What did you love doing before life got busy? And what might happen if you reconnected with a part of that person?
Welcome to 1999.
The young, deadly serious teenager striking a pose with a recorder held high, sporting a homemade attempted Rachel-from-Friends hairdo and preparing for a concert, is me. The concert in question was Adiemus, where I played the recorder solos, switching between no fewer than four different recorders. Imagine that.
My musical passions in those days were usually more medieval and Renaissance-oriented. I occasionally tried to hide this, because I was not entirely convinced that being deeply into medieval music was particularly compatible with being perceived as cool.
There was a more serious side to it, too. I actually considered pursuing music professionally. I had the interest, I had the passion, and perhaps even some of the ability. But I did not quite find the courage to follow that path. Then life, as it does, offered other directions and I got distracted.
Or perhaps I simply grew up.
The unexpected invitation to look back
Somewhere in midlife, many of us get a reason to look backwards.
Sometimes it happens because a parent passes away and old photographs resurface from boxes, albums and forgotten corners. Sometimes it is our own teenagers who start exploring family photographs and suddenly ask questions about the people we were before they knew us. For me, a combination of both.
Who were you then?
What were you interested in?
What did you dream about?
And, perhaps most revealingly, what were you like before you became the version of yourself that everyone around you now knows?
And there we are, confronted with old versions of ourselves.
Not only the polished achievements, but the interests, quirks, ambitions, awkwardness and passions that may have been parked somewhere along the way.
Looking at photographs from our younger years can be surprisingly disorienting. We may recognise the face, but not quite recognise the person. Or perhaps we recognise them more than we expected. Perhaps we notice that we actually missed them.
The parts of ourselves we leave behind
I often explore something similar with clients who are navigating midlife transitions.
Midlife is, of course, often framed as a time to ask reinvention questions, such as What’s next?
Should I change career? Start something new? Find a greater sense of purpose?
Those questions can be important. But I increasingly wonder whether midlife is not only about discovering something new and external but equally much about remembering something that was already there.
The things we loved before they became useful and part of a CV. Before we worried whether they were practical, impressive or sufficiently grown-up.
The interests we put aside because work became demanding. Because children came along. Because there was simply no time. Or because, somewhere along the way, we decided they did not quite fit the person we were becoming.
And sometimes it is about looking back at the things that once felt awkward or slightly embarrassing and seeing them differently with a little more compassion.
Perhaps that teenager with the recorder was not hopelessly awkward and uncool after all.
Perhaps she was simply enthusiastic, which is something we become better at appreciating as we mature and raise our own teenagers.
Not going back, but bringing something forward
I don’t think reconnecting with former parts of ourselves necessarily means trying to become who we once were. No secret plans on my side to abandon coaching and return to the Renaissance music scene, although I am not ruling out the possibility of a dramatic recorder comeback. You will hear all about that if it happens!
But there can be something valuable in asking what those earlier passions tell us about ourselves.
What gave us energy?
What made us curious?
Where did we lose track of time?
What did we care about before we started filtering our interests through practicality, expectations or other people’s opinions?
And perhaps there are clues there for the next chapter.
For me, the music never really disappeared. As a listener, it has stayed with me and, if anything, escalated over the last decade. As my children grew old enough for me to actually hear my own thoughts again, I found myself returning to music more and more.
The passion changed shape but did not disappear. Which makes me wonder what else might still be waiting in those old photographs, albums, memories and forgotten boxes.
Sometimes the next version of ourselves does not require us to invent someone new but simply remember someone we already were.
Now, where might I have put those four recorders?
For the record; this was the recorder switching song, though it is not me playing here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65TxEgiC3Vo&list=RD65TxEgiC3Vo&start_radio=1
