”You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have nothing compelling on my mind, something I have been busting to share with you for days. I had this flash a few minutes ago. What happens if I punch up an empty page, not even knowing the first word? I guess I’d have to tell you what’s going on, even why I seem to be at a loss for stories.
When I started this whole writing business, aside from sharing what was going on, I had no interest in being a font of negativity, in a world that doesn’t need any help from me. I also wasn’t interested in sharing my personal menu for world happiness. Conveniently, I don’t have one anyway.
I find it impossible to escape my age and the chronological contortions it induces. When you’re really young, the future is unquantifiable and all possibility, at least it was for me. Completing this last sentence, I realize how insensitive it sounds. I was lucky to have the opportunities I did and while I had no idea at the time, I do now.
Back then, I never imagined being 80 years old. It was way too old. I grew up in the world of what’s next? Settling for the same was never a plan. A young mind is filled with possibility. I grew up that way until time began to feel tangible and fear started flexing its grip.
Who I am now, I wanted to be back then, but I didn’t how to go about it. Where I came from, you went to college to become a person. After realizing I couldn’t even dissect a piglet, the dream of becoming a doctor melted under the bright light of reality. There was nothing I really wanted to do, other than now getting out of college with as little difficulty as possible. I made it out right on time with the exact amount of credits I needed.
I have had more jobs in more fields than most of you could ever imagine. After not becoming a doctor, I didn’t have the courage at the time to embrace myself. My first job was in the sixth grade as a waiter in a neighborhood delicatessen. I raced there from elementary school in order to serve lunch to classmates. I made $2.50 a week, tax free. I have been working ever since.
After turning my back on a career in medicine, the only alternative for me was to find the easiest major in order to graduate college. Political Science was an easy choice, because 1/3 of the credits for the major were taught by an elderly professor, who was very sloppy with exams. I took a radio and television production course, which afforded me an opportunity to work at NBC during the Johnson/Goldwater ’64 presidential election.
I spent a handful of months trying to get a job after that as a page(usher) at the network, which I did. I worked for a couple of years with a bunch of guys, who were all older and pursuing careers in show business. I felt very comfortable with them and their unconventionality. This seed was planted many years before when I was a little kid. The closest I can get to regret is being bummed no one picked it up and helped me nurture it.
In 1968, I was living in the East Village, Avenue A and Fourth St. I had finished active duty in the Army Reserve, avoiding the Vietnam War and the possibility of dying.I even had a motorcycle for a time. After my time in the military, I was free to become a grown up. I could really feel being torn between a predictable, paint-by-numbers, life and freeing that imprisoned creative spirit.
The idea of doing something with no plan was too much for me. Decades later, I can say I ended up saving my own life, but it took some doing, to say the least. I became a suit wearing, attache carrying, fledgling broadcast advertising executive. At all of 24, I got married and had two children. The divorce was not pretty, making me into a weekend dad when they were only 5 and 3. This person I began constructing after turning my back on the piglets in school, was not a person I was comfortable being.
I was very unhappy with my life in NYC. I increasingly felt like I didn’t belong there and I didn’t belong in the ad business. I spent my 30’s in therapy, looking for the person I wanted to be. All the fear I’d been holding on to began losing its grip. My life was feeling like a death sentence and I wanted more for myself. I moved to Santa Fe, NM and how that came about is too long a story for now.
I was suffocating in the City and found liberation in the southwest. In my early 40’s, it felt like the fear was losing its hold, replaced by embracing the journey of my life. I started to become who I wanted to be and we are still getting acquainted. I tell you what, I never imagined being 80 years old and writing this to you, while parked on Kauai.
I don’t know why I thought about writing any of the above to you. I never really felt free to even explore who I am, especially when I was a kid. Early on, it felt more like defining who I wasn’t. Frequently, I felt very uncomfortable, like I was play acting to be someone I didn’t know very well.
In many ways, my work feels done these days. I have no interest in being anyone else, but the world feels much less free than I can ever remember. I am going to the No Kings rally. I am not a communist, I don’t belong to Antifa. I am not an illegal immigrant. I have not received this week’s check from George Soros.
I want to tell you who I am. I am an American. I am free. All the years I spent growing up and all the bullshit I put up with, I never imagined living under Hitler Lite. Armed soldiers are patrolling our streets. I can’t imagine running to the deli at lunch time and being stopped by a soldier, asking for proof that I was in elementary school and walking me to the deli.
I want to tell you who I am. I am an American. I am free.
LISTEN TO IT HERE:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/18033156-homework