Today is September 1 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you remind yourself that your life will probably be a windy road?”
People who navigate the chaos relish the unpredictability of their personal life and career.
Maintaining a flexible mind allows one to adapt to the changes that occur on a windy road. American playwright, screenwriter and novelist Suzan-Lori Parks wrote “And as you walk your road, as you live your life, relish the road. And relish the fact that the road of your life will probably be a windy road.”
Her 2001 play Topdog/Underdog won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2002; Parks is the first African American woman to achieve this honor for drama. Parks found a way to navigate the chaos while she traveled her windy road. In 1974 her father, a career officer in the United States Army, was stationed in West Germany where she attended middle school and attended German high school.
The experience showed her "what it feels like to be neither white nor black, but simply foreign". After returning to the United States Parks lived and attended school in several states such as Kentucky, Texas, California, North Carolina, Maryland, and Vermont. Parks says her constant relocation could have influenced her writing.
She graduated high school at The John Carroll School in 1981 while her father was stationed in Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. In high school, Parks was discouraged from studying literature due to a teacher criticising her spelling.
However, upon reading Virginia Woolf's To the Light House, Parks found herself veering away from her initial interest in chemistry, gravitating towards writing.
Parks attended and graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1985 with a B.A. in English and German literature while a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She studied under James Baldwin, who encouraged her to become a playwright. James Baldwin describes Parks during this time as, "an utterly astounding and beautiful creature who may become one of the most valuable artists of our time."
Parks navigated her windy road. Have you?