I talked my way through a 90-minute water polo practice last week with a new acquaintance who shares a lot of my interests - what a bonus! Our conversation started with surface details like ages, grades and sports' interests of our children and moved deeper as the practice wore on. By the end we had introduced our families (both of us one of five children) and their challenges - with illness, adoption, and so forth. While acknowledging the pain and difficulties around these issues, we agreed that heartache and trauma can change us, break us open, and make us better (at least decidedly different) people. She said, "challenges knock us off the conveyor belt of life and force us to find our own path. That's especially good because a lot of times we were put on the conveyor belt by someone else and were just randomly moving forward without thinking!"
The image stuck with me over the past few days. Our society does put us on conveyor belts, depending on our socioeconomic status, aptitude for school, parental demands. When we're placed on the belt as children we have no indication that this could be taking us in the wrong direction, and - desperate for approval - we stay, moving forward blindly through college and jobs, graduate school and more jobs, family life and obligations. These things are not bad, but would we have chosen them for ourselves? It's only when we are knocked off the belt by illness, by children, by extraordinary events, that we can struggle around in the darkness looking for our own way out.
It's hard to take a different path in our society and leaves one open for scrutiny and lack of understanding, but its fulfilling to make your own way, to learn how to listen to your gut. I like the image of many of us wandering around in the dusty under the machinery, brushing our clothes off and finding the light. We're not in lock-step, but we are together, many who got knocked off and are discovering their own way.
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