Revisiting Childhood Hobbies Is a Way to Learn Who You Are as an Adult

—Flashvector—Getty Images I swept my arm overhead, forming a half-moon shape as my body bent into a side stretch.

I could almost hear the ballet instructors of my childhood calling out steps: Plié first position.

Keep your heels down.

Legs straighten, lift your kneecaps.

Stretch toward the barre.

When I started experimenting with ballet as an adult, it had been well over a decade since I last took a class.

I started alone with no mirrors, clutching my kitchen counter in tennis shoes.

It was as if this routine had been lying dormant in my muscles and my memory.

I still knew the steps.

I could still hum music that had been paired with certain exercises.

But now, this melody was accompanied by my knees snapping, crackling, and popping.

In addition to being floored by what I could recall (even if my body couldn’t quite execute it), I was taken aback by how an activity that defined my childhood and young adulthood felt like an opportunity for my preteen self to tell me something about who I was now.

Dan P.

McAdams, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, focuses on narrative identity.