"I don't care what you do with your life," she said.
"Yes!" I thought, "She's finally giving in. She's going to say that she should have let me take that year off after high school and that I should just do it now. Oh, how I've waited for this day to come."
"But whatever you do," she finished, "I want you to be a thinker."
Oh. Really?
...
Those words haven't left me since she spoke them, and I must have referenced them at least a dozen times in job interviews, various essays, and even casual conversation. They just won't, or can't, leave my mind.
My mother's words were true. She's never cared what I did with my life. When I was five and wanted to be an archaeologist because it meant I would always get to play with dinosaurs, she fully supported my dream. When I fell in love with basketball and mistakenly believed I could be the next Michael Jordan, or at least make it to D1, she said OK. The closest she ever got to questioning the path my life might lead was when I decided to go to seminary.
After approaching the topic with her and my dad, the first words out of her mouth were, "OK, but you're not going to start your own church, are you? Where are do you want to go? What do they believe?" It wasn't the path I was choosing that scared her. It was the fear of losing my own perspective that gave her pause.
It's been probably six years since she told me she wanted me to be a thinker in addition to being archaeologist, athlete, or, God forbid, a man of the cloth. The only thing I can say is that of the four options, the only one that still speaks to me is the first one.
The jury is still out on whether or not I'm any good at. Studying biology and chemistry ad nauseum, a torn ACL and lack of genuine competitiveness, and a general disdain for institutions effectively knocked out the other three, but the one thing I can never escape is my mind.
From the moment I left her womb, she and my father have constantly played the devil's advocate to my thoughts and opinions. No matter the issue or opponent, there was always a validity to the other side's argument that somehow outweighed my own. I could have been arguing for the need for increased compensation and benefits for teachers, positions both have held for a long time, and yet they would find a way to argue that there were plausible reasons why they should continue being underpaid and overworked.
None of this is proof that I am in fact a good thinker or that my thoughts produce meaningful action or that they're even worth sharing. Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you as much. It's merely a challenge posed by a concerned parent who wanted her son to get the most out of life. Can you blame her?
This little experiment, however, is a challenge posed by someone who very often gets lost inside his own head to himself to see if he can, in fact, take those thoughts, turn them into complete sentences on most occasions, and make them entertaining to audience of more than one. We'll see what happens.
