If you’re looking for a graduation gift, you might consider novelist Ann Patchett’s book, What Now?, based on her 2006 commencement address at her alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College, north of New York City.

The book is about being at a crossroads in life, and Patchett’s own discovery that while you should prepare for the future, you also need to let life unfold with the understanding that your life plans inevitably won’t work out. The message: Accept uncertainty, and enjoy the journey into unknown territory.

In her 2006 speech, Patchett compared fiction writing to duck hunting.

“You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog,” she said. “You get into the water before dark, wearing a little protective gear, stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. ... But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you’ve created, because more often than not the ducks don’t show up.”

The secret, in Patchett’s view, is finding the balance between going after what you want and being open to the things that actually come your way.

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, conveyed a similar message in another memorable commencement address in 2005 at Stanford University.

At age 30, Jobs got fired from Apple, and even though it was the company he co-founded, it turned out to his benefit. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything,” Jobs told the Stanford graduates. “It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

It’s the wisdom you learn by living, and not necessarily in a classroom. What Now? was published by HarperCollins.

—McClatchy Newspapers