Sheep don't surf.

My 15 year-old daughter was crying and it was my fault. It was ten to seven in the morning and she had just told me to hurry up and take her to school. She was way early; and I was not ready to go. "Did you eat?" I asked.

"No, but I’ll get some cereal."

She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.

"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.

"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"

I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.

I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.

We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.

Baa. Baa. Baa.

Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.

Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.

Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.

Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.

Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they  carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.

My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.