Embracing Destiny

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

US author & physician (1809 - 1894)

(http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/26186.html)

 

In reading Paulo Coehlo’s book, Brida, this weekend, the heroine remembers a game her father played. He would ask her to go check the temperature of the water and she would go put her toe in it. Then her father would sneak up behind her and throw her completely in. The lesson was if you are really going to discover anything you have to jump in and become completely engulfed in it.

But most of us prefer to go a little at a time. We test the water, discover its safe and then wade up past our ankles and wait a little longer. After a while we let ourselves go to our thighs, to our hips, and so forth. We don’t know what to expect so we gradually muster our courage and we move forward and then we wait. It is only after we have become comfortable with the change in our condition that we venture just a little farther out. Most of us move cautiously always keeping an eye on the shore because we know that if things turn wrong we can always return to the where we started and be safe once again.

But we can’t. If we retreat, we will return in a different state than we started. We were dry and now we are wet. But also by returning we have reinforced our fear and thus made it more difficult ever to go in again. We fear jumping in and letting ourselves become engulfed in anything because we know that do so means we can never return to where we were and that’s just scary as hell.

Sometimes we know we need to just take a leap, to have faith, to trust in the current. We see the signs around us, and yet it is as if our feet are frozen. We need someone, a friend, a lover, a teacher, life itself, to pick us up and throw us in because left to our own devices we would forever remain stuck exactly where we are.

As I have been exploring ways to further serve my students by coming up with new projects, better methods, and new curriculum, I realized that I was becoming stuck.  I love the feedback I get from my advisory board and fellow instructors, but after a while it seems like the same ideas and suggestions just keep getting re-circulated. For years I have preached to my students the need to expand beyond their comfort zone to meet and interact with new members of their profession, to broaden their horizons. And then I looked in the mirror and realized that I was standing safely on a sandbar as I shouted my advice.

So for the past month I have forced myself to do the uncomfortable. I decided to use various social networking tools to expand my contact base, to broaden the discussion, to reach out and try to interact with the very best minds in our industry. But it is intimidating to write to those people your students idolize and do research papers on time and again. It is like they are Gods sitting atop Olympus looking down on us mere mortals. Who am I to disturb David Carson, Paula Sher, Debbie Millman, Michael Beruit, Brain Hall, editors at major newspapers, professors at the top design programs in the world, and creative directors for the leading labels? It is even a little intimidating to reach out to the most creative talent in my own community. These are busy people. And what will I ask them and why should they bother answering me.

But I’ve taken the plunge, challenged my students and colleagues to do the same and have discovered that these Gods are really just human too and most of them don’t mind helping those of us who are aspiring to have what they have already achieved. And as I’ve started reaching out to the world that lays beyond little old Lakeland, FL it is now reaching back to me. Design instructors at other universities in the US and in Europe have requested that I become friends with them, have invited me to observe their online methods, have shared with me some of their experiences, hopes and fears. And although part of me wants to turn around and go back to the way things were just a few weeks ago, I am now part of something larger, something unfamiliar, something strange. For the first time in years, I am not in control, I am unsure what all the proper protocols are, I have already made a few mistakes and occasionally looked sophomoric or foolish. But I have discovered new allies, and new ideas, and each day is filled with mystery and uncertainty, and anticipation and excitement.

I mention this for my students who sometimes think that I don’t know their fears and trepidations. I do. We all do for each of us has left the safety of certainty more than once in our lives without really knowing where it will lead. That first date and first kiss. Driving by ourselves to some strange town. Going to college. That first interview, that first job, that first client. Falling in love, getting married, becoming a parent. It’s all scary business, but you do it and you live through it, and you learn by it and after a while, its not quite so scary until you realize you’re becoming stagnant and that its time to venture into unknown waters again.

I believe one of the greatest titles in the world is Susan Jeffer’s book, "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway". There is so much truth in the title alone, and even more in the pages that follow.  It’s OK to be uncertain. It’s OK to be scared. It’s not OK to let that fear immobilize you and keep you from living the dream you were born to live.  “You were never given a dream without being given the power to make it come true. You may however have to work for it.” (Richard Back, Illusions) That dream you have was placed in your heart for a reason. Trust that dream. It is your guide, it is your destiny calling to you. Embrace it, cherish it, feed it, and sacrifice whatever it takes to live it, even if it means letting go of your safety net of familiarity and security. It is your life’s purpose. 

It is who you were meant to be.