You can’t ignore what the body knows
In my junior year of college, when my anxiety about the future was at its peak, I decided to take a “Career Aptitude Test” for some guidance.
And what did it recommend as my most plausible pathway given an inspiring array of interests?
Bricklayer.
I was dumbfounded, and then, freaked out. College had been a pastiche of experiences: I majored in biology, with a secondary focus on art. I worked with an archeologist sketching artifacts from a nearby dig. I was wowed by an anthropologist just back from Eastern Timor. I interned with a medical illustrator and apprenticed to an Art therapist at a VA hospital serving Veterans with schizophrenia. And I played guitar in a blues band. And somehow it was asking a career aptitude test too much to reconcile these into a practical way forward. Instead, my love of biology, art, archaeology, anthropology, psychology, and music was plastered over and ignored.
My body responded in an honest and sensible way — with panic attacks and appendicitis.
It was during an Percocet-mediated moment (usually triggered by friends who tried to make me laugh post-surgery) that I reached out to grab something to hold onto, and caught my inner tadpole by the tail: I remembered a sense of calm and flow I felt by the tadpole pond at age 4 (see my inaugural post: “The Wisdom of the Tadpole: Navigating Change, Wonder, and Growth”) Here was something indelible. Something I owned. Something I could bank on. Something etched permanently into my psyche. The memory calmed my nerves and soothed my fears. And with that, I scooped my tadpolian self out of the hospital bed and wiggled forward on my way.
This career guidance testing run-in has made me a data analysis/human capability skeptic. It’s alarming to think that millions of students are now being matched with jobs by algorithms scraping their resumes. We are much more than what we put in our CVs, and a lot of what’s missed happens long before we enter college or even high school. But a discussion of the privilege of having such defining moments and “Passion-mapping” will saved for other posts.
As you’ll see, this wasn’t the first time my body gave a definitive thumbs down to some mislaid plan I had or was presented with. And I was on my way to know what my body already knew: Don’t mess with Mother Nature or your own.
Looking back, there was not one, but three moments from my early years that have had a determinative impact on my life:
My Tadpole moment
My Batmobile Moment
My “Turtle” moment
They may seem silly, but hey — they all happened before I turned six. Can you recall a defining moment from your early years that shaped who you are today? How might embracing that moment help guide your path authentically towards future success?
