Dreaming Of What I Want To Be When I Grow Up

Last updated on July 8th, 2022 at 05:54 pm

For my thirty-sixth birthday a few years ago, I bought myself private aerial silk dancing lessons so I could learn to spin, twirl, and hang upside in the air, held up by ropes of red silk.

In my very first lesson, I was already doing upside-down straddle splits, forming a human cross, inverted in an arabesque. My arms were sore after just one session.

Aerial dancing builds powerful arms, shoulders, and thighs. That’s not why I did it, however.

I did it because what inner child doesn’t still at some level dream of running off and joining the circus one day? (I have a very active “inner child,” by the way!).

I actually happen to have a lot of friends who are aerialists, who perform on the trapeze, silk ropes or hoops. Since I was a professional dancer for five years, I have a wide circle of dance friends around the country, and many have decided to venture into aerial dancing in their 30s.

I also have friends who run the circus out in California. My friend Gregangelo of Velocity Circus lives his dream every day, putting together circus events, costuming performers, and turning everyday life into an extra-fantastical wonderland.

In fact, it was a Velocity Circus event that first turned me on to aerial silk dancing. I watched a beautiful 34-year-old woman perform while her toddler ran below the ropes, pointing to mama. I thought I can do this!

Nuts, perhaps, but it was fun to give it a shot nonetheless.
Loving Your Work
I do not know of many people who love what they do as passionately as Gregangelo. He eats, sleeps, and breathes “circus” and even lives in a house that is its own wonderland, hand-painted and created painstakingly over a few decades.

I used to be so incredibly jealous of people like this who somehow always knew what they wanted to do and just went for it. I spent so many years flirting with different types of career paths, never quite willing to commit to just one.

I am just not one of these people who has followed a linear career path or always knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. As a young girl, I dreamed of being a famous writer, the first female president, or the backup singer and dancer in a rock band, as I wrote about here.

It was never “just one thing.”

This caused me a lot of angst over the years because I so often felt like something was wrong with me.

Yes, I liked to do many things and seemed to be bright and talented enough to pull most of them off successfully. But what was wrong with me that my career vision hadn’t struck me like a lightning bolt yet?

Why wasn’t I uber-focused on one simple beautiful dream so I could just step-by-step see it through, as others seemed to do?

Perhaps my talent in some ways is the ability to tackle more than one kind of work or project, and to therefore contribute to the world in multiple ways, while keeping my own life interesting. My brain loves to be truly stimulated, and that often means shaking things up and trying something new.

Where Your Joy Meets The Worlds’ Need
This past weekend, I stumbled onto a quote that captured for me what I want to create for my work in the world.

I discovered the work of a spiritual teacher on the Facebook page of a friend. Nithya Shanti is a professional joy-maker, conducting “Joyshops” for corporations, groups, and teens.

He calls himself “an inspirational speaker, writer, happiness coach, integral healer, educator, and modern-day sage.”

Nithya had started out working in the corporate world in India after pursuing a management degree but was hungry to do something more with his life.

He describes feeling a yearning for “spiritual growth and inner mastery,” something he said he wasn’t finding through his chosen career path.

He ended up moving to Thailand to become a forest meditation monk. After six years of monastic training, he felt moved to share what he had learned with the world and re-entered “regular life” as a teacher, writer, speaker, leader, and healer.

This quote on Nithya’s Facebook page moved me to tears: “Do the work where your greatest gladness meets the world’s deepest hunger.”

Inspired by the work of Frederick Buechner, it resonated for me with my deepest inner longings to both find great joy through my work, and to deeply impact the world in positive ways in my lifetime, to create a legacy.

I spent much of the rest of the weekend working on my life goals and vision, including what I want to create next in my career.

Shaping My Destiny
At this point in my life, I think it is fairly unlikely that I will run off and join the circus. Then again, one never knows. Stay tuned!

Because I have overcome great adversity in my life and survived some serious trauma, yet found my way to inner peace and happiness, I am inspired to guide others to do the same. This to me is a place where my “greatest gladness meets the world’s deepest hunger.”

I think the world needs true joy more than almost anything else. So many people suffer terribly, even in our society and culture in the U.S. which is far wealthier than most, where people, in general, have great freedom to create what they want for their lives.

What The Next Decade Holds For Me
If I can find a way in the next decade to conduct joy workshops, write more books, essays, articles, and blogs, do more public speaking, and get paid to travel the world while doing this work, I will be very happy camper.

Since I believe that we create our own destiny, as Nithya Shanti also teaches, I will just make this happen!

Motivational writer, coach, and speaker Tony Robbins talks about how the “how” of it – how will we make these dreams come true, exactly?!? – is less important than a total commitment to making it happen, and being in action. As we take consistent action over time, we can adjust our strategy when things are not working to create the results we want.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time, which I believe in deeply since I have always found this to be the case in my own life:

Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth — that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.
~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My book shares countless stories of synchronicity in my life. When I have truly committed to a path, somehow life always seems to line up to help make it happen.

More Than One Job For Me
At this point in my life, it’s clear that I will never be one of these people who lived one linear career dream – became a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher and was satisfied with that. I admire those greatly who find one job that calls to them and do it well.

I seem to be more satisfied when working in more than one realm and using multiple skill sets. I do live, eat and breathe my writing some days, and other days want nothing more than to be out in the world, leading groups or speaking to people.

I believe it’s possible for me to do all of these, and to make a good living while leaving a positive legacy in the world. And perhaps someday I will take more circus classes, because when I take a break from working, I love to dance and who doesn’t want to fly?