SETH MCBRIDE, CLASS OF 2016 I D I D N ’ T D O W H AT I S E T O U T T O D O . Hotshot graduate that I was, brimming with potential, I let myself down. Young Me would be ashamed of who I have become. In the speech I gave at graduation in 2016, I declared, “We may not all know our majors, but we know who we are.” But, I thought to myself, I know my major. I know exactly who I’m going to be. I thought of myself as the golden boy. Everyone believed in me—no one more than myself. Therefore, I was destined for success. I was going to be a screenwriter and pen the next great American TV show. After a year of college, I visited my Bear Creek drama teacher Dr. Lynch. Telling him all I’d done and all I
So, as I reassured Dr. Lynch I wouldn’t fall for those
hoped to do, I remember being a bit taken aback by
mistakes, I promptly fell.
his reservations. He warned me to be careful about the lifestyle of Los Angeles—how it could drain me, how it could change me. Most of all, he reminded me that the meaning of life was not to be found in fame. Nothing I hadn’t heard a thousand times before. It’s tricky. Those are the virtues your parents tell you
It’s not even what you’d think. I wasn’t partying like crazy or burying myself in work. I didn’t change all that much. It was just that deeply engrained sickness I inherited from my culture that nagged at me at all times. If I wasn’t producing something, moving towards that bright potential future, I was wasting my time.
every day through childhood, and yet society teaches
Luckily, blessedly, I met the love of my life at college.
the opposite. It paints a totally different picture of
She was, in no way, the woman I imagined I would
success. We end up learning to hold those things in
marry. Allison was somehow almost entirely free of
a strange, discordant tension. Yes, money and fame
that cultural lie. It was strange. Every step toward
won’t make us happy. But, we are totally going to
falling in love with her seemed a step away from “my
pursue those things until we get them, because…
true self.” I began to limit my so-called “productive”
well, what else are we going to do? And I didn’t
activities in favor of being there for her when she
really care about fame so much as I did success. Our
needed me. This dichotomy led to some conflict
society has a deep-seeded obsession with hard work
in our relationship, but we were able to work
and wealth. Those things quite accidentally became
through it. In June of 2020, the year of COVID, we
unconsciously equivalent to success in my mind.
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MODUS VIVENDI – Summer 2021
