Learning to Reject Harvard

On pearls, power, and how to become a person who can let go

Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash

I wish I could say that my writing is an exercise in dispensing the accumulated wisdom of the last 55 years. In all honesty and humility, though, every one of my posts is less a lecture and more a confession. A map of paradoxes I’m still navigating. A travel journal of places where I’m still lost. And if you read closely, you’ll find breadcrumbs that lead to every one of my neuroses.

Take, for example, my post about Lady Ragnell — the so-called Loathsome Lady. I hate to admit it, but it never occurred to me, not for a moment, to give her the choice. That post wasn’t a sermon — it was a mirror.

Or my recent piece about Pope Leo XIV and trusting the obscure and oft times circuitous path to one’s destiny. I wrote it while in the midst of a private crisis, wondering if I’d somehow missed my calling. If the train had left the station and I’d be stuck, forever circling the same track. His story moved me for many reasons, but one line stayed lodged in my chest: the fact that he turned down Harvard Law School.

What kind of person can do that?

Could I have?

Not just logistically — but emotionally, spiritually? Could I have said no to the status, the structure, the certainty? I don’t think I could have at that age. I’m not sure I could now! I think I would have been too scared. I think I would have clung to the shiny offer, not because it was right, but because it was safe. Let’s be honest -no one would be criticized for going to Harvard.

And that’s when I remembered a parable I once pulled from a Zen deck — the story of the man and the pearl. It goes something like this:

A man was told in a dream that he would be given a pearl of great value. One day, a stranger handed it to him freely, just as the dream foretold. But instead of bringing peace, the pearl brought torment. He was terrified of losing it. Worried about being robbed. Anxious that his friends and family would expect things from him he didn’t know how to give. The blessing quickly became a burden.

So, he returned to the stranger and handed the pearl back. He said, "I have a feeling this pearl will bring me more anxiety than joy. I'm returning it to you — and I want you to teach me how to be someone who can let go of something so valuable with ease. Because that, I believe, is the truest kind of wealth."

That story lives in me now like a koan.

Every opportunity carries within it a shadow. Every gift, a complexity. Sometimes what looks like a blessing becomes a trap. And sometimes the real work isn’t in acquiring something valuable, but in learning how to hold it lightly. Or let it go altogether.

I think about all the things I’ve longed for — visibility, accomplishment, recognition. I wonder if the universe hasn’t withheld them but rather protected me from them. Because maybe I’m still becoming the person who could carry them without being carried away.

I think of the jobs I didn’t get, the people who walked away, the doors that closed when I felt most hungry. At the time, I called them failures. Now I wonder if they were just pearls, I wasn’t ready to hold.

It’s easy to fixate on what we want. Harder to ask: Who would I have to become in order to hold it well?

We think the outer accolades we accumulate are what matter — that they’ll keep us safe or guarantee a happy ending. But the parable of the pearl suggests something deeper: that the real work is to not need anything so badly that our inner okayness is tethered to it. That peace comes not from possessing something valuable, but from not being possessed by it.

Perhaps the real work is to not need anything so badly that our inner okayness is tethered to it.

I’m pretty sure I’m not yet (will I ever be?) the kind of person that could give a total stranger an expensive pearl without flinching. But in this season of my life, I’m trying to learn how to hold things more loosely — success, relationships, identity. To love without gripping. To trust without needing a guarantee. To carry whatever pearls life gives me with a soft, open palm.

There’s a Zen teaching I return to often — just three lines:

How well did you live?
How well did you love?
How well did you learn to let go?

Maybe the answer to all three is the same.