Thoughts on passing an empty exam hall

I had a breakdown during my A Levels in June 1978. I started crying in an English Literature paper and couldn’t stop.

On account of which, I had to resit the following January.

On account of which, I met the man who would become my husband (the exam invigilator).

On account of all of which, when I went to university later that year, I was unhappy and couldn’t settle.

On account of which, I dropped out, got married and moved abroad with my husband.

On account of which … And so on.

Seeing that exam hall this morning reminded me how quickly plans and expectations, options and desires can change, even in such a controlled space. I should have passed my exams with flying colours and headed off to university without any sense that life could or should be any different. Instead, I spent two years living in a tiny foreign land, 4000 miles from home.

This isn’t about a sliding doors moment where I made a choice between two options. It was, at the outset at least, simply what happened: I had a breakdown. The choices came thereafter, and they were informed by that event and its legacy within me.

Fast forward 40 years. My mother and my sister die, six weeks apart. Traumatised, I’m off work for months, and when I return, a global pandemic isolates me at home for further months.

On account of which, I leave the job where I’ve previously been happy and where I had planned to stay.

On account of which … and so on.

Sh*t happens all the time. Some of us have life-changing events early on, which shape our way of looking at the world thereafter, our balance of regrets and satisfactions, and our faith or distrust in ourselves, in people and in planning.

Others have, or also have, life-changing events later on – illnesses, bereavements, redundancies, and so on. This is standard fare among my clients, because the potential for sh*t to happen increases in our 50s and 60s and it can be pretty big stuff. It can unleash an overwhelming mix of fear and release, constraint and opportunity, panic and desire.

I'm not going to say, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, or ‘When one door closes, another door opens’, even though those statements seem to be broadly true.

Because here’s the thing: it’s not easy to envisage a silver lining, or spot a door ajar, or simply to think clearly when your world has taken a different shape overnight and what you thought was going to happen, suddenly isn’t.

Nor will I say that traumatic events help you see what you wanted all along. No, life-changing events change you and you see things differently. You lose your bearings, making it difficult to find your way out of the woods. When what your pre-event self wanted either isn’t now an option or turns out not to be what your post-event self wants, what then?

On account of which … I’m a career coach now. If you’d like to benefit from that sequence of events, get in touch.

Photo: Akshay Chauhan on Unsplash