This post is dedicated to Bonnie Slotnick with much gratitude for her effort and kindness.

I almost deleted the email.  It looked like some sort of a scam.  The subject line read: “Something of Yours-?”  Annoyed, I assumed it was someone trying to get me to send money to some foreign country, complete with my credit card information.  Fortunately, my curiosity got the best of me as I noticed there was a photo attached.

“I have a cookbook shop in New York,” the note began.  She described how she purchases things that her friend finds at thrift shops to complement her vintage cook books.  Among the items she had acquired was a thirteen inch spoon with an inscription on it that she believed once belonged to me.  It ended with “If you would like to have it, I’ll be happy to send it to you.”

As the photo opened up on my computer screen, it was like traveling in a time machine.  Engraved on the spoon handle was indeed my name, the date 10-16-77, the name Ebony, and the letters “1st W.T.C.”  Sluth that she was, and a fellow horsewoman, Bonnie realized the letters stood for Walk-Trot-Cantor, and that this spoon was a prize from a horse show.  “As a rider myself, I would love to be reunited with such a trophy, had I ever won one,” she said.

Indeed, I was thrilled to see that spoon and hold it in my hand again, all these many years later.  But there was so much more to the story for me, beyond being a practically antique trophy! The horse’s name on the spoon was the first horse I had ever been allowed to take care of.  After years of wishing, dreaming, and making deals with the devil in my mind, my mother advocated for me and allowed me to lease a little black horse owned by a former neighbor who now lived on a farm.  It was the beginning of intense years of riding, working at the stables to pay for lessons, and feeling a sense of belonging and identity.

My mother spent many hours driving me to barns and tack shops (I could spend hours just buying a lead rope).  She woke up at 4 am many a Saturday or Sunday morning to take me to the stable so I could travel with my trainer to a horse show.  She watched countless laps around a ring that must have looked all the same to her for so much of it. She learned the phrases as I did, countercanter, change of lead, and the significance of 3’6” (the height of the jumps in the highest youth division). And most of all, she endured the scrapes, bruises, and broken bones that come with a rider’s life as well as the bruises to the heart as a girl outgrows her first mount or fails to make the finals in the most important of shows.

After the wildfire of October 2016, my relationship with “stuff” has changed.  When you almost lose everything and have friends who actually do, it reorients you to what indeed you want to keep.  When the granny unit that my mother was living in burned down, I lost so much of what was to be inherited of our family memories, especially of my mother’s family history and her own mementos I had always assumed I would have to keep. Bonnie, sitting in her shop in NYC, could have had no idea what that spoon would mean to me – a rare piece of my childhood and a symbol of the bond with my late mother that survived that horrible day.

As I hold the spoon in my hand, I can smell the grass as the hooves of my horse move through it on that chilly October morning in New Jersey. I can feel the leather of the saddle beneath me and the sound of the thud as I dismount. I hand my mother a carrot, and as scared as she ever could be, she would lean over and offer it to the beautiful animal she was absolutely terrified to be near.  But she loved me, and since I loved that horse, she loved it, too. A big thanks to Bonnie, a lover of books and of old stories, who took the time to find me, even to call me, and made this happy reunion possible. It is a reunion not just with a spoon, but with a girl, a love, and a mother’s love that still lives on within me.  

It’s such a fun time of year with graduations all around the community. Every college, high school, and even your local elementary school has their ceremony to honor the achievements of our young people.  Besides the academic success, just getting through the social dramas and bureaucratic tangles is something to celebrate! But I am reminded of some advice I learned from my studies (and find to be true in experience) about accomplishment.  That after achieving any goal, even ones you have longed for your whole life, there can be a let down. Understanding this phenomenon can be helpful in keeping yourself on track.

The wave of disappointment that often occurs after success was named the “arrival fallacy” by Harvard expert on positive psychology, Tal Ben-Shahar.  (I would assume a Harvard grad would have had have some!) He describes it as “the illusion that once we make it, once we achieve our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness.”   He posits that this is why so many celebrities struggle with depression and substance abuse. They may start out unhappy with the dream that once they make it, they will be happy. After they achieve their goal, they are happy for a little while, but it doesn’t last.  Then there is a hopelessness that couples with the unhappiness.

The old adage that it is the journey, not the destination, seems to be true, at least for long term happiness.  A promotion or a degree will definitely get you more money and open doors that are important for your well being, which contributes to your quality of life.  Most of us are raised with the values of the American Dream – work hard and achieve success, and you will be happy. But once you achieve a goal, life doesn’t magically transform to being a bed of roses.  You are still the same person you were before, and now you may have even more stress or pressure in your new role.

So what is a hard working person who wants to be successful to do?  Don’t stop setting goals, the experts say. In fact, the pursuit of goals can contribute to happiness.  As long as these goals bring value and meaning to your life while you are pursuing them. If you want to be a successful comedian, the process of writing jokes and performing, no matter where, will bring you contentment.  Getting your own HBO special will be the icing on the cake. We are a future oriented people, Dr. Ben-Shahar notes. We need to have goals. But he suggests having multiple goals in multiple areas of your life, both in and outside of work, can help keep you balanced.  And watch out for any sentences that sound like: “I’ll be happy if I can just achieve X.” With all the focus on the perceived benefits of the outcome, we set ourselves up for arrival fallacy.

I remember it well.  After the initial tickle of calling ourselves “Dr.” wore off (especially when people seemed disappointed we were not cardiologists or orthopedic surgeons) we all felt a sense of depletion.  All the years of schooling, all the classes, oral exams and dissertation, we had finally arrived. I had my doctorate hanging on the wall, but I was in tears, sitting at my computer, worrying about getting licensed.  I almost quit. I had fantasies of owning a doughnut shop, early mornings and selling things that instantly made people happy. But luckily deep down I knew that I loved psychology and that the doctorate and license were just vehicles to do the work that I enjoyed, not the end in themselves.  (And I am a terrible cook and would just eat up all my profits, anyhow.)

So my advice to any graduate, or any person who achieves their goal, is to celebrate while you can! But celebrate the process of what it took to get there and the reasons you are doing it. Then kiss your friends and family who supported you along the way.  Spend time with them and share what is important to you. Then set some new goals that also matter. Lately I have been thinking of life as a series of summits in climbing a mountain.  You climb and climb, and then when you arrive, you get a new view of another stage of the climb ahead that you couldn’t see before. Life is never about arriving at a final destination while you are living it.  But it is so important to put down your pack, grab a good snack, and enjoy the view.