Fork in the Road

Have you ever found yourself at a pivotal juncture – a point in life where the path you choose will profoundly affect the direction of everything that follows?

I found myself at such a juncture during my senior year of high school, when I was expected to choose a college and a course of study that would determine my career. I was really strong in math, and I was considering something in the emerging field of computer science … but I also had a serious interest in writing.

Two extremely divergent paths. Which one to choose?

The 13th century mystic poet Rumi advised "Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray."

The nascent writer in me had been encouraged and nurtured from a young age by my brother Dave – the Bohemian, long-haired, novel-writing, free spirit of our family. Dave is 10 years older than me, and on summer nights when I was in 5^th or 6^th grade, I'd sneak out with him after midnight to walk to a late-night diner where we’d talk about writing and music and other things that stirred my soul.

Those were good nights.

When I came to that fork in the road in high school, I decided my heart wasn’t in computer science. I went on to study mass communications in college … which led to jobs as a writer and creative director for advertising agencies ... which is where I worked alongside many gifted art directors and designers, which honed my graphic eye and fueled my long-standing passion for photography. I eventually left advertising to teach photography to high school students … then after five gratifying years of teaching, I left to launch Paul Cotter Photography.

Each one of those transitions represented a fork in the road, a choice to be made. Have you noticed that our lives are a continual procession of these crucial junctures? Every fork in the road leads to more forks, more choices, like the branch of a tree that keeps splitting into smaller and smaller branches in a repeating fractal pattern.

At each juncture, the wisest thing we can do is to let ourselves be silently drawn by the strange pull of what we really love.

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