Harvard Schmarvard

I didn't really have a career so I don't consider myself qualified to offer career advice.  I had two jobs and a vocation.  I was a Landscaper and a Teacher.  But first and foremost I was a Dad.  A 'Stay At Home Dad'.  I'm proud of that.

Still, career advice is helpful.  It's important.  I wanted to include some on this site so I borrowed some from another.  The advice that follows comes from a site called "If I Knew Then" which is just a bunch of 1963 Harvard graduates giving advice on a variety of topics.  Here are some examples of what they had to say about Careers.....

• Work hard. Be honest. Help others.  phillip smith
• Choose work you enjoy and that serves as many people as possible. Focus on serving others — not on building wealth. Serve well, and money will follow. norman barnett
• Have the discipline to limit work hours.  john mccarter
• Put up with boring, soul-destroying work only when you’re young, exploring your options, and establishing your credibility. Once you become established, become discriminating about your work, colleagues, clients, and associates.  shan turnbull
• I can see humor in almost every situation. It really helps in making decisions and keeping my sanity. thomas reilly
• Keep re-inventing yourself through self-education, because industries change quickly.  paul rosenbaum
• Make sure you truly know who you are, your strong points and weaknesses. A solid self-assessment is an important step in the right direction. Many of us do not do this to the full extent.  jerry wolin
•  “Heed your life’s calling — that inner urge to give your gifts away.” This requires being clear about your gifts, values, and passions, and using them as a compass to find your career path. It is an “inside-out” process. richard peterson
• Look for mentors who are in a place you would like to be, doing what you would like to do. Seek their counsel. anonymous
• Look for work in areas where you have built-in confidence based on your own experience or preferences. It’s not to say you can’t succeed in areas in which you never thought you had talent, but your shortest path will come through your strengths. john shwarz
• If you don’t truly enjoy what you are doing, seek change.  matt frauwirth
• I cannot do better than repeat Joseph Campbell’s admonition: “Follow your bliss.” Seek work that you love and do it.  eugene bell
• A blow job isn't a job and it isn't work. Get a lot of them.  anonymous 

8. Homo Idiotus

It doesn't matter how old your children are, you worry about them.  You want them to be happy.  You hope they don't make the same mistakes you made.  You pray for small, incremental doses of emotional pain as opposed to a windfall.  You do your best to convince yourself you avoided the parental pitfalls that will affect your children the way your own parents shit affected you. “My Dad was way more fucked up than me. And he had a bunch of issues.  I only have a few.”  Granted, they're really big issues, but still.

You worry and take precautions with little faith that any of it matters.  Life has plans for your kids the same way it did for you.  Whether you make their lives a bit more simple or exponentially more difficult it’s because you were supposed to.  Just ask my dad, Joe Mack.  That dude was my own personal human impediment to anything I longed for.  My friends may have found him funny when he’d crash our high school parties but to me he was just a dark pucker.  He was just an asshole.  

My dad never said a single positive thing to me or about me.  Not one.  Not an "I'm proud of you" or a "You did a nice job on that."  Not a "Don't worry, you'll get them next time" or a reassuring “I know it hurts but you are gonna be okay.”  Never.  Not once. Ever.

He never spent time alone with me either, just he and I, Father and Son.  We never went to dinner or breakfast.  We never saw a movie or a play or even a television show together, just the two of us, alone.  He didn't drive with me to college when I left nor did he visit when I was there.  He never took me aside to see how I was doing.  He never wrote a letter and he never initiated a phone call.  My dad was a failure as a role model for what it means to be a man. But that’s what the Universe prescribed for me.

To be fair, it’s hard to be a decent dad if your own dad  had no idea how to be one.  I'm guessing my dad's dad wasn't much of one. I'm guessing he let my dad down. I know I let my sons down sometimes.  I know I was a far cry from perfect.  But I tried.  I made the effort to get better and to learn from my mistakes.  My own dad didn’t.  All he seemed to be was annoyed by my existence and the needs I asked him to fill.  Whatever I've been to my sons I have to trust it was somehow needed.  I have to trust they might someday see this.  I have to trust they will understand. I hope someday they see whatever I was to them the same way I see what my asshole angry Irish alcoholic father was to me. 

My dad taught me how to descend into darkness and re-emerge with shards of light.  He taught me it didn’t matter how many times I got knocked down because I’d always get back up.  He taught me how to be gentle and patient by having a short fuse that abruptly turned to violence.  He taught me how important it is to be there through his disinterest and neglect.  He taught me I could decide for myself what it meant to be a man and that I was free to do my best to embody that vision.  He taught me the importance of building things up by constantly beating me down.

My sons will go through whatever they're designed to endure just like I did.  They'll do what they need to do to make sense of themselves and take their place in the world.  It's one of Life’s conditions, growth, and  growth is inherently hard.  It's painful.  It's imperative. Growth makes life worth the effort.  Even if we are just a bunch of glorified idiots.

Homo Idiotus.  Bipedal.  Upright.  Omnivore. Human Being. Man. My dad did the best he could and I understand that. I wish I'd gotten to know him.

Voids We Avoid We Owe It To Ourselves To Visit

When motion and movement halt abruptly you're left with a lot of space.  A lot of empty space, and empty space demands to be filled.  It's an actual law of physics I think, but I can't be certain, or remember which one.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is the stall, the disruption to forward progress.  Like the stall I'm in.  The one without growth or action.

With my usual distractions gone and Life's usual interruptions on hold, all I have to fill the voids that appear are the things I try hardest to avoid.  Things like ruthless self-reflection, or naming what I'm ashamed of, or the expanse of my guilt, or my desperate denial of all I regret.  Things that motivate me to stay busy and keep moving.  Things that demand distractions.  

Time stacks up when distractions are removed until you're face to face with everything you've avoided. We avoid what we avoid until we can't anymore and we're forced to make a decision.  Do we manufacture a new batch of distractions to engage in or do we surrender to the truth and confront our demons?  I'm talking transformational truth. Cathartic truth.  Hard truth.  Like admitting you let someone down.   Or acknowledging what you regret.  Or exposing the guilt you carry.  Truth that has the potential to destroy you if spoken without humility.  Truth that decimates the Ego and leaves you completely exposed to the world.  The kind of truth that needs to be spoken for growth to occur.

The unspoken truths in me are buried in the deepest of my depths.  Way, way the fuck down there.  I've avoided them on purpose because I'm afraid of them.  I'm afraid of the pain they cause when I think of them.  I'm afraid of who I might be if they're gone. I'm afraid to have my heart broken one more time, again.  I don't know if I could survive that.  

The things we leave unspoken are the things that have the capacity to destroy the person speaking them.  They also have, in equal measure, the capacity to heal those they're spoken to, and this is the big conundrum.

Is my psychological comfort more important than the contribution I can bring to another person's healing?  And no, it doesn't depend on who the person is.  It's an absolute equation.  

Do I have an obligation to repair what I know I've damaged, or is damaging people just one of the many accepted, universal conditions of life?  

Am I required to accept responsibilty for the pain I've caused others if no one has acknowledged the pain they caused me?  I don't know the answers to big things like these.  And at the same time, I do.

Those are big questions about profound philosophical issues that I don't have insightful answers for.  Those are questions I'm not qualified to offer an opinion on.  Those questions are too big for an average, ordinary guy like me so I ask myself a different one.

I ask if I can I be, or become, the person I aspire to be if I don't acknowledge the mistakes I made, or the pain my mistakes have caused?

I can't, so I have a choice to make and that choice will become the impetus that animates the way I live my life.  I can choose self-preservation and protect the viscera by living an armored, cautious life. Or I can expose myself through sacrificial transparency and let the Universe decide who and what it needs to preserve. I can let go and trust the Universe to maintain the continuum of balance and order we depend on. I know which choice I aspire to, and I know why I'll never be able to make it.

A choice like thatis tough for anyone to make and it's a tough choice by design.  It's so tough, in fact, you're awarded points if you leave the answer blank but had the courage to ask the question.  It's like the SAT exam where you get five points for writing your name in the box even though you left everything else empty.  

I did what most people do on this one.  I avoided choosing one over the other and moved inbetween them, instead.  I chose selfishly sometimes and sometimes I was altruistic.  I didn't have the strength or courage to commit to the choice I wanted to make. I wasn't too hard on myself for my wavering, either.  I cut me some slack because I know of only four people who chose what I would have but couldn't.  And all four were truly transcendent, where as, I'm not.  The four?  Dr. Martin Luther King.  Jesus H. Christ.  Gandhi. And Mother Fuckin Theresa.  That's it.  That's a very, very exclusive club.  Even for a smart dude like me.

Be Well, Bro.

 I got an email from Kevin wishing me a happy birthday and expressing an interest in trying to reconnect before we turned into dust.  I said great let's do it and said what I've always said.  I said the only condition I've ever had for reconnection is that he hear my story.  If he says 'no' he's telling me it has no value.  If the narrative of my life and the events that shaped it are of no value to him then I won't be either.  We are our stories and we all deserve to have our stories heard and honored.  He said okay.

I sent him a portion of it and he did what he's done since I was arrested.  He told me I was full of the same old crap.  He said he was sorry all that stuff happened to me but didn't take responsibility for the 'stuff' he was a part of or participated in.  He didn't offer an apology.  He said I had abandoned him and not the other way around.

I pointed out to him I've never restricted his access to me and he was always welcome to call, and always has been.  He never did call, and I wasn't allowed to contact him, or Susie, so the ball has been in his court like he wanted.  Hell, he never even told me he had kids.  I pointed out he was still accepted by other family members and that he had participated in 'family meetings' where they all agreed I wouldn't be.  I pointed out he still had somewhere to go during holidays or on vacations and I didn't.  I had nowhere to go and haven't for the past twenty years.  I told him it was concerning to me that he couldn't see the difference.

I told him I'd willingly participate in joint therapy together, with a qualified therapist who would remain objective.  I said that to him a number of times and each time I said it he ignored me. I said if he was sincere about wanting repair and reconnection joint counseling could facilitate it.  I'm all in if you are, I said.  But he wasn't.    Every time I suggested counseling as a viable way to fix things he ignored me or responded with his usual cold, impersonal reply.  "Be well, Pat.  Be well."  Okay, sure, I'll do that.

I told him if he ever wanted to reach out again in the future he was welcome to do so.  I told him if he did I'd tell the truth again, and be real with him, like I've been.  I told him if he couldn't handle that not to contact me again.  I told him I didn't need a 'space' like he did for superficialities like birthday wishes, or holiday greetings.

A couple therapy hours seemed like a small but reasonable ask for a complicated reconnection.  It seemed like a small sacrifice to make to be Brothers again.  It would be hard, I said, and painful, but I'd do it.  For whatever reason, he wouldn't.  If I am full of crap, I said, I'll own it.  But not if it's him saying so.  Let's see if an objective mental health professional says so too, I said.  And he ignored me, again.  Truth is he knows I'm not full of crap and counseling would validate that.  He knows his actions and behavior would be called out and identified as dysfunctional and habitual.  He knows he'd have to own it like I have, and he knows he doesn't have the courage or humility to do that.  He knows that I do.  So he ignores me.

Be well, Kevin.  Be very, very well.