Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 12 January

Genius can afford to be eccentric

Good Morning Jacob…

The sun doesn’t rise unless there’s someone there to see it.  You can’t ignore a big production and expect it to take place without the fanfare of appreciation, even if it’s only a birdbrain rooster clearing its throat.  That’s the way the universe works.  Prove me wrong if you don’t believe it.  Could you hand me that?  I believe it’s my drink.

I was beyond remembering the night before.  Whatever happened never took its required place in my memory.  Once I awoke the following morning the first thing I did was go to the window and see if my car was there.  Was it in one piece?  And what of the people I made myself known to the prior evening?  I should prepare my apologies, whatever they might need to be.  I could have done or said most anything imaginable.  My sober mind would have cringed at my insulting and boorish manner, but drunk, I would have considered my remarks stringently witty, if not downright welcomed for being so obviously necessary.

I put down the drink a long time ago and the chaos of my life has been lifted but the nature of my personality remains fiercely intact.  It’s just better caged.  That’s good enough for me.  I’m not working on changing who it is I am.  It would be like substituting someone else’s version of life for mine and I don’t see that a winning point.  We respect others while remaining true to our essential nature.  People aren’t required to accept our authentic selves but we do ourselves a favor by limiting our real friendships to those that truly know us.  We tend to the business of living our life as best we can and leave to society how they choose to value our contribution. 

Governments are always busy mediating the boundaries that protect individual rights while ensuring the stability of society.  Culture, history and contemporary context all help determine the extent of our freedom to pursue our desires and promote our beliefs.  We make ourselves known, letting others observe and judge for themselves the validity of our chosen practices.  Unless the spirit of the individual is repressed this scenario will make for a noisy affair.  The many conflicting points of view will be passionately debated.  What we have created in a healthy society is a marketplace of individual ideas endlessly seeking validation.

How annoying it can be to hear so many arguments for ways of living that go against my own common sense.  I smother my outrage.  It’s quite apparent to me the life I’ve chosen for myself has very little appeal for the vast majority of the people around me.  Should I take offense to this?  Why?  Fortunately we are not all shaped from the same cookie cutter.  A society made exclusively of people like me would soon starve.  My attitudes and skills are at best a fringe benefit to the population of this tribe.  There is need for very few people like me.  But it is good that I am represented because I believe diversity is fundamental to human success.   Look at all the niches human society fills.  We didn’t get to where we are by practicing herd behavior. 

We all have traits clearly meant for us and they do not transfer well to those we know.  This has a lot to do with what it means to be human.  Not everything about us is admirably polished on close examination.  We have our quirks.  They can be surprisingly useful.  Every individual known to history has oddities that are familiar to all.  They may seem laughable at times but I suspect our peculiarities are often unrecognized contributors, instrumental in making for brilliant and heroic acts.

Love,

           Dad

Good Morning Jacob...

Letter to my Son

Sunday, 16 June

Rush Job

I hope that you and I will one day again be able to take walks together.  Much of the energy I place into my projects is with this goal in mind.  I use the hands given me to do with as best I can.  There is a reason for everything we do.  We don’t have to know what that reason is for this to be so.  A coyote bays at the moon without considering why.  What need is there for him to know?  He may not even realize he’s a coyote.  It doesn't matter.  He is as life prescribes. 

Once again I draw pictures.  It’s one of those ventures where I don’t know what it is I am looking for except that I will know it when I see it.  That seems to be the rule of this game.  Do you find your instincts can appear counter-intuitive to what it is you are trying to do?  We can attempt the seemingly obvious yet find it as maddeningly elusive as writing our name while viewing the results in a mirror.  Doing what we think we ought to be doing only sends us in the opposite direction of where it is we want to be.  I find myself in life time and again stubbornly insisting on making the wrong approach.  What simple trick of the mind have I overlooked? 

It would be an easy conclusion to make that I have so far failed in what it is I have tried to do.  Failure here is a term incorrectly applied.  It is too definitive and simple an answer to be useful.  Trying to visualize the peeled-back layers of one’s own human mind is not like a round of horseshoes.  I can be far from my mark and still find the results interesting.  In some things it is better to make the most from an inadvertent gesture.  A God-awful choice has its own revelation.  The hunch I want myself to believe in is that the path to personal success is by way of making a series of right disastrous choices.  I’m stuck with myself.  Ugly ducklings don’t always turn into swans.  I’m sixty-four and my use of color and form still reminds me of goulash found in an alley behind the restaurant.  It seems evident by now that I wasn’t put on Earth to make roast duck.  I’m here to convince you that corn and green beans in tomato sauce is ravishing.

The challenges we choose for ourselves go a long way towards defining who it is we truly are.  The clothes we wear are largely influenced by the fashion of the time.  Our pick in career may be a muddled mix of motivations that includes mundane matters of money and opportunity.  Certainly our choice of a spouse suggests something significant about us, though, I suspect biology and timing play a bigger role than we would like to think.  No, if you want to know who it is we really are then look at the rock we volunteer to endlessly roll uphill.  I once knew a man many years ago that had a rare genetic defect.  Each finger of his hands was one knuckle short.  Despite his resulting limited agility and lack of reach his burning desire was to play the piano well.  He did.  The result was not a repertoire of familiar show tunes.  His style suggested the rapid course that water takes down a steep mountain stream.  His was an approach to the keyboard you would hear nowhere else.  It was music of a strange sort, but it was music. 

There is always something odd to be found in the character we each display.  We may try to hide it from view because our particular quirk appears so ridiculous, so indefensible to our own mind.  Sure, someone that doesn't know us well may have a good laugh at our expense but they haven’t had the time to sample the savory blend of seasonings that make up our seven course personality.  And yes, not everyone is going to take to us, no matter what.  We don’t all appreciate almond slivers in rice… or whatever it is that makes your particular psychological concoction uniquely you. 

I make pictures, though I never figured out how to draw.  I love drawing though learning about it never interested me.  I just put my shoulder into the rock, hope for the best, and start trudging uphill. 

Love,

          Dad