Now I don’t want to imply that success is dumb luck…okay, maybe mine has been but you probably earned your unique status. Notice that I didn’t capitalize “status”. That’s because I don’t mean it in that snooty way that implies being seen at the best places and doing newsworthy things.
I am talking about the place we have created for ourselves in life. I don’t think I am alone in saying when I look back on my life, my path seems to be a combination of blunders, chance happenings, strange coincidences, wrong turns, lucky breaks and even a good decision or two. I never headed in this direction, it just seemed to happen when I was looking the other way.
As a boy I would read books about the planets, or the pyramids and, for a week or two wanted to be an astronomer or an archaeologist. Jet planes were just appearing on the scene and so every boy wanted to be a pilot and since nobody could tell cowboy heroes what to do, well…enough said.
Growing up in a small town, I never had great ambitions. Oh, I had dreams, “Castles in the air” as Thoreau wrote, but they never solidified enough for me to build foundations for them. I rode my childhood like a flea on a rescue dog. I knew something big was always moving under me but I made no attempt to guide it.
As a standard-issue child, I found the world full of things I did not understand. A new experience waited around every corner and sweet or bitter, I couldn’t wait to bump into it. If I had owned a periscope that looked into the next event, I would have always had it to my eye. The toy periscope was a minor craze in the 1950’s and comic book ads offered them for just a quarter plus postage.
While periscopes are useful on submarines and for looking safely out of trenches on the Maginot line, when my twenty-five cent plus tax periscope came in the mail, I was disappointed. Actually, I think that’s what the ads in the back of comic books sold…periscopes, X-ray glasses, Sea Monkeys and disappointment.
With my two-foot-long plastic and cardboard periscope I saw through lenses darkly and never got even a glimpse of what was coming in life. It didn’t take long to realize that if I had to get that close to a corner I might just as well peek around it.
Elementary and middle schools serve two purposes. They begin to socialize us and introduce us to the world outside our neighborhood and they teach us the basics of language, mathematics, social studies, athletics and the arts. In the late 1980’s, a book called “Cultural Literacy” offered up the essential information that a literate American should know. Of course, the notion that America was a unified culture was a bit myopic but the book is full of facts that make up much of what we should have learned in school had we been listening.
The theory is that by the time we reach high school, having been prepped with all that cultural literacy, we should begin to know which parts we will need in our chosen future.
Ha! Chosen future indeed. Granted, there were some classroom rockets who were well on their way to becoming CPA’s or attorneys but most of us were signing up for whatever guidance told us to and picking electives which were closest to our skill set. Let’s face it…most of you were right with me on that rescue dog.
When we walked away from high school, diploma in hand or not, most of us followed whatever parents or the government or teachers suggested. Some took control and joined the military while others went directly to work. Some trained for a job and some postponed work by starting college. Graduation was a time, a marker event, where we grudgingly sloughed off our unrealistic dreams and landed face first on the hard ground of reality.
We had a sort of anti-epiphany when suddenly nothing was clear and we realized we didn’t have the answers and would probably live out ordinary lives. Okay, maybe we weren’t going to play first base for the Yankees, or dance on Broadway, or arrive, guitar in hand, at the Grand Ol’ Opry. Most of us would find “regular” employment and play church softball, or dance around the kitchen when no on
e was home or play the guitar and sing in our best James Taylor voice. Most of us settled for some of what we liked and a little of what we loved and began building a good life for ourselves.
There were, and maybe still are, false starts. The average person has over twelve jobs between the ages of 18 and 50. We may move to better opportunities or life may blindside us with pleasant or unpleasant surprises. Witness, if you will, a person who was scheduled to take a mundane job on Monday and got a call on Saturday night from someone he didn’t know for a job he hadn’t applied for doing what he loved for more money. That happened to a person near to my heart and here, not in the Twilight Zone. That razor cuts both ways, as many of us know. In the mid 80’s I believed I was on my way up that ladder toward success. I was teaching English, the subject I loved, I had just created the public information part of a successful school bond referendum to build a new high school, I was enjoying success acting in local drama and I had a comfortable homelife and two beautiful children.
And then, I didn’t. Everything changed, although the children were still beautiful, I no longer lived with them. Any good will, prospective future, and career plans were gone. Don’t get me wrong here…this is not a blame story. It takes two to tangle up a relationship beyond repair. Regardless of the reasons, It was time to start over. I was back at ground zero with no notion which way to go and nothing to guide me except the stubborn will to move forward. If you have listened to or read many of my stories, you know that life picked me up and set me on my feet again.
Every change is not so monumental. Sometimes we are just steering around potholes trying to keep things as smooth as possible and sometimes we round a corner and meet a rock slide. Both change our direction whether deflecting us to a new path or causing us to stop, reflect and change our expectations.
The young whippersnappers among my readers, you infants in your late forties or early fifties, will have to bear with me for a few moments, or not. That’s the magic of electronics, of remote listening. You can switch me off in mid-sentence and I won’t even know it.
At my age, everybody is on the mend, waiting for surgery, hoping that spot is just a shadow or nursing a soul torn apart by grief. Every morning is a symphony of bad backs, failing knees, aches from old injuries and trepidation about how the day will go. This is the old age our parents warned us about. Jimmy Buffet knows it and I offer him the song gratis. He and Mick Jagger and James Taylor carry on…and for a few moments, make us young while their feet are tired, their fingers ache and they remember old friends whose light has faded and blinked out.
We may not be bathed in the spotlight of fame but we remind each other that much of life is good. There can be new beginnings We come together to remember and to forget…to remember the times we were foolish and damned proud of it. To share stories about the people who made us laugh and to remember those we loved. We also come together to forget. We laugh despite heart-rending losses and fears for the future. We see each other in the light of our past when we were young and, for a moment made our mark in the world.
And there is this paradox. We live in a fleeting present, gone before we can think about it, and the future seems random and uncertain. As we age, when we look into the past, everything begins to seem orchestrated, events, people, places and good or bad experiences seem to interlink and come together like some huge million-piece jigsaw puzzle. All the jagged lines and awkward shapes seem to have a place and all together, lead us to here.
I am lucky enough to be part of a group of men who have breakfast on Saturday mornings and play bad golf about once a week. Some of us have known each other for decades and some for years. All of us, like all of you, know loneliness and loss, happy times and deep heart held memories. We know that life still holds surprises and wonders enough to make us peek around that corner and believe that something rich and worthwhile is coming.
May each of you, be you whippersnappers or fogies, be blessed with such friends.
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