When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I'd get an egghead look on my face and reply with a straight face: "I want to be a psychologist." I remember adults chuckling at that. A puny fourth grader, a girl no less, whose ambition in life was to become a shrink? More than one adult walked away shaking their heads. In those days, everybody knew that although girls were admitted to medical schools (1970's) it wasn't going to be an easy road. Those brave women would have to compete with chauvinistic men for the class seats while male professors looked upon women in medical school as trouble-making bra-burners who were just out to prove something and take a seat a man could have had. Although I didn't know exactly what a psychologist did, I understood that they helped people who had problems, and that's what I wanted to do. I subsequently wandered away from the ballerina pack. But as a magnet on my refrigerator asks: "I chose the road less traveled. Now where the hell am I?"
I never made it to the PhD level, although I did climb the academic ladder enough to glimpse it from where I was standing in my master's counseling program. And while it is said that everyone will have 15 minutes of fame, I've had much more than my share: I became a writer (which happened completely by accident), and that path has lavished me with many unexpected and delightful moments of glory. However, I never attained my dream of becoming a full-fledged doctor because in the process I discovered that intellectual prowess and money couldn't buy me happiness. In fact, I watched each subsequent academic degree make me into a person I didn't even want to be around anymore. I became competitive and envious of others and I unwittingly evolved into a narcissistic know-it-all whose lofty ambition in life was to out-smart and impress others with my academic acumen, a far cry from my innocent childhood motivation of simply wanting to help troubled people. Maybe it's a good thing I never became a doctor-we already have enough of those kinds of doctors in the world.
What I did wind up becoming is a suicide survivor, a writer, a counselor, and most importantly, a decent person. I've to the conclusion that you cannot be money-hungry and be truly compassionate at the same time. When my teen daughter committed suicide and my career as a counselor was consequently flushed down the grief toilet, I had a decision to make (or was it made for me?). I had to either choose to forgive myself or I could go on with the stuff-shirt charade, wearing a mask of feigned strength and superiority while covering up my feelings of worthlessness and self-loathing that her suicide had brought on. It took me over a year to forgive myself for the mistakes I made as a parent and to choose to love myself again.
During that time of mourning a strange and wonderful thing occurred. Without manipulation, without any contrived effort on my part, I began, for the first time in my life, to truly and genuinely care about other people as much as I cared about myself. I began to really hear others for the first time. Not just because they were my clients paying me to hear them; I was relating to them. I was feeling with them, not just feeling bad for them. I realized with astonished amazement that I was...one of them. My daughter's death forced me to see what I had tried so hard to avoid seeing: that I was a fallible human being. I was no better and no worse than anyone else. I was quite simply a flawed and fumbling biped who could get as lost as anyone. In the end, I decided to go back to what the little girl in me knew was right and good: to simply help people who were hurting like I was, minus the bravado. Funny how lost we can get when we're all grown up.
While I didn't become a doctor, I think my daughter would be relieved to know that I finally found my way back to compassion. I sure am rooting for the kids of tomorrow, because like me, some of them will get lost before they find their way back to their original selves again. Here's to more boy ballerinas and girl footballers who are brave enough to be true to their dreams.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2392971/Girl-footballers-boy-dancers-What-todays-children-REALLY-want-grow-up.html#ixzz3brA7D9CE
Click here for all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0