A Chance Style Encounter

Profundities occur when we least expect them.

Yesterday I sat for a free hairstyling to help an intern at a friend's salon.  It is part of the consideration process they do:  they review the final cut to make sure she has the skill level necessary to be a credit to the salon.

The very nice young lady (we'll call her A) surprised me in more that one way.  She said she was 19 (but you would not have known it from her carriage and her dress - I know 30 year old individuals that look and seem less mature).  She and her boyfriend had moved here from Chicago?  Why?  He had found a job in his field (a power pole lineman - he is also 19) and so they moved.

I asked her how she had come into hairdressing.  She said that it was something that she had always wanted to do but people in her life, including her mother, had discouraged her as they had told her that she would not make enough money at it.  She took this at face value for a while until she had the opportunity to learn from someone.  She found that she enjoyed it and suddenly made the realization that "she could make money doing hairdressing.  You just have to go where the business is".  And so she and boyfriend embarked on a lifelong (and lifetime) adventure at age 19.

This is certainly not the conversation I expected to have on a Thursday.

I gave her what counsel I knew to give - that she was actually quite right:  if you do what you love, you will find a way to make it (I do not necessarily buy the concept that the money will come but I do believe you will find a way to make it work).  And it is far more important to be happy in what you do than just pursue money and hope you find happiness - this hardly every works out.

The conversation left me hopeful in two ways:  in the first, that there are young people who are actually going in and doing the work of the world that needs doing; in the second, that there is at least one other person in the universe that understands that doing what you love can be made to work.  It renews my hope that others - even myself - can find our way as well.