The fate of the feline

Curiosity has always been my drive. When I was a junior, at 16, I read The Fountainhead in my English class and subsequently, Atlas Shrugged on my own. That summer, I enrolled in a volunteer social service program working in a soup kitchen and nursing home. An odd reaction, considering how much I loved those books, which are often considered contrary to social anything, much less service. The reason I gave was that I wanted to see what the world was really like for those who were struggling. I believe it was consistent with Dagny Taggert working night shifts as a dispatcher at her father’s railroad, starting with sleeves rolled up to get the most basic of understandings: first hand.

What attracted me to psychology as an undergraduate concentration was the process of unraveling the seeming irrationality of human behavior - especially the self-interpretations of the actor - to find the basic rational satisfaction of underlying drives. Safety. Acceptance. Self esteem. The rest of man’s concerns are window dressings to the basic underlying desires. How often does a person subvert acknowledgement of the truth to approval on one’s peers? How often do we strive to define and complete some otherwise arbitrary form of achievement for the purpose of feeling accomplished? Unlocking how these needs drive people’s maps of the world is a fun puzzle for me. It is the mystery that drives the social world. And now I try to unlock the mystery within myself.

It was a combination of my need for a tangible, hands-on path to knowledge combined with the mystery of human psychology, and a desire to make a positive impact on the world that inspired me to pursue a masters degree in social work.

It sounds so simple, described like that. The truth of the matter is that my career path has been wrought with twists and turns. Social work, it turned out was merely a far removed beginning.

A journey driven by curiosity, after all, does not run down a clear path. It is a journey driven by questions and second-guesses. What can the final destination of a journey driven by questions can be? It is a destination not known until the journey’s end. Without a clear destination, by what measurement does one identify the path?

I can take the time to recount where I’ve been. I can assess what tools I have. I can even make decisions about the next turn to take. But without a final destination, the ultimate direction is elusive.