Thirty Years

Almost thirty years before this photo was taken of Corey and Buddy, a seventeen year old girl and her big sorrel gelding were striking a similar pose for her “senior picture”, as she approached her high school graduation. A girl, who at the time, had her mind set on the next leg of her journey being that of her as an animal science major (more specifically, equine) at a neighboring community college, not quite sure of where her aspirations would lead her. The only goal she was positive of, being that of securing a vocation which would leave her embedded in the only life she had ever known and had grown up loving. Life on a farm.
Circumstances sometimes force a shift in our goals, changing needs and blurring aspirations, altering the course of our lives. What rarely changes through out it all are our passions. The parts of our personality defining our character, often times leading us in directions we aren’t even conscience of at the time.
If you’re wondering by now where all of my philosophical meanderings are leading to in this post, it’s to the topic of karma. A subject of little consideration to me in the past. But while striving toward current objectives, I reflect on the conditions that have brought me here, and find it worthy of contemplation when considering the future.
You see, I am back to where I began. The college I attend, now as a horticulture major, seeking the education I consider necessary to secure my goal, is that same little community college I aspired to attend almost thirty years ago. The goal has not changed as I still love the farm and the promise of its existence. My passion of nature, and the wonderment it brings, handed down to my children.
Still wondering where karma comes in to play? As fate would have it, the head of the horticulture department where I now attend hinges his teaching practices on a philosophy of student led learning. The younger sibling of a man with special needs, his goal for his undergraduates to leave his instruction with knowledge detailed to their own requirements as well as curriculum specific. And if that’s not convincing enough, my Ag Chemicals instructor is the same man who would have supervised my education in equine science all those thirty years ago. Whether by my own hand or that of fate, late bloomer that I am, it seems I am now exactly where I was meant to be.