Chapter 5:  You Just Might Find… You Get What You Need

On a warm May day in 1989, I wrote my final exam of my final year in university. Latin 101 (a bird course to fill out my credits while I waited to get my golden ticket into the foreign service). Spectacularly, about two minutes in, I realized that our glorious hippy-dippy prof had based half the exam on Rolling Stones’ lyrics. 

Non semper id quod voles.  You can’t always get what you want (but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need 🎶). 

I remember giggling maniacally in the gym, and then singing in my head like it was the Altamont Speedway concert - through the final stroke of the exam, and all the way down to the sticky velvet sofas of the old Duke of Somerset pub, as the power tune of the last hurrah of my last day of university. 

I think of this song every time I feel myself on the rising wave of a big change in my life. A wistful, yet euphoric personal anthem.  On June 15th - the day that marked one month til my final day of work before retirement - I idled in the Timmies drive-thru, and there it was on my radio. You can’t always get what you want, Tamara (unless it’s the Timbit multipack, in which case, you’re all set).

Life transitions come in different packages. Some announce themselves in big shiny boxes, with bold, type-faced labels: Marriage. Children. A new job. You open these with a sense of occasion, with care, and you make them a centrepiece of your life for years ahead.

Others sneak by you in a rumpled brown paper bag, the unforeseen product of a casual decision, or maybe something you didn’t order at all. It wasn’t what you wanted, but it is what you got.

I chose my university because I tried (and failed) to join the parliamentary page program. I joined the foreign service because I got dumped by my first real boyfriend, and thought that dramatically running away to a far-off land would be a comeuppance. Got engaged two months into dating my future, and soon thereafter ex-, husband because, well, he asked.

Sooo… thoughtful decision-making may not always be my strong suit… but the unexpected consequences of ill-planned life moments have brought me great joy. The incredible friends,  kooky adventures - and indeed, some fairly spectacular post-divorce snogs - are worth every detoured dream and silver-lined swap I have had to make. 

Choosing retirement now, at (not quite) 55, may well be a paper-bag decision - an urge for change that could just amount to the need for a really good nap. The sense of moment comes and goes, feeling more like the heady, concentrated freedom of a grade-11 summer vacation (Let’s steal the car and have the craziest 8 weeks ever!!) than the sober embrace of new - final??! - phase of life. 

And I don’t really know if I will get what I want in this next life transition - mostly because I don’t actually know what I want (aside from that nap. And many cocktails. And - why not? - let’s throw in some snogging). Living my life by the philosophy of the Rolling Stones hasn’t let me down yet, and I am sure that whatever comes next, I will have what I need.

🎸🎸🎸