A professor, not in an admiring tone, just called me “revolutionary,” “radical,” “a threat,” and “audacious.” Guilty to three out of four. I admitted to her that I make no bones about being a cable cutter. I added that my vision is bright, shining, and valuable only when I have the courage to follow it. When I know that it is the thing to do, then I step up and do it. But, I am no threat, however others may feel threatened. All I do is to stay informed, to educate myself on the latest research on learning, to pay attention, very close attention to what others have discovered, say, and write. It doesn’t bother me that a lot of the new brain-based findings on learning goes against long held myths. I am “revolutionary” and “radical” in that I don’t hesitate to find ways to change my thinking and doing. I don’t tightly grip to the comfortable, risk-free ignorance of age-old presumption, assumption, or perception. I am not, for example, threatened by the recent revelations in Frances Jensen’s “The Teenage Brain” that adds to the challenge of long held views that our students are rational, thinking-before-acting “adults.” I just remember who I am, who I was, where I came from, where I am, where I want to go, and what I have to offer. I give color and texture and substance and sensation to my most treasured dreams. I focus my mind, my energy, my spirit, my feelings, and my emotions on helping others to help themselves become the persons they each are capable of becoming. When that occurs, it is the most joyful and fulfilling scenario of service I can imagine. If that be “revolutionary” and “radical,” and a “threat,” so be it.
Now, as for being “audacious,” I admit that I have an engaged amazement of life, or what Rabbi Abraham Herschel would call a “spiritual audacity.” And why not. At this stage of my life, at the age of 74 and still young in spirit and somewhat physically spry, after a forty-six year academic career, after surviving myself, after having an enlightening epiphany, after overcoming cancer, and after miraculously–that’s the only word that fits–surviving unscathed a massive cerebral hemorrahage that normally kills or seriously disables 95% of the people who have experienced it, should I be otherwise? Am I really supposed to be worried about what others think? Am I really supposed to succumb and become the person others want me to become? Am I really supposed to tow the academic party line and kowtow to academic convention? I think not!
I’ll tell you, my greatest sense of stability is to live my vision and base my intentional choices on it. I get going when I get life going my way, when I move my dreams from “someday” or “tomorrow” to “now” and “today.” My greatest sense of liberation, the bedrock of my self-esteem, comes from not worrying about what others think, not performing as others would have me, and not conforming to the demand of others. Over the past twenty-three years or so since my epiphany, catalyzed by having survived cancer and that cerebral hemorrhage, I have learned that my life is the result of all the conscious and unconscious choices I’ve made about whose voices to heed, what paths to walk, what vision I may or may not have, in what direction I go, and whom I serve. As I had begun slowly and cautiously to control the process of choosing, I found that I had begun to take control of all aspects of my life. I slowly found the freedom that came from being in charge of myself.
It was and is that simple. When I take control, I have control. I intend consciously to live my intention of living well, that is, to bring sincere happiness, fulfillment, and purpose to each moment. And if any shortfalls occur, I’ll choose to morph disappointment into unstoppable determination. It breaks whatever controls others may wish to exercise over me. When I stop looking over my shoulder, I look forward and have my eyes on the prize. When I take the responsibility of the choices I make, when I silence that blaming whispered or proclaimed “the devil made me do it,” when I replace “you made me…” with the recognition that “I made me…,” I, and only I, am in charge of me. When I accept that “I am responsible for…,” I am the only one who owns me. I am my own person. I decide how to react to and respond to people and circumstances around me. The truth is that I will be miserable when I choose to be miserable, and I will be happy when I choose to be happy. I don’t need a particular job, title, income, or any set of circumstance to enjoy; I must simply choose to enjoy. The bottom line is that whatever and wherever and whenever I choose to feel, I feel. It’s all in the way I choose to look at life and all in the way I choose the way.
Of course, it’s not that simple, not as simple as self-help platitudes make it out to be. As DaVinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Sure, the outside world exerts a lot of pressure and influence that yield anxiety and fear. But, I found that I can have greater inner influence over me. So, breaking the binding chains is not easy. It requires courage and strength. It requires commitment, dedication, perseverance, and patience. It demands sweat. It demands a lot of challenge to inner conventional thinking, a lot of inner crockery breaking. It requires a new course setting over a long haul. Now, you may say that I’m going too far. But, as T.S. Eliot said, “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
So, my inner peace comes a twenty-four year and counting inner emotional and spiritual workout program of listening to myself, being honest with myself about myself, and constantly in pursuit of becoming and being my authentic self. That inner serenity and freedom give me a power, not to overwhelm, but to transform; not to be the bull in the proverbial china shop, but empathetically to tread carefully and lightly; not to be arrogant and self-righteous, but to be a mergence of power and gentleness and authority and kindness; to be humble; to be harmonious, but to be in community; not to be self-centered, but to have a keen sense of awareness and otherness and deep respectfulness; not to be haughty, but to be empathetic and sympathetic; not to take, but grab the chance to serve and to contribute to something bigger than myself.
I guess, as Cornel West would say, I am unbound, unafraid, unbought, and unintimidated to be me. You see, when I sing my own song, when I dance to my own choreography, when I perform my own lines, when I feel obligated to enlarge my world and the world around me, that’s when I have ownership of what I do, that’s when I experience purpose, meaning, and fulfillment. And, that’s when I am truly happy: when I truly love who I am and love more who I am constantly becoming, when I have a durable and enduring feeling of well-being, and when I have a quiet and honest satisfaction with what I am doing with my life.
Louis