Random Words of Encouragement

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Not too long ago, a friend sent me pictures of her speaking at the annual National League of Cities Conference in Kansas City. The heading at the bottom of her text was, “How the heck did I get here?” A reasonable question for a woman who dropped out of college to support her husband’s graduation, raised six kids, and went from region PTA president to one of the most popular elected officials in the state. She’s not the only one confused. I myself have spent the occasional two AM sleepless night wrestling with the deep philosophical question of “how the heck did I get here” about my own life—not because I ended up famous or influential, but because I suspect that like most of us, I have had twists in the road that led me to places I never had the imagination to even consider when I was young and trying to figure out my future.

Recently, I uncovered a clue as to why I might have chosen some of those crossroads moments of my life in a very unlikely place—a Hallmark movie. I have no idea what the name of the feature was, but the romantic heroine looks adoringly up at her handsome counterpart, and she asks, “How did you discover your life’s vocation?” (Yeah, I know. Dating couples in the movies usually limit such heavy questions to imminent zombie attacks or possible tsunami annihilation. But, as Daughter #2 says, “Whatever.”)

 “Well,” he replies, looking deeply into the eyes of his love, “I think it was partly because of a series of random words of encouragement.” Hummm. Now that I think about it, me too.

Even as a little girl I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I had one almost insurmountable problem. I was terrified of standing in front of people. When I was twelve, I had to perform in my first piano recital. Half-way through my piece, I missed a couple of notes, panicked, and ran away. Literally. I don’t recall ever going back. When I was twenty, I had to conduct my first adult meeting. An hour before the event began, I was nauseous. By the time I stood at the podium, I had thrown up so many times, I was dry heaving. Neither incident was an auspicious beginning for a profession where I would be required to speak in front of 30 or 40 people all day, every day.

By the second semester of my junior year in college, I was seriously rethinking my chosen life’s work. My Education Practices class syllabus required me to present a sample lesson to my fellow students and the professor, who was infamous for his sharp criticism. It was awful—not the lesson necessarily, the requirement. When I finished, students gave me a half hours’ worth of feedback. Then the professor spoke. “You have the makings for becoming a fine educator,” was all he said. Maybe he sensed how frightened I was? Maybe not? But because of that one moment, I didn’t quit. Forty years later my husband when was diagnosed with a brain tumor, I had had a long career which kept our family from financial disaster because of those kind words.

About a dozen years out of college, my neighbor talked my husband and I into taking the community education class he taught on writing. At the time, my husband was enthusiastically involved in creating what looked to be the core of a fairly rollicking fantasy adventure. (He lost interest soon after because he was distracted by his need to build a broadsword for the purpose of accurate description. But we’d already paid for the class, and we were too cheap to waste our tuition money.) Every week each class member had to write a short piece and read it aloud to the group. The writing was easy; the reading aloud raised my anxiety level to high alert. Plus, everyone else in the group had specific publishing goals. I was a stay-at-home mom. All the writing I ever had time to do occurred somewhere after midnight when I’d jot down little essays in which I tried to capture the chaos which reigned in a house with a bunch of noisy, usually out-of-control kids. I’d just finished reading a piece which described my cub scout troop painting a couple of fire hydrants in our neighborhood as a service project when one of the class members said, “that made me laugh out loud. You should publish it.” So I did–which was the beginning of a long-held, secret dream to call myself a “writer”.

I get that Hallmark movies aren’t a usual source of deep psychological insight. But who knows? Maybe they have something there. It wouldn’t hurt society to have an attack of random words of encouragement. I don’t know about my famous elected-official friend, but they have certainly made a difference for me.