years. But, first, we had to survive the dining hall.

It was a muggy, hot August. The kitchen made the weather even more extreme. Three time a day meant three sessions of early prep, organizing and serving, and clean-up. We spent hours sweating through each meal. We weren’t campers anymore, so we didn’t go on trips and couldn’t just show up for any activity when we pleased. We weren’t counselors, so we couldn’t hang out in their lounge or get days off. We just slogged steadily through four weeks of hard, hot, endless, physical work.

My call home came about halfway through that month. I was ready to leave. My father’s letter arrived two days later. It reminded me about the commitment I’d made and the trust the camp director had placed in two, untried, young girls. I had made my own promise in exchange for his and for four weeks, just four weeks, I could make it work. But, he went on, making it work wasn’t enough. I had to do the job right, to do it well and to do it cheerfully. Life is a bowl of cherries, he said. I now had a choice. I could hold all the pits in my mouth and complain about them or I could spit them out and enjoy the sweet fruit.

After I “spit out the pits,” I was finally able to find the fun in my work and the wonderful people around me. I’m still proud that I completed that job well. I still have good friends I made during that difficult month. I still count the camp director as a vital mentor in my life and I still love every moment I spent at that camp.

More than a few people have called me a Pollyanna, always trying to find the silver lining in every situation. My dad didn’t come to bring me home. But, he most certainly did rescue me from a life of discontentment. He challenged me to be happy. That old, ragged letter is still the gift I reread in troubled times. My dad gave me the greatest advice I’ve ever received.