Revisiting The Past

As I'm readying my house for a move - i.e., getting rid of extraneous stuff to "stage" my house - I am clearing out my closets. In my closets are boxes of stuff from my past. In my quest to simplify my life - in addition to staging my house, I'd also like to just clear out the things I don't need anymore - I'm actually going through the boxes to weed out things that I really don't need.

Today, I went through a box that included all the stuff that my parents had collected from my childhood through college. It included the script from a play I was in in third grade. All my report cards from elementary school onward. Drawings from kindergarten. My PSAT scores. My GRE scores. (Interestingly, not my SAT scores.) And a bunch of letters that I had written to my parents over the years. As well as a few old love letters.

In 1983, as I was thinking about graduating from college and what I would do next, I apparently was thinking that I would go to law school. I sort of remember having that thought. I mean, what else does one do with an English degree if one has a desire to make any kind of money? On the other hand, I think that I would have made a really bad lawyer. I'm much too empathetic. Perhaps if I had been in contract law? Nah.

I also mentioned going to France for a year or two to try to become fluent in French. I had taken French from fourth grade to eleventh grade. That's a lot of years learning a language that I really couldn't speak at all. I could read pretty well. But I never really got to the point of being able to hold a conversation. So I thought it would be good to submerge myself in the country and force myself to learn what years of school had not achieved.

In the end, I did neither of those things. Ultimately, as much as I'd like to think otherwise, I'm way too much of a chicken to go live in another country by myself for a year or two. My sister lived in France for a few years. She left her husband here and moved there for a job she thought would be a great opportunity. I give her a great deal of credit for taking that chance. I'm just not that brave. And I'm a total homebody. I get homesick traveling for a week. I can't imagine what I would do if I had to live in another country for any length of time. It really would not have been a good thing.

As for law school, as I said, I don't think I would have made a good lawyer. When I was young and impressionable, I thought that I would be a public defender. I wanted to help the helpless. But in the real world, public defenders have to defend people who have done really bad things. And I just would not be able to see myself as part of the process. I would have gotten beaten down by dealing with those kind of situations. Again, it really would not have been a good thing.

So revisiting the past has been interesting. If nothing else, it makes me appreciate that the decisions I've made (or had thrust upon me) have ultimately led to good things.