Twists & Turns

Ever since around 2006, my life has taken all sorts of twists and turns. One of the first being my decision to wholly commit to finishing college. Other twists involved changing my major (a couple of times) then going on and completing graduate school. I’m sure most of this doesn’t sound too strange for the typical college student. But when that student is 45 years old in a class full of 18 year olds, you can see where it could get weird.

I’ve always been a dreamer. An undisciplined dreamer mind you, but a dreamer all the same. For me reality set in after the birth of our first child, meaning instead of changing jobs on a whim, you sucked it up and made a paycheck. This was all fine and well, it planted within me the seeds that would later produce the drive to finish my education. So in a way the dream killer of hard, cold reality lead me further down the path to my dreams.  

A lot of times twists and turns can seem time consuming and wasteful. It isn’t until much later on that we are better able to see that what we once thought was a roadblock was actually a lifesaver. There were more than a few times on my path where stumbling blocks ended up saving my ass. And things I found inconvenient were really warning signs of danger ahead. But knowing this doesn’t stop us from cussing the driver ahead of us or the detours we may face.

I suppose the moral here is to remind each of us that life is seldom a straight or smooth path. That we should take each sharp turn with caution. And to remember that paths that are quick and easy, usually don’t end up being much fun.