| Regardless of who started it, I know it's a question many of us have asked ourselves. I'm sticking with the answer that I gave over a month ago: "It May Go Differently." Those words represent a reality with which I've had a problem for some time. When one is seventeen, on the precipice of making choices that - unlike most previous ones - one knows will impact adulthood - they're foreboding, representing the possibility of failure. In fact, I dare say that those of us who were most focused on our futures at such a young age were likely among the least prepared to deal with the uncertainty and risk of failure those words represented to us. To know you can influence the direction of your own life is indeed empowering, but to think your life can be enriching and planned is a disillusion that school and adolescence can feed. Then the diet changes. |  |
As years progressed, I had a mix of jealousy and awe when I would see others taking what I term "detours" in life, by which I mean doing what they thought they should or what they thought necessary at the time even if it took them far afield of their plans, and trusting that they (or God) would get back on track when the time is right. How can you know? (After all, if you admit the plan didn't work out, what makes you think it will?) What if you get lulled into the routine security of a daily grind you would never have chosen from the outset, too scared to leave it's reliability to take an on-ramp back to the less secure route toward your aspirations?
Now, I think my concern was mostly right as it applies to those for whom a detour was seen as just that, because they ignored the same thing that I did: "the plan" is neither perfect nor static. As a consequence, not all deviations from it are letting yourself down. Sometimes, our aims and values change, while others become intensified and enriched. I'm not going to drone on about "maturity," a term that I think is too often used as a shiny veneer for settling, or as a way to exalt your own preferences by putting others down (as "immature"). I just have in mind gaining more self-awareness. Across the years, as I've ventured out into more situations - without the need to be worldly, a social butterfly, or masterful in my field by any stretch - I've learned more about myself. Sometimes what I want is really what I want, so I don't lose sight of that, while in other instances I realize other values, other aspects of life, make what I thought I wanted less important.
Ironically, in my career, I'm getting back "on course" only after a detour of sorts. The detour wasn't nearly as hard as the one with which some people are faced, nor as those I feared facing in the past and dodged only by the Grace of God, Family, and Friends, but it did make me see that sentiments like isolation and disappointment would prod me to continue to strive for something better. I have hope that I'm moving forward now.
At the same time, I'm wondering if I missed out on what mattered most. I would like to share this better place with the special individual with whom I was privileged to share a good portion of the last year. Begrudgingly, I accept that there is no one "linchpin" that caused us to not work as a couple, but I do believe if I'd wrestled with career and financial uncertainty with much more grace, trust, and calm, we might still be together. If the opportunity I'm enjoying today had come a bit sooner, we might be sharing it today. Would we have had years ahead of us if we could have skipped a few months?
Along with my hope and gratitude - which are very real, I assure you - I'm left with a few questions. Reflectively, I wonder if I realized then how special we were, and trusted her to realize it, if I could have chosen to "bet" on us before having this kind of "launch" in my field and trust that it was a choice? Prospectively, now that I think I may be on a better footing, will I get another chance to build what I could have if I'd known this opportunity would come, or if it would have come earlier? Both questions center around a simpler one, "If something had happened sooner - either an external event or an internal realization/appreciation - would it all be different?"
The third question may strike some as a bit more bizarre. Because there are at least two "changepoints" where I see my life going very differently, part of me sometimes wonders if there is an alternative reality taking place in which I'm sharing a brighter future with her? Partly, I do enjoy some metaphysics, especially as it relates to time, but aside from those quandries, I wonder what this yearning represents. Is it just lingering attachment and/or self-doubt, or is it something more? A Spiritual message through a rift? A pull to merge the two into a more coherent, fulfilling, unified life?
I'm pretty sure any answers will flow more from accepting that, "it may go differently."
