The Path You Are On…
Star Trek nerd alert!
Actually, I probably don’t know enough details or watch enough of the spinoffs to fully qualify as a true Star Trek Nerd™, but I’m definitely a fan and have been as long as I can remember.
There were very few shows my parents let me watch as a kid and even fewer that would qualify as family viewing, but Star Trek was one of those. We would watch the rebroadcasts as a family throughout my childhood.
As I grew up, more series and movies were added to the franchise, I still watched. Both the somewhat utopian nature of the society depicted, with equity and diversity, as well as the idea of space exploration continued to pique my interest.
An episode in the first season of Picard presented a cult of Romulan nuns. These are Romulans who take up lost causes and defend them against all odds. In the show, one of the new characters who had joined the nuns (even though he was male) committed to Picard’s lost cause. When Pickard was threatened, he stepped into the circle that had formed around them, drew his sword, and said “Choose to live” to the attacker threatening Picard. The enemy stayed and was slain.
The subtext seemed clear. Continue to threaten this person and you will die. Leave, and you could live.
But then in the fourth season of Discovery, a different subtext was revealed. The full admonition from Romulan nuns was “The path you are on has come to an end. Choose to live.” This to me was different. Not “Do what I say or die” but “Do what I suggest and live”.
The choice is outlined more generously, offering up the option of another route. One that requires acceptance and surrender. You have been on a particular road, these nuns seemed to be saying. There is no future here. It is at a dead end.
This shift in language, subtle yet important, really affected me as I watched. Because it wasn’t just about realizing the end of one path. It was the potential to discover a new one.
I do love a path metaphor. When I started working on my website, I knew I wanted to use path photographs. What I didn’t expect was that I already had tons of path photos. I'd been collecting them for years without knowing what they were for.
I had a path of my own end four years ago. A path I had been on since I was 16 and decided to pursue a career in medicine.
One thing about a medical career is that the road before you is predominantly preprogrammed. Once you choose medicine, you have a clear direction that involves many steps, all laid out ahead of you, with little need to consider the pathway after that point.
True, there are some decision points along the way: what to major in college, which medical school to go to, and which residency. But these are just well-worn branches off the original track.
But four years ago, it became clear that the arthritis in my hands was progressing enough that my strength was decreasing, despite occupational therapy, and my ability to continue to perform my job duties as an orthopedic surgeon was at an end. The arthritis was my Romulan nun.
So I too, chose to live, stepping out into a new direction from the dead end I was surprised to find myself on.
It has been disorienting, partly because I found myself somewhere I had never intended, starting over as so many have, in the middle of my life. And partly because there was no clear-cut route to follow and I had to learn how to make one.
But with the help of family, friends, and coaching, I began to make some new trails, following the areas that interested me for exploration. Over time the passage has become clearer and more defined, but still nowhere near as well worn and prescribed as the old one.
If your current avenue ends, you too can choose to live and forge a new trail. (And to boldly go…)
Not all new trails will be what you want but explore them anyway. Not all of them are actually going to lead “somewhere”. But it’s not the direction or destination that’s important, it’s the motion, the information gained, that will guide you to new roads to travel down.