what do you want to be when you grow up?
After writing the last blog something hit me. I have always envied people who stuck to one vocation their whole life and really cultivated themselves in an area so fully. I think I have always given preference to this choice and thought this was something I should be doing or striving for. Perhaps some of that came from a social bhav or feeling I grew up with.(Hmmm.. an attainment model) It has taken my whole life to get to a point where I am not judging that part of me that continues to move on. I used to label it as flakey, attention deficit, (to use a really popular over used label), or maybe I just didn’t know what I wanted. Now I see that the ONE constant in my life has been the path of change and perhaps that is one of the many reasons I was so drawn to certain Tantric schools of philosophy.
Looking back I see that staying with something for awhile and then trusting some quiet inner voice ,or sometimes a loud ear-splitting siren that pushed me in a different direction, has been my path. I remember as a teenager feeling so overwhelmed because so many of my class mates seemed to have an idea of what they wanted to BE when they grew up (there is that attainment again). I however, loved so many things. I loved studying languages, anatomy, all the arts, and music, and clearly philosophy. How was I going to choose? My parents pushed me away from pursuing music as a serious career choice. “You’ll never make a living,” they said. That seemed to make things worse inside my own judging, squirrel of an un-yoked teenage mind, “GREAT, I thought, now at 16, I have to be concerned with making a living-good grief!” I tried so hard to push myself to fit into one mold and yet the nature of the infinite possibilities, kept me swimming and often drowning in the current.
In the end I was luckier than most in many ways as I had a very well rounded education from an educational system that still believed that pursuing the arts was just as, or even more important than football. I was “allowed” to get a BFA in Fine Arts only after I had received a 2 year associates (in more important studies like computer programming).
After I graduated I even got to pursue a short-lived music fantasy and started my own rock band and played all over Philly and New York and made a CD. Then after years of late nights and second hand smoke, I put my electric guitar on the stand for a more suitable living (Ok Mom you were right).
Looking back I am grateful for not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. I guess the truth is that I haven’t changed much. I still have multiple interests. Does being a yoga teacher count as a real job? –Ha. I still am playing with and cultivating many of the skills I began with years ago. I love the process of steeping in the learning process, I love the vastness of what the world holds, knowing I will never be able to get even a tiny seed of what is out there and in there.
It reminds me of something Douglas Brooks talks about. Instead of just stepping into the current or being dragged by the current of life’s unfolding, we also have the choice to become the current. I can step into the reality and become the reality of constant change. So, are we there yet? I hope I never am.