"Remember what you loved as a child. Often, our truest passions emerge in childhood, only to be squelched by real life pressures." -- Ruth Zive at The Muse
At the ripe old age of seven, I had my whole life all figured out--or so I thought. Our second grade teacher gave us an assignment, probably still the most common one for kids: Write an essay that answers the questions "What do you want to be when you grow up, and why?"
I wrote one sentence and turned in the paper right away, because I didn't even have to think about it--I was certain: "I want to be an artist because my mother is."
Strangely, the teacher didn't ask me to expand on it. She read it, scribbled an "A" on the paper, and handed it back to me with a smile. As far as she was concerned, I had answered the two questions sufficiently.
There was a lot more to my dream of being an artist than emulating my mother, who had a studio in our house where she taught children's art classes during the summer, and taught adults how to paint on Monday nights after dinnertime. My father was a painter, too, but not professionally. They both set me on my path, though. There was something about the creative process--making something out of nothing--that was magical to me.
When I think back on the things that I loved to do as a child--play the piano, get lost in a book, draw pictures of people and invent stories about them, take pictures of my ever-patient pets--I can still feel the appeal of each of those things. Each one is introspective yet liberating, requires imagination, and is largely solitary. Those things aren't for everyone, but they are definitely for me.
I went through a lot of career upheaval in my 20's and 30's--book publishing, magazine publishing, public relations, advertising--and I see now that I jumped from one thing to another because I wasn't following what I truly wanted to do, down to its distilled essence. Yes, they all had a creative whiff about them, but it wasn't pure creativity. It was creativity for the benefit of clients and commerce. (Plus, many of my career choices were based on how I could manage to afford New York City rent.)
I wish I had been more mindful then, able to step back and appraise my choices. But most of it was just necessary sloshing around in muddy puddles, growing up, figuring out what worked and what didn't, and learning to listen to myself. It's like twirling the dial of a combination lock and listening for the click that finally opens it, letting you know that you got all of the numbers right, in the correct order.
I think we all have a quiet power within us, a gentle voice that guides us to the things that feel right. But the world has become such an incredibly noisy place, it's often hard to hear the whispering of our truest selves.
I've said it before (in this post about sacred time, art journaling, and focusing) but I really do believe it bears repeating: Find a quiet place and be with your own thoughts on a regular basis. Phone off. Music off. Just you and a blank page. Ask yourself, "What do I want to do?" (Not just big, pesky career questions--what do you really want to do on your next day off?) See what appears; see what feels instinctively right, deep-down.
Who knows? It just might be the same answer you gave when you were a kid.
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