Step Right Up

I don’t have a college degree. I’ve gone to college. I’ve gone to several actually. Took classes. Changed majors. Lived on campus. Commuted. All the while, as I sat in class, I wondered what the hell I was doing there. And why did I have to take writing intensive Russian History to fulfill a credit. I think, looking back on it, I was part lost, part lazy and part overwhelmed. How do you know what you want to do when you are eighteen? Sure, there were those friends who had a calling, who felt inclined towards a particular profession or career but I’m not talking about those friends, I’m talking about me. Lost, reaching, unsure and afraid.

I remember thinking tons of times about how I wanted to major in six things. Why did I have to be limited to one? And then I used to think about why I didn’t want to major in just one. Why couldn’t I find where I fit? We all belong somewhere right? I mean, isn’t that life’s purpose, to figure out where you belong? And then to make a life there, amongst the rest of the puzzle pieces put together to make the picture that you live?

Could it be that maybe my piece fits in a bunch of different puzzles and that maybe, just maybe like Po Bronson once said in the Introduction to his book What Should I Do With My Life, “You want a step?  Step one: stop pretending we’re all on the same staircase.”  Have you read that book? You might want to if you ever feel a little lost or want to learn about people trying to figure out how exactly to go about putting one foot in front of the other. The introduction alone grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.

So here I am, on my staircase, trying regularly to figure out if I’m utilizing it correctly. Have I taken the stairs in the right order? Should I be further along? What’s at the top? Is there a top? And, if my staircase is really my own and if I really believe that we are all on different staircases, then why do I spend so much time thinking about where I belong in relation to others? I belong where I am, right? There should be peace in that, yes? Why then, do I constantly feel a need to reach, to find, to understand? Is the restlessness that I carry around with me at times there because it’s supposed to be as a fundamental part of my staircase, or have I fallen off? Have I derailed myself? Could it be that I’m back at the bottom, standing on the landing, looking up wondering whether or not I have the energy to even be a part of the process?

I feel that in life, there is something to be said for the person who reaches, who pushes, who is constantly exploring. You grow that way. I can appreciate that and I understand it. Maybe, just maybe, the reason I have questioned and pushed and wandered and reached all of these years is because I have been growing. Maybe, just maybe, if I had found a way to look at it that way instead of fretting away my time trying to figure out where I was supposed to be, the restlessness I felt would have been replaced by laughter and joy and peace. I would have looked at my life more as an adventure and not merely a collection of boxes needed to be checked off according to a time line set by what I thought was expected. Better yet, I would have hopefully understood that the boxes to be checked weren’t standardized and that I could make them anything I wanted. How fantastic is that.

Anyway, as I sit here, thinking about my staircase and my boxes and my joy and my next step, I wonder if anyone else feels this way. How do other people handle their lives and do they have boxes that they plan on checking or conversely, do they follow their happiness and find that when they look back on their life, it’s one giant box that they’ve happily checked? I don’t know but, I wonder. I wonder what makes us all tick and if we’re happy and how, when we’re not, we fix it. I find that stuff interesting. It intrigues me. Maybe enough to go back to college. And declare a major. And check off a box that I’ve made for myself versus one that was in the general application that seemed to come with life after high school.

All I can say is that I really feel it’s time to push, to explore, to wonder and to reach some more and this time, I’m choosing to embrace all of it. I’d like to think that if someone was to take my picture at this very moment, the caption that would accompany my photo would read, “Confidently she grasps the railing and smiling, she approaches the next step.”