Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.

–Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

It was three years ago this month that I really began to question whether I was on the right path for my life. I wondered if the things I had accomplished meant anything and I wondered if I had accomplished those things for myself or if I had really done them for other people. It was a crossroad of sorts and I was facing my Cheshire cat, asking which way I should go.

Down the rabbit hole we go…

The short story is that I admired and wanted a coffee mug and someone told me I was not qualified to own that particular coffee mug.

Almost, but not quite.

The longer story starts with me sitting on my couch, leisurely scrolling through that social medium that is full of friends, thumbs up, and random pokes. In my news feed, I came across a post from a family member who had shared a picture of a coffee mug touting the quiet subversiveness of librarians.

I had been working as a library employee for close to a decade and really felt I was contributing to a worthy service for my community. (Yes, it was a paid job but a personally fulfilling job.) For this reason, I replied with a comment that simply read, “I want one, too!”

Yet, somehow, my experience was completely disregarded in her response of, “When you get your Masters in Lib Sci, [Nina]”

(Here is where I would like to add, at the time of reading the aforementioned post, I was about nine months away from getting a Bachelor’s Degree in English. To which I will also add was twelve years in the making at one to two classes a semester. There were no plans to go further at that point in time).

This one comment had my whole world crumbling around me. I felt my academic accomplishments had faded away and been diminished to a mere ALMOST.

The definition of almost has a condition on it that makes things feel as if they will never be complete…ever! In a lifetime of trying and working hard to meet a goal, the weight of almost was simplified to two simple words…

…All but.

Where does one go from here?

“All but” has seemed the condition of my life. Whether it be from others for why I could not do something (“You are almost old enough” or “You are almost tall enough”). Or, I have allowed my own fears to create a safety zone around my life that kept me from doing anything remotely fun or interesting (“You almost have enough money to take a vacation, just a little more would help, though”).

This way of thinking, of course, is not this particular family member’s fault. (After all she was then and is still just an in-law.) This way of thinking comes from years of following the rules and doing the right thing based on the expectations of others. However, the implications of this family member’s comment for such a small and insignificant object became, in my mind, a challenge to my experience as a library worker and to my character as a human being. I mean if a Master’s degree was the standard for owning a 15 oz coffee mug then I was doomed for being a good person in general.

Perhaps it is true that I did not have this family member’s extensive academic knowledge in the field (she is a degreed librarian), but I had a plethora of knowledge and experience in a public setting that can oftentimes be as mentally strenuous as researching the medical symptoms of a disease that has yet to be documented in any peer reviewed periodicals of the academic world.

When a regular person comes up to you and asks for a book that has a blue cover, but they do not know the author or the title, they have high expectations for you to be able to produce said book. There are some patrons who are willing to accept that you cannot perform miracles, and there are some patrons who are highly disappointed that their tax dollars go to such a useless town service.

It can be the difference between feeling like an epic hero or a demoralized loser. But I carry on when it is the latter because I must in situations like that.

As I will do now, but which way do I turn to begin eliminating “almost” from my vocabulary and from my life?

What would Cheshire Cat do?

Well, with a Cheshire grin of my own, I buy that mug!

Then, I drink to all the things I have accomplished thus far. And, after that I make a decision to stop allowing others to dictate what my life looks like for them.

I start looking at what my life looks like for me.