And this leads where?

A few weeks ago, one of my old bosses visited Paris, and we were able to spend some time exploring the city and catching up. This particular fellow was someone with whom I worked when I was a wedding planner on Cape Cod a few years ago. We need not go into the logistics behind that vocational situation now, as I cannot really explain how it came to be. The only light I can shed is that my time spent planning weddings was just part of my "figuring it all out" process in terms of my professional path.


Incidentally, I have not as of yet figured any such thing out. Proof? I am currently a university "teacher"-- a job for which I have neither the training nor especially the interest, except that it is a means to an end (i.e. enables me to live in France), and it is also shaping up to be quite the social experiment as well. And boy, do I love a good social experiment. But, even though I have had more "careers" at age 33 than most people have teeth, I feel no closer to really knowing what my "calling" might actually be. So do with that what you will.

In any case, my old boss, Kalson, asked me an interesting question while he was here. He posed the following: "If someone had told you two years ago that you would be living in Paris, what would you have said?"

I love this sort of game. In fact, my whole life is one big question of this variety. I mean if someone had told me when I was in my early twenties that I was going to be a woodworker, I would have laughed my sides off at the ridiculousness of that prediction. Cut to me, two years later, trudging to class with a satchel of chisels under my arm and sawdust covering my jeans. Likewise, if someone had told me I was going to be a wedding planner, I would have given them a look of ardent skepticism and wondered where they came up with such a foolish notion. And then...cut to me a couple years later, running around like a madwoman as I tried to pin boutenires on hungover groomsmen and reassure the mother of the bride that no one has stolen her cake knife, which was allegedly a family heirloom (what?). If someone had said to me when I was 28: "Oh you will move to Charleston and work as a professional matchmaker," I would have politely, yet firmly, suggested that they cease huffing glue as a recreational activity. And then, cut to me, age 30, living in South Carolina, interviewing and "matching" people up to go on dates with one another. Given my stocked arsenal of past careers, we could play this game all day.

Fun as that would be, my point is that life, or my life at least, has been full of unpredictable surprises.

Yet it is also full of links and connections too.


So I will change Kalson's question a little: If someone had told me, when I was working as a wedding planner in 2006, that five years later I would be in France with that very boss, driving through Champagne country, I would in turn question his (or her) sanity.


And then, there we were, guzzling bubbly in a renowned Champagne cave after he weaved and sped with all the other wild European drivers on the French highway out to Epernay.


I mean, who would have predicted such a thing?


Life really does not follow an easily chartered path. Sometimes, I want, so badly to know exactly in what direction my life is headed, to have validation that there is a "point" to all I have done thus far. At times, I feel extremely embarassed that I am 33 years old and I have no idea what my professional calling actually is--despite grandiose efforts to figure it out.


Being in France has taught me much about patience, has given me myriad lessons in pride swallowing, and has opened my eyes that there are so many ways to live and none are "better" or "worse" than any other.

So, while I could play a version of that game of prediction, I think I finally have to accept that no amount of thinking, overthinking, or stressing is ever going to result in a crystal ball showcasing my future.

I suppose people often try to guage what their future will hold, many of us do things like make "five year plans" or the like. There is some comfort in knowing that your are headed in some specific direction--it gives life focus. And, sometimes, meaning.

I can easily enough voice my values, my hopes, my dreams--at least in an abstract kind of way. I am less able to specifically identify the path on which I would like to tread mostly because the darn thing keeps shooting off in directions I never before even saw as possibilities.

Yet, my path, however it may frustrate me, has lead me to Paris. And that is something. Something great. Maybe it has not proffered up my "calling" but it has allowed me to sample a heck of a lot of options--if only to take a quick taste of each of these offerings and think, "Ugh, nope. Next!"

So what else is there to do but to continue on my wily way. Who knows--maybe next month I will be wandering around the Jardin du Luxembourg with the woman who owned the Bed and Breakfast I ran, or walking along the Seine with one of my former co-workers from when I was a technical writer (or from when I was a waitress, or a travel agent, or a lifeguard...you get the idea).

In terms of the meaning for which I am constantly searching; maybe the life lesson here is that, while I was obviously so NOT meant to be a wedding planner, maybe I was meant to see Epernay, a gorgeous little French village in Champagne region. My former boss may not have been able to interest me in the intricacies of the "Platinum" vs. the "Gold" package, but he still taught me something: that it is worth risking your life on the French roadways to taste really yummy champagne. Not a bad boss, in the end.

So maybe the message here is that all these "failed" careers will wind up being good for something. Let's hope so. In the meantime, this "teacher" will continue to seriously moonlight as a student; life seems to be teaching me something new everyday.