Good Morning Justin

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 16 November

Good Morning Justin…

A college student I know says his education costs sixty thousand dollars a year.  It’s a private school in upstate New York so maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised at the small fortune required to get a degree.  State schools are more reasonable but students today are still required to take on enormous debt in order to get a higher education.  That means you are soon faced with stiff monthly payments once you receive your diploma and become a bright jobseeker, intent on landing a well-paying position in a highly competitive environment.  You can’t afford to founder and be branded a deadbeat at the start of your adult career.  Living at home well into your twenties implodes the hard-fought self-respect you earned attaining good grades while tackling challenging subjects.  A person is likely to second-guess their choices.  You find a Bachelor’s degree in biology certifies you to clean out animal cages and wash test tubes while you work on a more advanced degree.  You better know who you are, what you want and have a realistic career strategy by your sophomore year if you are to avoid writing blogs about life viewed from the sidelines.  What a picture; you still in your pajamas tapping away on your laptop just beneath your framed diploma.  It’s a good thing your phone’s disconnected – what with all the creditors menacing you.

This is not the first time eager graduates have been thrown a curve by the economy.  I remember a story many years ago of a man with a Ph.D. in physics having to settle for driving a cab in San Francisco.  At least he wasn’t faced with paying off crushing debt.  During those years the cost of textbooks for your courses cost more than your tuition at California state-sponsored universities.  What a dream that was.  It allowed you to experiment, find out who you were, what you liked.  You could change majors without fear if you liked.  It was even feasible for a student with little means to get a degree in topics like Art History or English Literature or Drama.  No, you weren’t likely to get a job in your field of study.  Chances are you wound up watering plants at a local nursery but you were free of creditors.  You could pull up stakes and move to a small mountain town in Arizona.  Here you would work as a DJ for minimum wage while you worked on your first novel – never to be published.  Friends would be getting married, buying new cars and setting career goals for where they wanted to be five years hence.  That’s OK.  You had the great outdoors and a good deal of free time to enjoy it.

I’m at the age of collecting Social Security.  I never figured out what I wanted to do for a living.  It was a life largely of improvisation.  It’s not a strategy that brings a tidy pension once you reach retirement.  Still, I doubt if I could have been successful working any other way.  I hated giving up the time it took to be practical.

The schools thought it a good idea to learn speed reading when I was a kid.  I think President Kennedy was said to read over twelve hundred words a minute.  The trick was to search for key words and phrases as you skimmed down the page.  Yeah, I think most people call this approach skimming.  I hated it.  It’s like stuffing your mouth and spend five minutes eating during your lunch hour.  There was no time for appreciating anything.  I would gladly skim through topics I didn’t care for in school.  Most books, though, I preferred to savor. 

Feel free to get your degree in a field that promises you a prosperous career if that’s your desire.  Raise a happy family and find a pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.  This is the path chosen by those fortunate enough to appreciate its demands.  I’m sorry it didn’t work for me.  I’m still willing to try.  Give me a ring if you know someone willing to pay me for photographing moths in a field somewhere.  I’ve also got some doodles I’d love to have marketed as posters.  I’m always game for starting over in something new.

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to my Daughter
Sunday, 21 July

Doorway

Good Morning Jessicca…

Pull back the curtain and you will find a time when it was thought all serious people decided, for perpetuity, what they would be in life once they grew up.  This was a miraculous period that followed completion of basic schooling.  By now girls knew something of boys and boys knew something of girls and everyone had done their homework enough to know a little bit about everything.  All things true would come to a glorious completion as we tied a bow with the love of our life, and assessed our aptitudes in order to choose a career that would help make love, family and security, all possible.  Wendy and Peter Pan, shedding their childhood notions, meet at the wedding alter in their first step of commitment for two adults sharing all the twists, surprises and rewards offered in life.

A few people my age might actually describe their life in this manner but, for many of us, this was the mythology of a simpler time.  There no longer is the sense of inevitable opportunity and domestic certainty young people once naively felt about their life before them.  Today there are still enormous opportunities for smart people with the skills to keep pace with the rapidly evolving demands of this society.  For those of us not exhibiting the capabilities profitable to the various enterprises of our time we are left to feel fortunate we remain standing on a treadmill whose pace seems ever increasing.

Actually, what is described here probably holds true for at least the past hundred years.  There never really was an optimal time for people whose expectations exceeded their marketability, in an environment where the price of personal labor is as much governed by supply and demand as is any product offered on a retail shelf.  Prior to the twentieth century you could opt out of the demands of civilization and choose to take your chances on a sprawling frontier west of the Mississippi.  Pioneers lived a life of beauty and brutality, opportunity and uncertainty of matching expanse.  The laws governing your actions were merciless in judgment, but you were free to call all the decisions you made to be entirely your own.  Success in your venture could provide magnificent reward.  Losing out to the elements would leave you only with the pride of having died free.  Your story might be one passed down through the generations if only they first stumble upon your bones.

The degree of our desire determines the intensity of our ambition.  The more we want from our life, the greater the mountain and steeper the slope that first must be scaled.  Hard work and devotion to one’s calling is no guarantee for ultimate success but personal effort and sacrifice is as fundamental to achievement as purchasing a ticket is to winning the lottery.  This seems an obvious truth if your wish is to own a grand home on a hill.  It may be no less true, though, if what you seek is spiritual in intensity.  The difference may lie only in the path of applied effort.

Life is a wellspring in seeming defiance of nature’s laws, an expression of high improbability.  You and I are free to pursue whatever fancies may enter our mind.  It is well for us, though, to retain always the healthiest of perspectives and celebrate each day the extraordinary nature of our own conscious existence.  The fact that you presently are is all that you have to safely take for granted.   Anything more has the ethereal substance of personal wish.

Love,

           Dad

Good Morning Jack...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 7 July

Neighborhood

Good Morning Jack…

I hope only for the best in health and happiness for you, your mother, brothers and sister.  Hope is never a casual expression.  The world sometimes presents us with sinister turns.  The people I care for most can sometimes seem to have a frail hold on life.  Still, nothing is gained dwelling in darkness and I think it best to enjoy the light of day.  We live to stay involved.

Each of us is furnished a familiar outlook on life that also displays characteristics unique to ourselves.  We all desire much of the same things but we set about procuring these goals in a manner that reveals our own shades of personal meaning.  In so doing we fill the niches of humanity.  At some point in life our time spent planning for the future is encroached upon by our estimations on how we’ve already done.  Our life, seen in retrospect, makes for an interesting narrative.  Certainly there are some who have turned their early intentions into accomplishments and they now walk the path they always envisioned for themselves.  Yet, the decisions they made along the way and the events that led to this point in their life were beyond their ability to foresee.  We fulfilled our predictions to a splendid degree but the manner of our achievement is a story spiced with intrigue. 

There are those of us not quite so resolute in our goals.  Our youthful intentions often seemed murky, even to ourselves.  The journey began without a plotted course.  The destination was never adequately settled.  Critical decisions were improvised.  What does one make of this manner of voyage?  Was there a notable result beyond that of personal discovery?  This captain’s log may hold a tale of misadventure, shameful lapse of character and brilliant survival skills.  The ship finally makes port safely, having to show for its extended effort a cargo hold that is empty save for two rare albino coconuts. 

Popeye’s goal in life was to win the heart of Olive Oyl.  He worked very hard at it.  Olive always appreciated his effort and devotion to her but she never could quite overcome her attraction to Bluto’s animal magnetism.  Bluto was a narcissist and I doubt Olive Oyl meant anything more to him than a prize of conquest.  Bluto was no good.  When he swept Olive up with his powerful arms, holding her pressed to his barrel chest while he carried her off, she would scream for Popeye and vainly struggle to be free.  Deep inside, though, she was enthralled with the feeling of being a helpless captive to desire and she would sigh, “Oh, my!”  Meanwhile, ever faithful Popeye would come running, crying out, “I’ll save you, Olive.”

Ain’t life a bitch?  If only Bluto could be trusted.  If only Olive would settle down.  If only Popeye wasn’t such a mumbling nitwit.  If only what was good for you wasn’t a can of spinach – leaves soggy with vinegar. 

One of the goals in most everyone’s life is to win someone’s heart.  We have our reasons to develop our personal capabilities as far as we can take them but it all seems to be in the context of being a part of another person’s life.  The desire to accomplish great things can lose much of its luster once the person you most care for is suddenly gone.  It doesn’t mean we quit.  We find new motivations to continue on but it hasn’t the same sense of sharing as before.  If you’re a Neanderthal there’s enormous gratification in dragging the impressive carcass of a freshly killed animal to the cave entrance of the woman you love.  If it turns out she has left then all you can see is decaying flesh and an issue with flies.  You leave it for the hyenas.  You head in the direction of the setting sun.  Who knows what waits for you over the horizon?

Love,

          Dad

Good Morning Jessicca...

Letter to My Daughter
Sunday, February 10

Rodger Dodger Jessicca

Good Morning Jessicca…

Going back many years when I was young I had a minor job at the Palo Alto Cultural Center in Northern California.  I helped set up and take down exhibits and generally make myself available for small tasks to do.  One afternoon I set up the chairs in the Center’s large auditorium for the evening’s one man performance by a noteworthy actor.  The paid audience grew to standing room only.  The evening was an enormous success and when the actor concluded his performance everyone gave him a rousing ovation to show their appreciation. 

The performer’s paycheck was in an envelope handed me the following day to deliver to him personally.  His address was in a pleasant neighborhood.  It was that of a shaded room with its own separate entry onto a brick patio, behind a large, imposing home.  He met me outside, a man in company with a cat harboring about his legs, both appearing in need of a kick start morning coffee.  Like many an actor, musician, artist and writer, he probably chose his calling early, when ideals meant youthful adventure.  Now, middle-aged, he undoubtedly had been given reason enough, long ago, to abandon his plans. 

Society is built with the labor of people, like my uncle, who chose a career because it offered the kind of steady wages needed to raise a healthy family.  One’s own dreams are often subordinated for the sake of a marriage, one’s children, and a safe home near good schools.  My uncle chose engineering even though mathematics gave him no joy.  Still, the Thanksgiving table was guaranteed abundant with good food, there were always presents under the Christmas tree, the driveway had a reliable car available and there was a set of Encyclopedia Britannica in the living room.  Sure, he sometimes had to move to follow the work – often buying homes at inflated prices and eventually selling them when there was no market.  It was Indiana to Texas to California to Florida to Oklahoma and then, back to Texas.  On this basis he raised four children, saw each of them married and have children of their own.  His own marriage lasted over fifty years. 

When making our choices it is important to keep in mind that we can’t have it all.  Life requires commitment from us if our values are to have meaning.  We are not born with our character fully formed.  It is built from the actions we take.  Every major decision made by us involves both satisfying gain and a degree of personal loss.  The loss we experience has value, as well.  Knowing what we’ve sacrificed is knowing something of who we are – the degree of our passion, the determination behind our commitment… and maybe the folly of our choice. 

The actor sits reading in his room shared with a cat, waiting for that rare call to appear live upon the stage.  If only I had listened to my Dad and become an engineer.  How good would life have been?

Love,

         Dad