I don’t know for certain that I’ll die this year. I don’t have a terminal illness, nor was I given a window of time to live. All I have is a random forecast made by a 12 year-old boy. I made the forecast when I was a 6th grader, on the playground of Portola elementary school. I was involved in a conversation with four classmates when it occurred. We were sharing predictions about the world, and where we’d be as adults. I listened as my friends shared their future selves: One was to become a lawyer, and spoke of the path he’d take to get there. One was going to be a businessman, and another an architect. The last, my best friend, was going to be an engineer, like his father.
When it was my turn, I paused. I hadnever thought of my future before. I didn’t have a scripted answer like my friends gave. But I remember what I said. This is what came out:
“I don’t see myself holding a specific job for more than two, or three years, and the jobs I have won’t give a lot of money, or stability. Instead, they’ll provide certain experiences that I’ll need for one other thing, but I don’t know what that is yet. I’ll do it right around the age of 52. After that,
I don’t see anything. I think I do it, then die. “
It was met by “yeah I can see that”, or “that’s cool”.
I remember listening to the predictions, and being impressed by the planning they’d done. I remember going home and trying to discover an alternative future for myself, and failing. I remember how my answer came out automatically, and how I never forgot it. I remember feeling like my future was planned for me. I remember agreeing to it . I’ve reflected on that conversation a few times as an adult. I never examined it until now. I’m entering my 52nd year, and despite my efforts and aspirations, my life has followed what I said as a sixth grader. Every path I planned has been blocked. I moved from occupation to occupation because I wanted the experience they provided. I never wanted, or cared, about titles or money or status. The plans I made were consistently usurped by the necessity of life. Maybe coincidences are never coincidences. I’m going to live my next year, my fifty-second, like it’s my last. I’ll either be transformed in some way, or die.
Both possibilities are acceptable to me.
As a married man, I worked as a Stay-At-Home Dad. Like every important decision in my life, I didn’t make it. It came from necessity. Every time necessity has appeared, something personal has vanished. Every time something vanished a hint about my ‘purpose’ replaced it. I can’t be certain, but I thinkLife took the wheel every time I made a wrong turn. I think Life does that a lot, and we don’t listen. Following my divorce six years ago, I entered Teaching. After seven steady years of teaching either English, or special education, I’m unemployed. Another series of unanticipated, coincidental events brought me to a crossroads. For the first time since I was twenty, I don’t have a job. I own very few material possessions. I’m not interested in status, or social standing. I like solitude, and prefer unplanned thought to required attentiveness. I’d rather love than be loved. I’m broke. And I feel as if I’m exactly where I need to be. Not where I want to be, where I need to be.
I feel as if all the big lessons I can learn, have been learned. I’ve had a lot come my way without a lot of time between. The only one I can think of, that’s left, is the one I’m most curious to learn: how to die. I’ll be 52 next year, and because of a pink-slip, I have an uncertain future. Or none.
The persona I wear is demanding, and outdated. I want to shed it like a snake sheds its skin. I guess I need to do it, or die. It must be one or the other because I accept both. I’ve learned that if I agree to enter what appears, I come out better, no matter how unpleasant, or scary it is. I know entering guarantees something integral to my Identity will be lost. I know I’ll change. Yet, no matter how terrifying those entries have been, who I am upon exit, is worth it. In fact, in addition to becoming a Dad, the insights that accompany these passages inform me best about who I am- Who I really am. They clarify the currents that shaped my journey. They tell me what I am, so no outside judgment, or opinion, can.
When the insights download, and illuminate my role in the lives of those who make up my jury, and theirs in mine I’m convinced of at least two things:
My life had purpose beyond the one I sought. And psychological pain is the measuring stick used to determine our capacity to be Human.
We love what we love deeply, because we’re aware that in losing it, we’ll lose part of ourselves.
We earn our wings when we love something more than we love ourselves.
When we say yes to loving something absolutely, and vulnerably,
When we say yes to loving without condition,
We agree to the absolute certainty
Of losing part of ourselves.
From that day on, each day you wake, you’ll wake to an instant of horror. You’ll wake with a flash of insecurity about the lack of rhyme, or reason, in the world. You’ll wake each morning with the same question:
Is today the day the world collects what I owe?
Is today the day I lose a part of who I am?
If you face that with courage the blink that was your life gets placed upon all those made by humankind before you. Your courage is laid upon the building pile of what others left. It becomes the footing for a distant generation. It confirms that there will be one.
The shape of the path that shapes us is unknown until we reach the end.
The closer I get to the end of mine, the more gratitude I feel for the shape it took.
The shape it took was carved out by the people in it.
I appreciate them most of all.
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