"Thoughts come clearly while one walks." - Thomas Mann
It is a Saturday afternoon and I am sitting with a group of social work students in a rather stark classroom on the second floor of Stevenson Hall. We are a diverse bunch. Young and not so. Men and women. Experienced and as green as they come.
It is their fieldwork seminar class, an opportunity for them to review their week “in the field” and ask the question, “What is it I want to learn today?” Each week I ask someone to bring in an “ice breaker”, something to get the conversation started and the creative juices flowing. The questions always amaze me.
Knowing what you know today, what other career might you have chosen?
An invisible hand shot up in my brain. I know that one.
A couple of years ago I was at a professional crossroads. After 20 years of working in the mental health community, I was faced with the decision to close the non-profit agency I had run for over 10 years. I was about to be laid off. The economic climate had turned sour and it was just too hard to keep the doors open anymore. For the first time in my life, I would be joining the ranks of the unemployed. I was scared to death.
A friend referred me to someone he knew. “She helped me,” I remember him saying, “I think she can help you too. You really need to call her.”
I remember that first conversation vividly. “I’m burned out,” I told her. “I don’t love what I do anymore. I need to do something different but I don’t know what. I can’t figure it out. I’m not sure what I want. And I’m tired. Very, very tired. I just can’t do this anymore.
I can’t. I don’t. I won’t. Black cloud words. She’d heard it all before.
“Make a list of the 10 most significant events or experiences in your life,” Bonnie assigned me in our first meeting. And so I did.
The answers came quickly. Within moments the list wrote itself and I sat back to look at what was there. It was the beginning of a journey of re-discovery. Just who was I, anyway?
That was just the tip of the iceberg. There were lots of questions. Questions about what I loved and what I didn’t. What I believed about myself and what I did not. Bright ideas, negative voices … and dreams. Lots and lots of dreams.
I was surprised just how far away I had ventured from my heart, from what was really important to me. Not big, obvious, detours down paths marked with warning signs and flashing lights. Small ones. Like tiny little forks in the road that had taken me farther and farther from what I really loved about this career in the first place. It had happened gradually, over time. So gradually, in fact, that I hadn’t even noticed, until the day that I woke up with that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I just could not make go away.
So I started to walk. Like Bill Murray’s character, Bob Wiley, in “What About Bob”, I began to take baby steps. One step at a time. One. tiny. step. Some days it was many. Some days only one. But every day there was a step.
And gradually, I found my way back.
Recently my sister found herself in the same situation. A gifted Special Ed teacher, she had spent years in the classroom and had come to the same conclusion. She just couldn’t do it anymore. I gave her Bonnie's number and she recently began her own list.
What I learned from that journey was to pay attention to those little forks in the road. To make a list of the things that we love and make sure that we do at least one of them every day. To ask the question, “Just who am I anyway?” and take the time to listen to the answer.
And remember to keep walking.
Knowing what you know today, what other career would you have chosen?
Image from here.