I've been working diligently to find a career path that best suits my personality, strengths and background. It's taken me 12 years, but who's counting? I ask myself, if I could have any job, what would it be? I think it would be an interviewer, like Charlie Rose or Travis Smiley.
Over the past 8 years, I have come to the conclusion that one of my greatest gifts is my ability to communicate with people, one on one. I have an inane ability to connect with people. This connection comes from my love for people and a genuine intrigue into their backgrounds, stories and histories. Why?
Last summer, I saw an old friend from high school. We exchanged salutations and the regular banter: "what have you been doing, where do you live...", nothing special. While I was talking to this friend, her brother (whom I had met, but didn't know they were related) came up and asked her a question and left. I told my friend, "I didn't' know you were related, he's a really good kid". She responded, "He's adopted. He wants to make everybody happy." This friend was basically apologizing for her brother, she had no idea that I, too was adopted. It was one of those times when you talk to someone and (unbeknownst to them) their words hit you like a freight train. I was shook. I saw myself in him and him in me. It was some deep shit.
I was adopted when I was a baby, but I always knew my biological parents growing up. Psychologists say that adopted kids are always searching for the love that could have been there and ask themselves: "why did my parents give me up?". I never went through that, because I always knew where I came from. I was a ward of the state and could have bounced around foster homes through my childhood, but was lucky enough to have been taken in when I was 10 months old. I have come to embrace my unique past and realize that it has made me who I am.
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