My Path

As I look back on the decisions I have made in my life and the direction these decisions have taken me I am convinced that some unknown force, call it fate, call it random chance, has guided me to the life I live today and that life is indeed where I want to be at this moment. The teaching career I was so sure I wanted seemed to fade into a journalism career that melted into creative non-fiction. The creative non fiction and the fiction came together in my one woman show and there I was on stage telling everyone else that they could realize their dreams as I have done. The thing I omitted is that the dream I am living is not the dream I had when I was planning my life 50 some years ago. I wanted to be a wife and a mother. Period. I realize now that as each moment unfolded in my life I was pushing myself farther and farther from that particular nirvana. Something in my psyche said, "That isn't your path Yours is a lonely one, a creative one, and an uphill road because you are defying pre-conceived notions."
The beauty of that kind of progress is that if you are a true eccentric and I am beginning to believe those tendencies have been lurking in my personality for many more years than I like to admit, you do not realize you are defying convention when you take your quantum leap into new careers, new ways of thinking and making great ideas happen. You think you are making the only logical choice available.
So I say we must accept that the past is over. We cannot change it. It is valuable only because it gives you the buiding blocks you need for your future, but in reality the only thing you have is this moment.
It is really difficult to live in that moment when you are thinking about how it will clear the way for tomorrow's victories.
Perhaps that is the challenge...and keeping those two options in balance is indeed "treading your own path."
I am trying.