MOMENT OF REVELATION

A Word on Your One Wild and Precious Life

I WAS A MISERABLE first-year law-school student, suffering yet another massive migraine, standing in the shower in the upstairs bathroom of my parents’ house on an otherwise uneventful Sunday morning, when the revelation hit me: I could just quit.

Quit?

Surely I had that wrong.

I couldn’t quit.

My parents were well acquainted with struggle in life, and they were determined that their circumstances would not define them. My mother, the only child of an auto assembly-line worker, had lost her own mother at age ten. She grew up with the proverbial evil stepmother. She was a bright student, a valedictorian, but her father refused to allow her to attend college. So she ran away from home at eighteen and somehow made her way to Texas to join the Women’s Army Corps. She eventually became the secretary to the commanding officer at the military base, which is how she met my father.

Mom was a richly talented artist who mostly put her art aside while she poured herself into her three children—determined they would have the education, the experiences, and the opportunities she had not.

My father grew up with a noticeable physical deformity in a tiny Texas town. When he was thirteen, his father and brother died within nine months of each other, and his mother never fully recovered from the shock and grief. After World War II, he went to the “wrong” law school—University of Texas, before anyone had ever heard of it—definitely not Harvard or Yale. He succeeded in law by dint of sheer hard work and intellectual prowess. He eventually became dean of Duke University Law School, a deputy US attorney general, and a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He taught his children that they would succeed if they just kept going when the going got tough.

My parents were not quitters. They were not sympathetic to the phrase “I don’t like it.” Hard work and perseverance were their credo, and what they wanted more than anything was for me to fulfill my potential. They both thought that following my father’s footsteps into the legal profession was the right plan for me.

I knew how much they had invested in me. I knew how many of their hopes and dreams were reflected in me. I knew they had overcome so much more than I could understand.

Surely I couldn’t just quit!

Still, I was ready to quit.

Until that point in my life, the only thing I truly excelled at was people pleasing, particularly parent pleasing. I worked hard to please my parents—much to the resentment of my brother and sister at times.

I was not going to be the one to disappoint Mom and Dad.

However, by the second day of class, I knew I hated law school. When my dad came to visit, I told him how much I hated it. I told him about the constant headaches, and the complete lack of joy or interest I felt each time I walked into the classroom.

“Give it a year, Carly,” he said. “See how you feel then.”

A year sounded like an eternity to me.

Shortly after his visit, I traveled home to see my parents. I did not have in mind that I would quit that weekend. Nevertheless, it was during that trip, while standing in the shower one morning, that I made up my mind. This was my life . . . what poet Mary Oliver calls my “one wild and precious life.”[1] It didn’t feel wild or precious just then. It felt dreadful and disappointing at best.

I craved the wild-and-precious thing.

Resolved, I dressed, headed downstairs, ushered my parents together, and plunged headlong into my announcement.

“I hate law school. It is not what I am meant to do. I quit.”

My father said the worst thing he could have said: “Carly, I am very disappointed. I am afraid you may not amount to anything . . .”

Ugh.

My mother, looking very grave, asked, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

I don’t know? I don’t know?! I have always known what came next!

I did not want to disappoint my parents. I felt heartbroken by their obvious resignation to the fact that their daughter was making a terrible, terrible mistake.

And not knowing what came next, I felt terrified.

Still, I did not want to sign up for a life that wasn’t my own. I was heartbroken and terrified, but by the end of that agonizing conversation with my parents, I also realized that I felt totally, utterly free.

The following day, I flew back to Los Angeles, packed up my sparse belongings, and vowed never, ever to look back.

———

I spend a fair amount of time these days speaking to civic organizations, university students, corporate audiences, church groups, and others. I love connecting with people from a variety of walks of life in these somewhat intimate forums, and I always stick around after my talks to greet anyone who cares to chat. I’ve given hundreds of talks, maybe even thousands by now, and after nearly every one, at least one person has approached me to say, “Thank you. I feel so lifted up.”

It’s uncanny how often this happens, and it’s always those same two simple words: lifted up.

In a day and age when so many people feel anxious and overwhelmed, hopeless and helpless, weary and annoyed and afraid, such a boost is no small thing. We need our sights lifted from our present circumstances to what is possible in the days to come. We need our thoughts lifted from negative self-talk and chronic comparisons to confirmation of what makes us distinct. We need our hearts lifted from despondency and despair to openness, expansiveness, and peace.

I’ve come to believe there are two kinds of people, both in your relational sphere and in mine. There are those who push us down, tempting us to tap into the worst, smallest, most self-centered version of ourselves; and there are those who lift us up, compelling us to reach for the best us we’ve ever known.

I’ve written this book with the singular desire to be the kind of person who lifts you up. My hope is that the lessons I’ve learned since that moment of revelation in the shower, and the decisions I’ve made to reclaim my own power, take possession of my own life, and find my own way, will be instructive—and inspiring—for you as well.

I know what it feels like to possess an abundance of anxiety and a scarcity of peace. I know what it’s like to try to live someone else’s dream, to strive for someone else’s goal, and to attempt to get where I’m going by following someone else’s plan. I know what that soul-level dissatisfaction feels like. I know the drudgery. I know the disappointment. I know the pain.

But that’s not all I know. Along with that decision to take back the power that had been mine all along—the power to assess, the power to reason, the power to choose—came a new wave of learning and insight. Among other things, I learned these key principles:

There is only one wild and precious life with your name on it, just waiting to be lived. The chapters that follow will show you how.