I’ve been told that some people know from early childhood what they want to “be, when they grow up,” and that they steadfastly follow that path into adulthood. I even know people who make plans months and even years in advance for trips, purchases, education, family, and retirement. It never fails to amaze me when their plans come to fruition.
In my case I think of life as being more a game of chance, even with my best intentions.
Take marriage for example. As a child it never entered my consciousness to any great degree. I certainly never planned my wedding. One day a metallic sphere labeled marriage came zooming out of the chute and I began madly flapping my flippers in an attempt to have some control. By some miracle I was able to knock the ball into the game and the chase was on.
Occasionally, I succeeded in gaining a few points, or heading in the direction I intended to go, but more often the ball bounced off something surprising, chattered back and forth between various obstacles, and went in a completely unintended direction. Marriage, children, in-laws, affairs, relocations, grandchildren; they all just sort of happened.
The same pattern followed for education, career, and health. Action and reaction became the buzzwords of my life. I admit to becoming quite a master of reaction but not much of an initiator of the original actions. I had quite an interesting and lucrative career in Clinical Research that began accidentally but allowed me to grab the opportunities as they came along. It isn’t always easy to grab the golden ring as you are screaming past it reacting to the latest in a series of disasters; but it can be done.
As years passed, I occasionally took the reins in hand and attempted to steer my life in a sane-ish direction. But before long I found myself bouncing off some unexpected obstacle and ending up in a place I never expected. Re-marrying, retiring, relocating, becoming a foster parent (to teenagers, no less), possibly returning to work. More than once my calm trajectory has been interrupted by the illness of a loved one, and the subsequent months spent adjusting to all the changes that entails.
In so many cases, while the developments were not planned, I have discovered things I loved that I thought I would hate. It has been a privilege to take care of a dying friend, an honor to be able to give a child a stable, safe home from which to launch themselves into adulthood. Some things I planned and thought I would love turned out disappointing. Living in the mountains where the nearest grocery store is 25 minutes away and it takes an hour to reach what I would call civilization is more of a challenge than I expected. Living without the modern conveniences of dependable internet and cell phone service is a daily frustration. It is not that I didn’t realize the limitations, I just didn’t realize they would bother me as much as they do.
I am older but not much wiser and can reliably predict, not what will happen, but that I won’t be expecting it when it does.
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