When I was fifteen, I took a course in high school called, “Career Management”. It was designed to teach us how to figure out who we were and what we were best suited towards in life. I remember reading passages out of “What Colour is Your Parachute” and being dazzled by the questionnaires there and on the photocopied sheets our teacher handed out. I had no idea that the answers to my strife and indecision could be solved simply by answering questions around what my functional skills were or what my career goals were. Then I did some personality quizzes, answering such nuanced questions like:
It’s Friday night and everyone is going to a school dance. Which of the following sounds most like you:
a.) Get dolled up and do it fast! You love hanging out with lots of people.
b.) Go reluctantly but tuck yourself into a quiet corner with one or two of your friends.
c.) Agree to go under pressure from your friends but find an excuse to back out.
d.) Refuse to go from the outset. All those people and noise are just too much for you.
Now, any teenager worth their salt knows which one of these makes you sound like a weenie and which sounds cool. I went for cool every time. Needless to say, I never found out what colour my parachute was. I did find out that my school guidance counsellor held out little hope for my aspirations of being an archaeologist, a veterinarian, or a writer. “You don’t have the marks for that,” she told me. She was right, I was kicked out of the school the next year. Nobody cared what colour my parachute was over the next few years when I worked at a fast food joint, then nights at a truck stop, before ultimately joining the army. I don’t recall my salty Warrant Officer asking me if I was being fulfilled by my career.
As years went on and I returned to school and then did some more school, I had little to go on in way of direction. What I did have was this gnawing feeling that I was missing something. I was supposed to be doing something, but I couldn’t figure out what that thing was. Even when I was doing the most important job of all, raising children, I had the sense that I was failing to meet some sort of requirement or expectation. I loved my children and I loved being a mama, but that feeling of missing something wouldn’t leave.
I had a longtime interest in nutrition so I became a nutritionist. No, that wasn’t it. Turned out that convincing people to do something they really didn’t want to do wasn’t my thing. Then I did a sports nutrition program. Fascinating, but I didn’t like the business side of the work. So I took more courses and tried more hobbies. I joined groups and tried my hand at all sorts of things, but still, that feeling that I was off my path persisted.
Sometime in my early thirties, that feeling felt like more of a squeeze than a poke. I started reading all manner of books in hopes that somewhere in those self-help pages I might find the key to the riddle that was me. I felt aimless and so I looked to self-help books to help me find my way. I spoke to the priest at the church we went to. I joined some parenting groups and spoke to other women. Everything, I see now, was in search of the person or the book or the course that could help me find my way back to me.
I don’t think much has changed in the world today. It’s not so much books now, it’s the internet, but in that whole galaxies of things to tap into. Courses and fads and outrages and groups and sides and teams to align ourselves with. All manner of counsel to be tapped into. In fact, there’s so much of everything, that we don’t need to go to one person who may annoy us with things we don’t want to hear, we can first vet out people who rub us the wrong way and just steer our ships into the safe, friendly waters of whatever harbour we find most pleasant.
The internet hasn’t improved this propensity of ours to look for answers outside of ourselves. I think it’s only made things a whole lot worse.
After awhile of being on my searching plight, I lost my steam. The books all started to sound the same. I recognized some sort of endorphin-like high I got from the courses I took or the weekend workshops that got me all jazzed up. That excitement that in great waves while I sat in the audience, but dissipated to a fizzle when I returned to my life. You know the saying, “wherever you go, there you are” - exactly what I now see I was trying to get away from.
It turned out that there was no me to to be found in any of that. My grade ten teacher was wrong to tell me that my dreams of being an archaeologist, digging deep into ancient worlds, was a pipe-dream. Those questionnaires with the assured declarations of who I was should have never trumped who I thought I was, even if I was still figuring it out. It was all just utter nonsense that sounded official enough to adhere to when you’re a fifteen year old girl already on shaky ground.
Ultimately, it wasn’t until I got fed up with listening to everybody else and just allowing myself to float into the abyss of the unknown that I started finding a few footholds here and there. I didn’t know what to do, but I did know that I wasn’t going to read another self-help book or go on another weekend retreat. Instead I started reading old fiction books. I started spending my time outdoors, sometimes just sitting on the grass for an hour in the afternoon or taking a hike through local parks without anything in my ears telling me how to save my life. I started noticing what was around me and listening for what was in me. And then I prayed and offered up a deal to God - if He would help me with the first step on my path, I would take it. And I would take whatever came from then on out.
And so I did. If I had an interest in something, I tried it out with absolutely no investment in the outcome. I met a young couple at the farmer’s market when I was buying some food. They had been working on a farm and we started talking about nutrition and soil and the layers of life we all belong to. They told me I should come work on the farm for a few hours when I got the chance. And from there I volunteered on the farm for an afternoon a week. Then I found out about another farm and went to the woman who owned it and asked if I could work with her pigs to learn from her. We became friends and she shared intimate pieces of her life with me. She taught me about how she was able to live such a profoundly beautiful and simple existence, raising and growing food, with such meagre funds while also caring for her seriously disabled sister and having such a playful, joyful marriage. She taught me things about life much more profound than the raising of a pig.
This is how everything started to go for me as I tapped out of external noise and practiced, in real time, what it was to move in alignment with what life unfurled before me. I surrendered with faith to where my life would bring me.
I met a few younger people at my book launch gathering in North Carolina last week. They had either just recently finished, or were about to finish, their educations. After only speaking with them for a short while I was so impressed with their convictions and the direction they were pointing themselves in. And yet, in them, I could hear the uncertainty of the uncertain. There is often this lure, propped up by well-meaning parents, teachers, or maybe just society as a whole, to go the path of the assured and certain. A trade of relative stability for a passion or a dream. There are times when the slog and the gotta’-get-through-this are necessary in life. The danger is when those become the totality of a life.
Some people are born with an entrepreneurial spirit. I used to think that because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do or how anything I wanted to do would be able to earn me any sort of income, I just didn’t have that trait. My parachute was not coloured in the shade of entrepreneur. My husband was the same way. A career military man, stable, solid, dependable. But what we’ve both discovered is that when we let go of that “security” bit by bit, other paths appeared that we’re simply not there before. It was subtle and slow, nuanced and unpredictable, but we had faith that what came was what was meant to come and we would accept it as a gift.
What I wished I had said to those young people, (so I say it now), is that I was deeply impressed with their values and their vision. That to know the path of a life is not the work of your age. Now is the time to know yourself. Start with whatever you do know - what you like, what you don’t like, what excites you, who excites you, what fills you with purpose, and what dwindles your reserves - and go from there. Move into alignment with yourself and keep going. When you get knocked back, get up. When the people around you question your decisions, hold fast. Create the you that is resilient. The you that you can trust and rely on no matter what comes.
Ultimately, nothing is assured. Nothing is certain. This world is a topsy-turvy place. We can settle and plant roots, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be ripped up. We must remain nimble and adaptable so that we trust in our ability to handle whatever comes. The job can fire you. The government can take your land. The best friend can betray. We can lose so many things, but we can never lose it all. As long as we’re living, there are those impenetrable things, those God-given talents and characteristics in us all that are enough to see us through. But we have to know them, to exercise them, to come to believe in them because we’ve used them and the muscle memory of stepping onto unknown paths, fear or no fear, is strong. We have to be familiar with our capacity.
I believe that there is a reason for our own unique interests and talents. Maybe God puts us together with the tools we’re going to need to see us through this life, yes, but also to bring into this physical plane the very thing we each need from one another to evolve as we are designed to evolve. For us to collectively contribute to a world that is fuller and richer because we’re in it. Maybe that’s the reason for that gnawing. Some people fill it temporarily with distractions, but there is only stifling in that, never peace. I don’t think there can be peace until we are walking the road we are meant to walk. And even then, the road cannot be defined by ease. It may be a road with lush soil and cool grasses that wrap around our toes. It may also be a road full of jagged rocks and uneven terrain. Neither defines the rightness of your path. Yours is yours alone and even if it’s a hard one, we must have faith that we have what we need to still find the meaning of it and share those markers and guideposts with others.
Our lives are ours to honour and nurture, but they are not solitary affairs. The wasting of talents and the diminishment of our gifts is a travesty for us all. We are woven as one whole with threads of different colours and weights and tensile strength, but all of it together matters. We are here together. We are connected. We have a duty to step into the things that scare us. We have a duty to follow the callings of our lives.
I never could have planned my life. I couldn’t have planned this man by my side. I couldn’t have known what was to come and what would be asked of me. If I had to, I never would have been able to offer myself so much or I would think myself greedy. I also would never have been able to take so much from me for I would be certain I couldn’t survive it. I am so grateful that all of my planning didn’t work out. I’m glad I never followed the paths or careers or educational dictates the experts and society told me was ‘the way’. Developing confidence in myself by doing the things I liked, even when they seemed awfully scary and then having faith that my Creator put those little nudges in me to keep me moving, gave me a life I love. It’s painful and heartbreaking and full of love and, yes, still strife, but I am where I’m supposed to be and that’s something worth everyone finding their way to. The best part of all is that the very place we’re supposed to go has no map at all. Onward ho’ into this wild adventure of life!
Another outstanding essay Tara. At 80 now, I may have finally learned what you are saying here. It's never too late.
Sending to my 2 daughters. Wisdom here. Thank you!
Ps: got my book! I’ve decided to read sequentially and suppress my urge to jump to different essays. Already profoundly moving and thought provoking…. I’m going to sip not gulp… savor 🙏