Even the notes I find seem as if they were written about someone else. Some person who was once reliable, and undaunted. Some person who had strength, and a vision. They can't be a reference to me. That me is gone.
"This is the worst joke anyone has ever played on me. This time it's not someone playing the joke, it's something. It's the whole universe. And AT & T. Because the phone rings on this beautiful night in June, this beautiful southern California night, and it's my mother. She's asking me how I am, and how's my wife, and how's that baby, her first grandson? He's 6 months old, and as far as I can tell he's pretty much the same as last night, and the night before (Infants, if we're being honest, are predictably boring, and breathtaking, all at once). Oh, and by the way, I have 6 months to live. I have lung cancer. Her 40 years of smoking finally pinned her to the mat. Before that phone call everything was ordinary. It was a peach ripening in the sun. Now it's rotting on the limb. And will you be home in half an hour? I'm gonna call your sister next, and I don't think she's gonna take this well. And I know you will. You have always been so strong.
And sure enough my sister calls me one half hour later, and she's in tears. But I can't hear any of it because my son is waking up, and he's crying, and my wife wants to know what she can do, and over there, on the horizon, it looks like the moon is riding a few feet low tonight. But I don't care and I'm not startled because I'm done. My life as I've known it, is over."
"My older brother says he sees me as an author, tells me to write everything down. That's all. Because if you write it down it's kind of like signing a contract with the universe and it will happen. He asks me how I see my life and I tell him I see myself breaking away from all of this that surrounds me. I tell him I see myself walking quietly in a forest. I tell him I don't understand much, anymore. I tell him I have no idea what to do, or who I am. What I want is for time to slow down, and for quiet to appear. I want time to digest the air that I breathe. And he tells me he knows, and he says he thinks I'll get there someday. But I'm not sure. I think I'm already in too deep, and my life is eating me up, or maybe I'm already swallowed, and shame on me. He says 98 percent of people just conform to what's around them, and only 2 percent don't. "I see you in the 2 percent," he says. Man, I don't have that kind of courage. I'm a dog with its tail between its legs, or maybe a bird with its head beneath its wing. But not really, I know. We can change things, we can change our lives, if our hearts aren't liars. We just need courage.
That may be the biggest lie of all."
Taking Inventory
This period of looking for work has dismantled me in a manner I didn't anticipate. I don't know what value I have to anyone, or anything, and I'm the kind of person who needs to feel like I contribute. Hiring for the next school year has started, and I'm not a hot commodity. I spend a lot of time wondering if I'm any good at what I chose as my profession, or if my idealism is a skewed prism. I'm close to convinced that what I perceived as contributions were actually naive disruptions. Whatever foothold I had before is gone.
I had intended my exploration of an authentic self to play out, in part, in the redefining of myself as a teacher. It appears it's going to play out on a larger stage. I think I'm going to have to redefine myself as a person. Instead of adjusting the way I deliver a lesson, or negotiate a behavior contract, I need to readjust everything I've thought about myself over the past 51 years. That's much more substantial than I'd planned, and to be frank, I'm terrified. I'm not the strength my mother saw, and I'm not part of the 2% my brother predicted. I don't know what of who I once was remains, and I don't know if I have a comeback of that scope in me.
For the first time in my life I can say I'm completely, and utterly, lost. Despair is a lonely anthem.
The rants at my siblings aren't rants at them at all. They're the first stabs at excavating a question I've wanted to pose my entire life, and the awareness of what needs to be put to rest. I'd like to know why it's been so hard for the people closest to me to acknowledge what I do well, and what's good in me. Then I want to terminate my need for anyone's validation of those things except my own. Most of all, I want to get free of being judged.
A long time ago I read that Gandhi made the decision to present himself as whole prior to stepping into the arena of leadership. He knew that to get people to follow him he would have to be viewed as an average person, and not an iconic superhero. To do that, people had to see his shortcomings, his weaknesses, as well as his leadership abilities. He had the humility to acknowledge that all people, even those at the top, are imperfect.
If I may, I'd like to cut to the chase. I have a laundry list of imperfections, and insecurities. My public examination of authenticity is not a holier-than-anyone charade. It's a sincere attempt to decide for myself who I am, where I belong in the world, and how I want to spend my time before I view my final setting sun. That's it. I don't think my perceptions around those things are accurate.
A long time ago I read that Gandhi made the decision to present himself as whole prior to stepping into the arena of leadership. He knew that to get people to follow him he would have to be viewed as an average person, and not an iconic superhero. To do that, people had to see his shortcomings, his weaknesses, as well as his leadership abilities. He had the humility to acknowledge that all people, even those at the top, are imperfect.
If I may, I'd like to cut to the chase. I have a laundry list of imperfections, and insecurities. My public examination of authenticity is not a holier-than-anyone charade. It's a sincere attempt to decide for myself who I am, where I belong in the world, and how I want to spend my time before I view my final setting sun. That's it. I don't think my perceptions around those things are accurate.
Go Back To 'Start'
During my seven years in education I have consistently been the last kid picked for the team. I spent my entire student teaching year working at an Intern level, unpaid, where I was solely responsible for 4 classes (as opposed to the norm of 10 days with full responsibility). As an Orthopedic Impairment Specialist I was paid $10,000 less than the other OI's my first year, and wasn't offered financial help to obtain the credential necessary to maintain the position. In my intern year teaching English to English language learners I was delayed entry to my classroom by six weeks due to a paper processing backlog that cost me $6,000, given the worst classes, endured my hiring Principal's firing mid semester, and was subjected to the evaluations of a new Principal who I never had the opportunity to say more than two words to, and who chose to evaluate me in a class of "TR" seventh graders (the students no one else wanted) who had been left in an unstructured environment for the six weeks I was out. I'm starting to think the universe is telling me I made the wrong choice.
If that's true, I don't have a lot of time left to make the right one. I'm regretting the decision I made at the end of my first year at San Francisco State, a decision that despite any outcome, would have been authentic.
I entered SF State after a year of disciplined cycling and writing that culminated in a 5-week solo bike ride through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and parts of British Colombia. My goal during that ride was to find my voice as a writer, and beat down any fear of the solitude required to become one. I was 21 years-old, and I discovered I could thrive under those conditions.
I had two significant courses during that first year. One was a generic Humanities class, the other was titled "Literature and Society". They were significant for the feedback I received from the professors who taught them. The Humanities course required that we keep a journal, and I wrote prolifically in mine. At the end of the semester my professor told me mine contained the best writing she'd ever seen from a student in my class year.
The 'Lit and Society" class was a graduate level course, so the professor wasn't as easily impressed. In fact, my academic writing was average at best. The final, however, offered the opportunity to be more creative, so I wrote an allegory about a barnacle that addressed all the main social issues the course had identified. After our public presentations my professor stared at me for an unusually long time, and said my allegory was the best piece of writing he'd heard in all of his years teaching.
I had planned to take a one year leave of absence from college after that semester to write. I was going to learn how to live off the land, pick a remote piece of wilderness, and enter. I was going to bring enough supplies for two weeks with the intention of staying for six months. I wanted to write about the effects of solitude, and explore the emergence of my primitive nature as the civilized facade slipped away. I let my course counselor talk me out of it, and the opportunity to do so hasn't appeared since. Neither have I.
If that's true, I don't have a lot of time left to make the right one. I'm regretting the decision I made at the end of my first year at San Francisco State, a decision that despite any outcome, would have been authentic.
I entered SF State after a year of disciplined cycling and writing that culminated in a 5-week solo bike ride through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and parts of British Colombia. My goal during that ride was to find my voice as a writer, and beat down any fear of the solitude required to become one. I was 21 years-old, and I discovered I could thrive under those conditions.
I had two significant courses during that first year. One was a generic Humanities class, the other was titled "Literature and Society". They were significant for the feedback I received from the professors who taught them. The Humanities course required that we keep a journal, and I wrote prolifically in mine. At the end of the semester my professor told me mine contained the best writing she'd ever seen from a student in my class year.
I had planned to take a one year leave of absence from college after that semester to write. I was going to learn how to live off the land, pick a remote piece of wilderness, and enter. I was going to bring enough supplies for two weeks with the intention of staying for six months. I wanted to write about the effects of solitude, and explore the emergence of my primitive nature as the civilized facade slipped away. I let my course counselor talk me out of it, and the opportunity to do so hasn't appeared since. Neither have I.
All In
I didn't think this is where I'd be at fifty-one. But I am. I don't know yet if it's a blessing, or a tragedy, and I'm not going to attempt to influence an outcome either way. I'm going to fall back on myself for a little while longer before making one final attempt at manifesting the life I want for the self I see myself as. I'm going to prepare myself to lose everything while maintaining the hope that I might get part of what I want. And I'm going to inch a little closer to an acceptance of death.
Every man has his limits, and every man wants to know what they are. That's a significant admission from someone who didn't think he'd ever meet his own. I have. My best friend said to me recently that he'd never met anyone who has so many things go against him as me. My middle son said the same thing to me a few months ago. It's funny to those who are witness to it. It's something different to those who live it.
My ears are pinned back. But then again, they always have been.
