Full Circle

The question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” has always stumped me. How was I, a second-grader, supposed to know the trajectory of my life when I barely knew my timetable? Even ten years later, on the precipice of adulthood and college decision, the question still stumps me.

It isn’t because I don’t have an answer. I have an idea of what I would like to pursue. It’s the uncertainty that scares me—the fact that life is at the mercy of entropy. Change is inevitable, but being able to cope with that change is an unpredictability I rather not face.

As I sit and procrastinate on my college application, a mirror pulls me into another timeline decades ago. The timeline where my dad faced his own battle with college.

—

The glass cup clinked as it met the wooden table, and Dad let out a chuckle, “No.”

“Why?” I asked, already well aware as to why he wasn’t a studious student.

“Because I really didn’t like school very much,” Dad bluntly replied. I laughed, adding another mental tally to the list of things we did not have in common, ranging from school to fishing. But there, at 9:17 in the evening, there is one thing both of us went through together, even if it happened years apart.

“During my senior year, I was just looking to finish my senior of high school so I could then get on with my life, and undecided as to whether I would go to college.”

I had held my parents on a high pedestal. They always seem to know their way around life and know what to do in complicated situations. It never occurred to me that my dad, who seemed to know everything, had no set perception of his future career. Despite being surrounded by teenagers with the same dilemma, hearing it from my dad gave me a sense of comfort. 

—

The fridge hummed as it opened and closed. Taking out his favorite soda (diet Cream Soda), my dad poured himself a glass to the brim before returning it to the fridge. The foaming of the bubbles, the way the ice floated—they were scenes ingrained in my memory. I had seen my dad pour his soda hundreds of times. There was a pattern to the way my dad carried out his night, almost like a heartbeat pulsing softly in the background.

“So using the availability of GI Bill funding, I was able to attend community college. I had two areas of studies in mind, with the eventual goal of having a career in one of two areas: one being forestry, the other being journalism.”

“I thought it was veterinary school—or being like a vet,”

“Nope—”

“—I swear it was a vet,”

“Nope, no,”

“Yeah, you told me that once,”

“No you’re thinking a veteran—”

“Yea—no, not veteran, being a vet. And then you didn’t want to be a vet because you didn’t want to see animals being hurt,” I stated my case adamantly.

“Ok well yeah, maybe I did tell you. I actually did have some consideration of being a vet but I sort of dismiss rather promptly—”

“—Okay—” the memory of such a distant conversation floated back to me.

“—because I had too much…I was too sympathetic to injured animals,”

“So why these options? Why journalism? Why forestry?”

My dad took a sip of his drink, “Well, I have always been an avid outdoorsman. That’s why having a career that would allow me to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors—the woods—appealed to me. On the other side, I also excelled in at least one area in high school, and that was English. I had a good command of the English language, of writing and reading. It made me feel that it would be an interesting alternative to forestry.”

His answer didn’t surprise me. My father’s intellect when it came to the natural environment was envious. It was less of the environment part and more of the passion he carried for the subjects he was interested in. He took this passion and turned it into a possible career. While my dad came to this conclusion years after high school, I can’t help but question: what am I passionate about?

What am I supposed to do with my life?

“So how did you decide between these two careers?”

“A coin flip,”

I couldn’t help but snort. I had heard this story before, and the confusion followed by the shock of my initial reaction hadn’t faded away with time.

“I flipped a coin on the bed of my apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to decide. I used a coin that had an eagle grasping a branch on the back side, and the head of a renowned founding father on the other,” my dad had a faraway look in his eyes as if he had traveled back in his memories to that night, in that bed, “As a result, I decided heads should be journalism, and the wildlife side—the eagle on the back of the coin—would represent forestry. I was at the point where I was filling out my sophomore-year classes. It was late that summer between my freshman and sophomore years, and I needed to make a decision so I could start picking classes that would point me in one direction or the other. I was equally torn between the two, so the decision was to simply flip the coin one night before I started picking my courses.”

“So, what did it land on?”

“Heads,”

—

It didn’t end there, though. Life isn’t that simple. While my dad did enter into journalism, his career took him on a circuitous route. He became a communication director for a forestry company. In the end, the fork in the road ended up being a loop, one that my dad had no way of foreseeing. It’s similar to how I’m unable to speculate about my own future. The horizon stretches far beyond my fingertips, and there’s only so far I can see before the curve becomes the sphere. When I eventually reach my own fork in the road, I’m at ease knowing despite entropy not being able to be destroyed, my own choices aren’t at the mercy of the second law of Thermodynamics. The career changes my dad undertook required adapting, but he is happy with where they took him.

“In a way, I eventually came full circle.”

—

“Woods Path” by E_Bass is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.