There are many paths leading us to where we need to be in life
At the end of almost every interview I do, I ask my interviewees about the most important lesson they’ve learned on their life journey thus far. Of the thousands of people I’ve interviewed over the years, I can’t think of one response that hasn’t taught me something or inspired me in some way. I stumbled onto two of the simplest yet most profound lessons—to trust the process and to be OK with foregoing an “A” to settle for a “B” from two interviewees from completely different walks of life during the past week.
As I wove the stories together into a project, something transformative happened. I began to see pieces of myself on the pages and tidbits of wisdom that applied directly to me at a particular moment in life. As I shared the book through a series of events across the country and even in places as far away as Qatar, Japan, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, I continued to collect more stories, so many that I began working on a second volume and even accepted Oprah’s challenge to all of her viewers during her final season to pitch a show that I titled “(Voices) from Off the Beaten Path” for the OWN network.
Even though I accumulated thousands of interviews, I never finished the second edition of that particular book and I didn’t win my own show on OWN. Instead, I became a single mom of two who stopped traveling internationally and waited till my oldest—now 11-year-old—daughter started kindergarten to go back to grad school and chip away at my deferred dream of being a writer, in the structured environment of an MFA program. Since graduating with a dual-genre non-fiction and screenwriting MFA I’ve kept writing and revising and rewriting and accumulating hundreds of pages of drafts of books and screenplays in my google drive, but I’ve stopped short of seeing anything all the way through.
This summer, I’ve been on a mission to change that, as I’ve been writing like my life depends on it—which it does at the moment, as it is the source of my summer livelihood. Now, it’s a matter of balancing the weekly deadlines, hanging out with my kids and getting them to their activities, trying to help our rescue dog overcome his separation anxiety and finding a way to finish my book(s) and screenplays.
Over the weekend, as I wrote a profile for a local paper about a Contra Costa teacher named Linda Marsden, who was awarded “teacher of the year” recognition, and reflected back to an interview I did last week for East Bay Express with artist Seandale Turner during the Alameda Art Festival, I found the combination of their words to be exactly what I needed to hear. Instead of telling himself that it wasn’t reasonable to fulfill his dream of sustaining himself full time as an artist, Seandale Turner told me he just decided to cut back on shopping and trust the process, even if it involved struggle at times. He also told me he’s content with the venue—the Red Door Alley & Gallery, which is literally a space between two buildings without a roof top—for showcasing his work, because it’s in the community where he is rooted and it works around the mainstream hierarchy.
Although Linda Marsden’s medium is a classroom not a canvas, and she’s never met Seandale Turner, her philosophy aligns with his. Marsden has spent some four decades in a second-grade classroom without aspirations of transitioning into an administrative role or climbing the educational hierarchy. When I asked her what advice she’d offer her younger self or what life lesson she’d want to share with the generations of students she’s worked with, she didn’t offer a canned “always do your best” response or even words one would expect to hear from a teacher. Instead, Marsden said: “Get a ‘B’ and be happy with it. You don’t need to get an ‘A’ on every assignment. Go out, spend time with friends. You will end up where you are supposed to be and there are many paths to get there.”
As I wrote the weekend away, while my daughters visited their dad, while shouting out song requests to Alexa, I couldn’t help merging and internalizing Marden’s and Turner’s words: “Trust the process and be willing to get a ‘B.’ There are many paths to get you where you are supposed to be.”
What do the never-ending process of writing, the pursuit and sustenance of our dreams and the acts of dating and finding love have to do with each other? Everything!
If we can learn to rely on ourselves, trust the process, accept the “B,” have fun, make mistakes, fall, get back up and try again, whether we’re dating, seeking love, writing a book, making a movie or chasing another unwieldy dream, the world just may be our oyster.
