I was pulling weeds while chatting with one of my classmates a few days ago. We were discussing our options for after this program is done because we’re about 100 days away completion. They were telling me all the ideas and options they have, and it was fun to listen to a young person with such enthusiasm and fearlessness talk about their next possible adventure. Then they shocked me by saying, “If you have any sage advice on what you think I should do I’d like to hear it.”
I was so taken by surprise by that statement that I reflexively muttered something about you don’t want to follow my path. But after thinking about it for a few days, I think I have a better answer: Go somewhere new.
My earliest memory of considering careers was when I was a small kid and I wanted to be an astronaut. However, my interest in space travel was squelched by a pilot visiting on career day that told me I couldn’t be a pilot because I wore glasses, and from watching the Challenger space shuttle blowup on repeat for several days in school. So I leaned into my art and creative skills.
For the remaining years of school, I would carry this idea that I would grow up to be some kind of professional creative. Artist, actor, writer or a combination of all three. I carried that dream for a long time, and to a certain extent I still do. It all changed when graduated high school and stepped out on my own.
I tried going the academic route, getting a degree right out of high school, and following the stereotypical prescribed path to a a successful life. Unfortunately, I possessed poor study habits and weak self-discipline so I flunked out of college on my first attempt. At that point, I decided my path forward to becoming was going to be guided by Henry David Thoreau’s advice on becoming a writer, “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” Instead of studying to be a writer, I would go on adventures and learn by living a life worth writing about.
In the summer of 1995, I decided I would not be like others. I would never live my life wondering what if. Instead I would experience as much as I could so that I could. For 30 years it has felt like survival mode and constant seeking; constantly in search of the new. My life has has taken me around the world, through over 60 jobs, and introduced me to an amazing array of people, and only recently was someone able to make sense of it. I can connect the dots looking backward by describing myself as a humanitarian, but my wife recently helped me connect the dots looking forward by calling me an explorer.
It’s funny that in the time it took me to live this amazing life to this point, social media was born, stories of exceptionalism became the norm, long-form reading lost its popularity, and my life story became less valuable as a memoir. So would I have done it differently if I could have? Who knows and, honestly, who cares. I look to the past for advice on mistakes to avoid repeating, but I look to the now for decisions of where to go from here.
So here’s a little sage advice from someone who has lived a life truly without the constraints of predictability. First, remember no plan survives first contact. Rigid maps to the future are always prescriptions for disappointment and disruption. “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Pick a direction, gather some provisions, and then prepare to adapt as you go.
Second, I would suggest you learn from your mistakes so you don’t have to keep repeating them. This one truly slowed me down in life. If you can master this skill, you will advance further faster.
And lastly, believe in yourself. You can never be fully prepared for what’s ahead, but you can always find a solution to every problem if you just keep moving forward. Life is not a destination, it is lived in the moments of choices we make as we are traveling toward the next fork in the road. Don’t get so tunnel-visioned looking forward that you forget to look around where you already are.
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