The Paths We Take
A view from one of our trips to Scotland (2022)
When my kids were younger but old enough to play unsupervised, Jason and I needed to stay close to home but still wanted to take a walk and talk, so we circled the same block several times each evening. One elderly neighbor used to sit in a lawn chair outside his garage and count how many times we passed him with a chuckle at each lap. Another neighbor teased us that we should turn around and circle the block in the other direction. We tried it once. It didn’t feel right.
Even though now the kids are older and we can walk wherever we like, we tend to take the same set path, although sometimes now we reverse if we want the wind more at our backs. It turns out I like to loop around, to traverse familiar terrain. I think I enjoy it because then my brain is free to think new thoughts and process complex ideas or problems. I remain undistracted by new stimuli. Yet I know that even familiar terrain changes in profound ways as nature evolves or people change our built environment.
Maybe it’s because walks tend to take the shape of big loops—we circle back to where we started and begin again—but the conversations Jason and I have as we walk frequently turn to whether we are caught in life loops. We use our walking time to break free of dilemmas, of old ways of thinking. We ask ourselves if we should leave the known path.
When I thought about changing jobs from teaching at the local two-year university to being an administrator at our local technical college; when we thought about him leaving a full-time job to finish a third master’s degree, be more present for our young kids, and give us time and space as a family; when first our older and then our younger son decided he had an interest in going away to a boarding school for high school; when we debated whether we should move—and felt pulled back to the beautiful Victorian home we are restoring; all of these conversations forced us to think about whether we were stuck in a loop from which we should break free or whether we were delightfully engaged on a familiar walking path that allowed us to explore new ideas and experiences in a different way.
Sometimes when I’m unsure of direction, I reflect on my dad’s decisions or, in the case of what path he took, what always felt to me more like indecision. That indecision was probably brought on by limited financial circumstances, but strengthened by a lack of self-confidence and the often-debilitating depression that impacted him and our family.
My dad, Jim Stolpa, his senior year of high school
I know from what I observed growing up and from reading his journals after he died that my dad always felt restless about work. He started his career as a music teacher, teaching elementary, high school, and college vocal music before I was born. Early in my life he taught vocal music at the local high school. He then changed completely to selling insurance, burned out by a lack of administrative support. He grappled a long time with the decision of whether he should stay selling insurance or not. One day he wrote up a list in his journal of what he liked and disliked about both careers he had tried so far in life. He concludes the entry by trying to figure out what he can control about selling insurance to make it more palatable, how he can make himself fit in that career path and shove contentment and fulfillment in somehow. He seems to have thought if he stayed on the same road, he could ignore his unhappiness.
He wrote during this time about a total lack of confidence and about the difficulties of being rejected in sales. I empathize, knowing I would struggle calling strangers on the phone and asking them to buy something. Knowing how poor his self-image was and how he struggled with personalizing rejection, I can’t imagine how difficult it was for him to pick up the phone most days. Frequently during his time selling life insurance, he writes about music as if he is grieving the loss of a career path he can never have again.
In another effort to convince himself to like his current job, he tries to work out on the page what he does like about selling insurance—going to people’s houses, listening to their worries, helping them feel heard, and working with them to reach resolutions to their problems. With the benefit of hindsight, I realize he is being called to ministry, a path he didn’t get a chance to take until years later. He didn’t hear the call then, or else he didn’t know how to listen.
Years later, when he found a job in non-ordained ministry, I know he had moments where he felt more fulfilled. Still, his depression impacted his work life tremendously. I remember his sleeping in until noon, maxing out his vacation time earlier and earlier in the year, hiding out at home and then feeling guilty afterwards. Sometimes I lament my dad’s lack of purpose or courage to seek out a new direction in his career, some path that might have changed our economic fortunes. I become angry at his indecision. Other days I understand his fears. Leaving the comfortable known path is difficult.
My sister quit teaching high school math after 21 years, frustrated by a system that didn’t value student accountability and high standards, frustrated with parents, students, and fellow teachers who constantly said math was too hard or irrelevant to life. She added a certificate in paralegal studies to her résumé and moved into a successful career in contracts, RFP management, and paralegal work, topics that are so different from her former job that sometimes when she talks to me about her day, I struggle to understand what she does.
My husband, a naval architect and marine engineer, now works in historic preservation and architectural history. In my work in higher education, I meet adult students all the time who are switching gears dramatically by coming back to school and pursuing a degree in a very different field from what they had done earlier. Some of my colleagues took very circuitous routes to the jobs they have now. Such change takes tremendous courage.
To make these shifts takes what many people call a “leap of faith.” When team teaching a religion-literature-philosophy learning community with a philosopher colleague, I learned that the phrase “leap of faith” was likely coined by the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. My philosophy colleague taught us one day that Kierkegaard never wrote “leap of faith,” but rather, he spoke of a “leap to faith.” What’s the difference? Kierkegaard apparently was frustrated by people who thought about faith all the time and didn’t act on it, but he was equally frustrated by people who acted and never reflected on how their actions matched their faith. He said that we should act in the direction of our beliefs. He said we should move towards our faith in our decisions and do so in a thoughtful way.
That preposition difference (“to” instead of “of”) helps me understand my dad’s true doubts better. I think for as much as he read about, talked about, prayed to, and spoke with God, as much as religion and his spiritual life was at the center of his daily life, my dad was much too scared to move his life in a direction of faith. He was terrified of combining action and reflection. His fears made him feel powerless, and that feeling froze him.
I have worried sometimes that I too am paralyzed. Sometimes I say to Jason on our walks, “Why are we continuing on this path?” He knows I’m not talking about the houses we are passing on our regular route.
As an engineer, he was taught that there are four known forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction; still, he has long believed in both a joking and serious way that the undiscussed fifth force is the strongest of all—the force of habit. Windows in an old house stay closed (or opened) not because they cannot be opened (or closed), but because of the force of habit. Structures that lean and appear to be on the verge of collapse can stay standing for decades because of the force of habit. And people can stay in a loop for the same reason.
Yet my fears are joined by realizations. At some point I began to more deeply understand that in addition to the limited nature of my time on earth, my time as a working adult will have an end, so I should ensure that whenever possible, the work I am doing is fulfilling me. When it wasn’t, I made a leap to faith—reflecting on what matters to me and making sure the work I’m doing matches that.
My time with my kids at home was always going to have an end, so while my heart ached in indescribable ways when first one and then the other moved two-and-a-half hours away for high school, I recognized that we were simply moving in the direction we were always going to move—the realization that they are unique individuals pursuing their own paths. I made a leap to faith, letting them go, knowing it was my job to do so.
Looking forward into uncertainty is daunting. I want to learn from my dad to have the faith towards which I can leap, the faith that pulls me away from the force of habit. My physical walking path may stay the same, but when faced with bigger life choices, I want to be ready to take a leap to faith. My dad didn’t navigate his life towards a destination; he surfed waves, unsure towards what shore he should aim. I want to be intentional. I want to make choices. I lay out my own values and loves: educating, leading, collaborating, writing, creativity, travel, family, music, spiritual fulfillment. I aim for those shores. I let those guide my days’ work, my choices, and my long-term goals.
All the conversations my dad had with my mom about work and his future, all the journal pages my dad filled with worries about money and jobs and stability are all for naught now. What remains with me is not his life’s work, but his work of living. I continue to examine his choices and my own, hoping to find the path to take.