Has your life been a straight path...

I moved back and forth from parent to parent from 4 years old, until 35 years.

I used to work with adult schizophrenics in an apartments program, doing informal counseling and helping them with their adjustment to “independent life”. I then worked with developmentally-disabled girls (9 years to 12 years old), most of whom had been severely physically and sexually abused. They were wards of the state, and they lived at the school I worked at. My job was to help them after school, bring them out on activities, read with them, feed them, and get them to bed. We were their care providers.

I then realized that I was not emotionally cut out for this. It was heartbreaking work, and even if I went back to school, I would likely burn out and make very little money in the process. So I rediscovered a childhood interest of mine – computers. Taught myself some programming and the rest is history. Now I sit at a desk all day writing GPS/mapping software.

Not so much a path. More like a roller coaster.

Zig zagged all over, then stopped to rest a spell and now zinging back into the great wide open and unknown.

No. Has anyone’s? I always assume most folks are living plan B (maybe C or D).

My life has often been non-Euclidean.

I’m at plan zero right now. lolol

Path? What’s a path? I hop from stone to stone, hoping I don’t fall into the raging river and drown.

So you want me to tell you my life story? Well, here’s a brief summary.

I was born normally, like most child, I suppose. No disability. I went to kindergarten and was quite surprised to find out that some kids didn’t like me and used name calling to me. At primary school I found out that I got on generally better with boys than girls since I shared many common interests with them. One day Mom said I should brush on my English and taught me in her own way. I got good English since then. At secondary school I had a feeling my hobbies were “derailing”. I didn’t know many things about the pop culture and people looked at me with strange eyes. At high school I realized that the reason why some people didn’t like me was because I thought differently. What considered normal to me wasn’t normal to them. I tried to fit in but I failed. There was a time I hated myself for being different. I had to act as if I liked what I didn’t like, but I felt a sense of guilt for doing that. One day I found Fluther, and was surprised to see that people had a lot of different view. I came to realize that it was just better to be myself, so I came to accept myself.

No. I leave room in my plans for life.

I’ve seen this path and it seemed to me narrow and dirty. Looking back, I’ve chosen the tree-line.

The path is disgusting too much of the time. I crossed the ditch. Now I’ll stay with the tree line. Shelter & shade.

Yes and no.

There’s a Zen koan that asks, “How do you walk straight on a path of 99 curves?”. It’s easy to see the “10,000 curves” part of this koan in my own life: I’ve been a draftsman in Texas and Utah; a pastry cook in Texas, Alaska and Paris; a chocolatier in Paris and Illinois; a rehab technician in Chicago; and a Zen priest.

Somewhere along the way, though, I began to see that none of this was as different as it appeared on the surface. It’s all just This. This in different guises. Kind of like a symphony: If you were to listen to the oboe part of Beethoven’s 3rd in isolation, it would be allegro at some times, largo at others. And it would sound like a different piece of music altogether than the tympani part. Each instrument appears to follow a winding path, now playing this note, now that. The score looks like a mess of winding paths. But in playing each of those instruments and each of those notes in turn, something quite straight is manifested. It’s all This.

Pretty much. The hills and valleys have been made easier to negotiate because of a good wife and the curves have been straightened out by a loving family, including extended family members and friends.

sometimes I long for the uncertainty of the wilds

but don’t we all want what we don’t have at some time?