Life’s Many Paths

The above quote can certainly be taken in many ways. I’m not meaning it to be a bad thing. It is more about some of the unconscious things we get wired for as we grow up. For example, it was always a given that we were going to college. I wouldn’t say it was overt pressure. Nothing like “if you don’t get good grades, you won’t get into college”. It was more subtle but it was clearly there.

I remember getting to high school and having friends who grew up in different environments where college wasn’t even part of the picture. It felt strange and foreign to me. Like how could you think that. Even though I now know that college isn’t really for everyone and going just to go often doesn’t really work out.

But that programming you get as you grow up often doesn’t quite match with who you really are and can lead you to ignore paths you really should walk down. All of what I was subtly influenced towards lead me to believe that using my mind was the only thing I was really good at. I was all about the numbers and the logic and nothing else really mattered.

And, yes, all of my childhood programming made it that much harder to go into the dance studio for that first lesson. I mean I’m not a creative type (except I am and just didn’t know it). We were learning a new Mambo step last night and it just came so easily that I didn’t really stop to think that it was from the highest level in Silver.

Yes, some of that is my years of doing this. And some of it is some amount of natural ability that I never explored or knew existed until I started dancing. I do sometimes wonder how things would have turned out if I found this part of me earlier. It would have been interesting, that’s for sure.

But I don’t spend too much time thinking like that. You can’t go back and change your past. I’m just glad I finally walked into a dance studio because it lead to something I didn’t even know I was missing.

Which comes back to the beginning quote. I do think some people know what they want and never question it and end up right where they belong. Good for them. But I think it is more likely that we develop blinders and have an incomplete vision of who we are and what we are capable of doing.

Its why from time to time, you should do something that doesn’t feel like “you”. Never know what you’ll find.