Life Is Too Serendipitous To Be a Straight Line
How have you gotten from A to B?
This is me, yesterday.
All three of us — cap, gown, and me — show our age. The cap is worn-white at each of the four points, the regalia is wrinkled and has never been dry-cleaned in its 40-year life, and I retired from the college you see behind me six years ago. I knew none of the 358 students who walked across the stage, although I had taught several of their parents.
How did this wanted poster guy get to that gown guy?
A straight-line theory of life
I only remember two things from my high school geometry class. One day, our teacher, Babe Derouin, brought two fully inflated basketballs and a hoop into class and simultaneously put the two smaller spheres through the larger one.
Wow.
Babe was also the basketball coach and seemed agitated that day.
But the second piece of geometric wisdom relates to this story.
Babe said, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”
Was that also how life, not just geometry, was supposed to work? As far as I knew, my dad had always wanted to be an engineer. And my friend Ed, a history teacher.
From A — — — — — — — — — ->B
Over the years, my professor colleagues have talked about how they had always wanted to be teachers, loved being students, enjoyed school, and felt a passion for their subject matter.
None of that was true for the young college graduate in the second photo.
My path to a 50-year teaching career looked more like this curvy bike trail.
A serendipitous theory of life
In 1969, newly elected President Richard Nixon knew America would have to get out of Vietnam. The war was unpopular, with demonstrations routine across the country.
Nixon and America’s military leaders decided to move toward an all-volunteer army. The first step was the introduction of a yearly lottery that would assign a number to all American males born between 1944 and 1952. Thousands of young men, including me (born in 1949), would now know their chances of being inducted.
Numbers ranged from 1 to 365, and those assigned the lowest numbers had the highest chance of being drafted. In December 1969, I learned my number was 66. All my close college friends had numbers over 250.
However, my college deferment would only lapse once I graduated in the spring of 1971, an eternity to a 19-year-old. So I didn’t think about the draft until May 1971 when I received an order to present myself for a draft physical at the Fort Des Moines Army Base in Des Moines, Iowa.
About 40 of us got on a bus in Davenport for the two-hour trip to Des Moines, had our physicals, and returned late in the evening. I was one of only a handful who passed. The guy beside me failed his physical because he was five pounds too heavy and vowed to lose the weight.
Me? Reality had smacked me up against the head. Soon after, I received orders to report to Fort Des Moines in August.
In desperation, I tried the local National Guard. There were no openings. I thought about Canada. I had marched against the Vietnam War and believed it was a mistake. But to leave country, family, and friends for an unknown life? That was beyond the cautious me. Asking around, I learned of another option.
Although I had graduated and lost my deferment, a provision allowed me to receive one additional deferment year if I was a full-time student pursuing another degree. So, I signed up to get a teaching degree. With America’s involvement in the war winding down, that was enough time to put me out of harm’s way.
I became a teacher to stay out of Vietnam.
But that change in life’s direction, represented by the bike trail’s sharp turn, was only the beginning.
Mystery
You see, I had been a mediocre student until the stay-out-of-Vietnam year. That same geometry high school year, I even failed Civics, a subject I would teach college students for four decades.
Something mysterious began to happen during that fifth year of college. It was more than just getting one year older. Unknown to my conscious self, I had committed and made a start — not only to a profession but to a way of being in the world.
Today, I look back on a half-century of loving teaching, learning, and my subject, politics.
This love slowly grew and matured AFTER I committed myself to each.
Stephen Pressfield in “The War of Art” describes it this way:
Something mysterious starts to happen … a process is set in motion by which, inevitably and infallibly … unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
That’s how I got from A to B.
Gary Buzzard suggests a valuable practice along life’s paths.
