Kathryn G. O’Brien, PhD
Foundational Essays | Reflections
Featured Essay: What if the Life You Planned No Longer Fits?
You made the decision. You did the research. You built the business, moved to France, changed direction, or created the life you thought you wanted.
And then you began living it.
That’s when things became interesting.
Something you expected to love mattered less than you imagined. Something you barely considered became important. A new question appeared. An old assumption stopped making sense. A possibility you hadn’t planned for caught your attention.
None of this necessarily means you made the wrong decision.
It may mean something much simpler—and more useful.
Does Everything You Love Have to be Useful?
When did we become so determined to make our pleasures productive?
You start painting, and someone asks whether you've considered selling your work. You enjoy taking photographs, and suddenly there's a conversation about building a portfolio. You write because you love writing, and before long someone wants to know when the book is coming out. Even walking can acquire targets, metrics and a device congratulating us for having done it correctly.
We are remarkably good at turning things we love into things we accomplish. And I'm beginning to wonder what gets lost when everything we enjoy has to justify the time it takes.
When Words Keep Taking You to the Same Place
Sometimes we have explained a problem so thoroughly that we can no longer see it differently.
We know what happened. We know why. We know who did what. We know what our options are. We may even know what we should do, and yet we're stuck. At that point, more words may simply take us around the same familiar circuit
What If Expertise Gets in the Way of Learning?
I value expertise, but the older I become, the more suspicious I am of expertise that never allows itself to be surprised. Knowing a great deal can help us recognize what we're looking at. It can also make us remarkably quick to decide that we already know what we're looking at.
Why Do We Keep Talking Ourselves Out of What We Want?
Some desires barely survive the week.
Others survive decades.
You keep thinking about Paris. Or writing. Or learning to paint. Or starting a business. Or living somewhere entirely different.
And every time the idea appears, you have an answer ready.
It’s too expensive. Too impractical. Too disruptive. Too late. You don't have the talent. You have responsibilities. You should be satisfied with what you already have.
When Questions Mature
Not all questions are meant to be answered immediately.
Some require years.
Some require loss.
Some require experience.
And some require becoming a different person than the one who first asked them.