FAIR's Rising Generation

Archive for August 8th, 2009

I love my job.  I work in clothing retail where I help people decide what to buy and be friendly to everyone.  They pay me to do that!  When I first started there, I was surrounded by great employees who had worked there from months to years and they all wanted me to succeed.

One task that scared me when I first started was refolding the dress shirts.  The store folds the ones on display expertly.  I was genuinely afraid of trying to figure out how to do my share of refolding shirts customers try on.  Josh, one of the employees,  told me early on to, “Just follow the creases, that’s what I do.”  In other words, the shirts had visible, deep creases, and all I needed to do was refold along them to get the shirt looking as good as it was supposed to.  That didn’t stop me from the occasional mess up, but Josh kept repeating the same words, “Just fold along the creases, that’s what I do.”

When a new employee came on I overheard Josh telling him, “I just fold along the creases.”  I went up to Josh and sarcastically said, “that’s just your life motto isn’t it?”  He said, “yeah,” we laughed about it and kept going.

I’m not about to write a book on it, but if there is a pattern to folding a shirt based on creases, there is a pattern to life based on this wisdom.

I learned from a very young age that I had not had a significant life problem that someone else didn’t already have.  Someone else made the creases.  I can tread my own way, or I can follow their way (in some cases actually, know what not to do) and bring order, harmony, balance to a chaotic heap.

If I ever get in trouble following a false crease at the store, I definitely get in trouble following someone’s poor insights.  If Fred (my imaginary friend) does something amazing, nearly dies, turns to me and says, “That was awesome, I’m doing it again,” I’m going to say Fred hasn’t learned his lesson, and I probably won’t take too much from it.

My parents, on the other hand, aren’t up to date on a lot of technology, music, youth culture, etc., but they do know how relationships work, what’s a strong one, when one is going to fail, and how to recover from a failed one.   They know about spiritual rollercoasters; they know about staying motivated.  They’re not the only ones, but they’ve made some of the deepest creases in life.

If there is a deeper message in Josh’s message, it is this: You aren’t facing something someone else hasn’t gone through, and chances are, there’s someone close that can help.