Lately, in the midst of the season of frantic candle lighting, gift buying and baking, wrapping, and mailing, I’ve been pensive.  My brother-in-law, my dearest friend, whom I’ve known since the days before he met my sister when we roomed together back in the early sixties at UNC, is in the hospital, again, with some real serious stuff, again.   It was in that deep mood, about 4:30 this morning, that I jumped out of bed, brewed a cup of coffee, and came back to sit on the steps leading down to the sunken master bedroom.   It was still.  My angelic Susie was sleeping.  In the silky dark, I could feel a presence, for I find that it’s in the dark that my inner light shines forth brightest.  I looked up at the 22′ high cathedral ceiling and shook my head in amazement.  This  20′ x 20′ room, along with the large master bath and Susie’s huge walk-in closet, is what Susie and I call our “get-away master complex” in which we can shut ourselves off completely from the rest of the house with the mere closing of a door.

I had designed and built the whole thing with my own two hands thirty-seven years ago.  Me, an intellectual, a history professor, an “egghead,” but a person who loves to work with both his mind and hands.  Starting and continuing with a “what the hell” beginner’s mind I opened the roof, stripped off the outer brick in order to tie-in the new wing to the old house.  I did all the concrete work, carpentry, stone work, framing, electrical work, masonry, drywalling, plastering, wood working, hauling, lifting, nailing, screwing, hammering, ship-lapping, painting, staining, roofing.  It took me a year.  It wasn’t a free ride.  It was full of challenges.  It was full of aches and pains.  It was full of cuts and scratches, and an injury or two.  It was full of mistakes.  It was full of tearing out and redoing.  It was full of learning.   I still look at it now, as I have been almost daily for these past nearly four decades, with  a “wow!”   The “wow” was the result of keeping at it until I got it, and it, and it, and it.   It was the result of a determination, an needed antidote to cynicism, to face up to the hard realities of what it took to build this addition myself without letting anyone or anything diminish my imagination, creativity, and enthusiasm.

Since then, I’ve renovated most of the rest of the house, and Susan says I never really wanted to move not only because we live a block from campus, but because I have so much of myself in the house.  That’s true.  Much of what I learned, much of what I have confidence in doing started with this 800 square foot complex. I found abilities and talents I wasn’t sure I possessed.  But, while I picked up the gauntlet to build this complex, and learned a lot about myself, I did not risk taking the lessons of what it took to build this addition and other renovations beyond the confines of wood, marble, and stone into my larger personal, social, and professional life.  Until my epiphany fourteen years later, in the fall of 1991, there was still a great divide between the words I spoke and the way I lived.

As I began to put flesh on what I call “little big words” words like faith, belief, hope, and love, however, and as I began to embody those words in my values and beliefs, in my identity and integrity, in my all my relations, I came back to this complex with a different amazement.  “Why was I so blind and deaf that didn’t I see and hear what you have been saying all these years,” I remember one dark morning tearfully speaking to these rooms in the winter of 1991.  Since then, listening to the whispered answers of this complex, it has become for me a deep and insightful metaphor for anything in life:

First, throughout the year it took to build this complex, I was in a state of constant “edginess.”  But, I had learned that those unwilling to take any risk and play is safe have allowed comfort zones to control and restrict them; yet, they have as much angst in their comfort zone as a person who is willing to put it all out on the table, and expands what Howard Thurman called a her or his “growing edge” in life.

Second, so, I think the biggest mistake anyone can make is to avoid anything where they might make a mistake, for mistakes are the road signs to what we have to learn.

Third, I found as I was willing to be discomforted, I became so comfortable with discomfort that I could live boldly and fearlessly. In the words of Rumi;  “Forget safety.  Live where you fear to live.  Destroy your reputation.  Be notorious.”

Fourth, as a consequence, I learned that the boundaries of comfort zones are more often than not expanded by discomfort.  Again, in the words of Rumi:  “If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”  It’s a way of looking at things, a kind of essential edgy growth around the edges that reveals the nascent light within, and makes new starts possible in everything we do every day.

And, finally, I came to realize that the things I value most are those things to which, and for which, I give of myself the most.  I value this part of the house most because I gave of myself the most. I took the most chances; I learned most how to do things; I risked the most screw-ups.  I experimented the most.  I tested myself the most.  I reached out and stretched the most.  The valuable things are valuable because of how much of me has been put into them, not because they are easy.  The effort spent on creating value is a joy; and, when it is a joy, it is not laborious work.

Each day I hear this complex, as well as my koi pond and water fountain, speak to me.  They say that arduous and challenging efforts are not somethings to be avoided, but somethings to be sought out. They’re the way to make a difference in your life and the lives of others; they’re the way that problems are transcended; they’re the way of making a difference; they’re the way that lives live on.

Louis