A smooth hand-off of his department to new owners in St. Louis took eight months. So it was a long goodbye to work he enjoyed and 17 years of friendships.
The transition was doubly difficult because of how he views work. Commit long-term to your employer, he says. Give your absolute best. This is how you live out your calling and live into what comes next.
But where’s next? And what next?
These are my husband’s questions. They are also our son’s questions.
Silas graduates high school next spring and is knee-deep in campus visits and SAT test prep. As he talks aloud about his future, we hear his inner conflict: Do I pursue what I love? I’m not even sure what that is yet. Maybe I should just pick a career that will make me a lot of money.
“When you could pay your way through college by waiting tables, the idea that you should ‘study what interests you’ was more viable than it is today when the cost of a four-year degree often runs to six figures,” wrote Glenn Harlan Reynolds, in an essay for The Wall Street Journal.
Our son worries about choosing the wrong path. No more are the 20s the years of do-overs.