CLICHÉS THAT HAVE WORKED FOR ME – CONVERSATION WITH MY COLLEGE BOUND GRANDSON

CLICHÉS THAT HAVE WORKED FOR ME – CONVERSATION WITH MY COLLEGE BOUND GRANDSON

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 13, 2010

* * *

When the sun is setting on a long satisfying day, it is easy to forget how it rose with worrying uncertainties. The same could be said for a life. Every life is an adventure with a story to tell.

Recently, I had a brief visit with one of my grandsons, a college bound young man I see far too little of as he lives up north. He has grown tall and straight, quiet but funny, with an engaging personality and a captivating smile.

It has not been an easy road to his eighteen years. He has seen more of life than a young person should and still remain wholesome but he has. If anyone deserves to find happiness, and to succeed in life, he does. He has paid his dues.

What is most engaging about him, he doesn’t consider his situation unique. Nor does he believe it makes him special. It doesn’t. It does imbue him, however, with maturity rare for his generation.

He has been forced by circumstances to make the most of difficult circumstances, and to take nothing or anybody much less anything for granted. He is light years ahead of most eighteen-year-olds. So, I felt somewhat taken aback when he asked me what was the key to my success.

It is easy to wax philosophical with this ambivalent word, success, and sidestep the failures and regrets that have been part of the journey.

That said it was clear he wanted something to grab hold of when only truisms came to mind. He knows little of our family history, of the mainly accidental journey through which I, and now he have sprung from our mainly Irish family tree.

I sat there wondering what to say, realizing I have enjoyed an incredibly blessed life often despite rather than because of what I am. How to share this? I told him I could only express what seemed to work for me. “That is what I want to hear, bumpa,” he said.

* * *

THE IMPORTANCE OF PASSION

The most important thing to have is passion for what you do. Passion not only energizes you but fills your body and soul with spiritual health that sustains you when the unexpected occurs, or when the inevitable disappointment throws you off stride.

Passion is not the drive to become but the satisfaction of being who you are where you are doing what you are doing.

The purpose of life at every stage is what you are doing, not what you plan to do or hope to become but what you are doing right now.

Passion fills your body and soul with joy. Consider this. You work on something with all your being. It can be a sport, a project at school or around the house, anything that drains you to the limits of your energy. How do you feel? Exhausted? Of course.

You take a shower; feeling clean inside and out, refreshed, satisfied knowing you have done your best. Something happens. You start to feel your energy returning. You see everything more clearly. You are ready to go forward, ready to accept the consequences of your investment in time, energy, and sacrifice.

There is a simple formula that describes this:

PAIN + RISK = GROWTH

From the time we are small, we like to stand against the wall and see how much we have grown since the last time we measured ourselves. Growth is important to us. It is easy for us to think of growth in terms of our physical stature. It is less easy for us to think of growth in terms of our mental, psychological, emotional and moral stature.

Early on, we have a passion for things, a passion to dress ourselves, to do what we like, yes, and to do what we are told not to do.

We see others older than we are and want to be, do, and enjoy what they are allowed to do. We want to imitate them and to derive the benefits they have amassed by simply being older. We don’t see who and what and how they are in terms of passion much less pain and risk. We see them only in terms of what they are allowed to do versus the way we are treated.

The pain of growing physically is something everyone experiences. Yet even physical growth involves risks that either enhance that growth or retard it. You are eighteen and have seen more than most teenagers have seen in terms of how taking risks that are not life enhancing can retard your physical well being, and more importantly, can damage that precious mind of yours.

A life is a terrible thing to waste, true, but even that idea is subjective. If you are following your passions, whatever they are, your life will not be wasted.

Some may say you should be this or that because otherwise “you are wasting your talent.” Implied in this is that you are wasting your life. A life that follows its passions is like a plant that seeks the nourishment of the sun, settles in nutrient soil, and an enhancing climate for growth.

The problem with this is that that sun, that soil and that climate become revealed to us, if we have the alertness to heed that revelation, which occurs in a series of tectonic shifts in our experience. It is almost like osmosis. It permeates our temperament, in most cases, with an ultimate epiphany, but it has been working to that moment from the beginning.

You tell me you have no idea what you want to be. That is all right. Listen to your gut; yes, I said your gut. It will tell you if you are on the path of your passions. That means you must pay attention to what gives you satisfaction, to what puts a sparkle in your eye, and a bounce in your step. There is no honest work that is not worthy of passion. There is no honest vocation that is not worthy of passion. There is no fulfilling relationship, despite what others may tell you is wrong for you, that is not worthy of passion.

Passion has no interest in competing and comparing. Passion has no interest in being what everyone else says is important. Passion has no interest in celebrity, in making people envious, in stimulating admiration. Passion is all about the effective utilization of your inherent ability in the service of others, which is the best way to serve yourself.

* * *

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING A SKILL BASE

Your grandfather has had a passion for ideas and learning all his life. When he was a little boy, he was surrounded by men who never stayed in school very long, who hated school, hated formal education, thought reading books was effeminate, thought that the world was against them because of their ethnicity and religion.

They were of the opinion that the die was cast, that they were of a class and cast system with no options other than to gather around the kitchen table smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee complaining of how they were exploited at work by their bosses.

They talked in stereotypes. I didn’t know what that word meant but they repeated it enough that it stuck in my mind. “All rich people were corrupt.” "All politicians were crooks except President Roosevelt.” “All pious people were hiding something.” “People who dressed to the nines were putting on airs.” “All people with fancy homes were trying to keep up with the Joneses.”

Sitting around that kitchen table in gossipy collusion they seemed to derive pleasure from the practice. I noticed my mother, who was hard of hearing, poured coffee and cut pieces of fudge cake for them, and emptied their ashtrays but didn’t say anything. In fact, my da seemed to enjoy the company with no need to participate. I found that odd.

It was my mother who broke me out of my trance. She became my coach, counselor, mentor and friend pointing out the importance of a “skill base.” She didn’t use that expression. She talked of how I was to escape the kitchen table. My mother did not look at things in sophisticated language, but in earthy, pragmatic and perceptive ways.

It may seem cold but nonetheless true. She saw me as a commodity for sale, an amorphous bit of protoplasm with certain possibilities that would take nurturing and grooming. She started on me from the age of five when she came into my life after spending much of those earlier years in hospital.

It started with my appearance; the way I looked carried myself spoke and even walked. She said, “You are going to be tall, good looking, with a massive body that people cannot help but notice. Don’t ever forget that.” Well, of course, I did and paid for the trouble. But she was right about presence. It counts for more than it should.

My mother was a reader, a fast reader. She could read a book a day, smoking her cigarettes and drinking her coffee. Since she had poor hearing, it might have been compensation for that fact. In any case, she persuaded me that books had power and would open my mind to see itself, naked.

She told me that life was not a career, but a series of jobs. The first real job of a child, she said, was attending school. “If you don’t have a passion for school,” she said, “it is unlikely you will have much of a passion for other jobs.” She added, “Don’t blame your poor performance on your teachers. The most important teacher you will ever have is yourself. Pay attention to that teacher.”

This made little sense to me at the time. I asked her to explain. “What happens in school when you are prepared when Sister (the nun at St. Patrick's School) calls on you?”

Puzzled, I said, “I answer.”

“What is Sister’s expression?”

Still puzzled, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Does she smile? Does she compliment you?”

“She smiles.”

My mother lights a cigarette on the butt of the one in her mouth. “Progress, Jimmy, is a series of smiles and frowns in every job you will ever have. The more smiles you can produce the greater the progress you will make, and the greater the progress you make the more freedom you will enjoy.”

“Does da cause a lot of smiles?”

“Jimmy, and I don’t expect you to understand this, but your father is one of those people that has never reached the level of smiles or frowns. He is taken for granted and treated that way.”

“You are right. I don’t understand.”

“What I’m trying to say is he is not treated as a person because he could disappear tomorrow and nothing would change and nobody would miss him other than us.”

I started to cry because I had seen instances in my own presence when he was treated poorly. Anger welled up in me. I had a temper. My mother watched me through a smoker’s haze.

“You look like your father right now.” I wondered if that was good or bad. “He gets upset, which is all right if you know why you’re upset, and do something about it, but he doesn’t. Anger is not bad if you know what caused it. It is my job to help you use your anger to bring more smiles than frowns to those that have authority over you.”

* * *

Now, why am I telling you this?

It wasn’t until I came back from South Africa in 1969, half a life ago, that I realized that my drive, my passion, the multifaceted skill base that I had developed that put me in such demand was not a matter of my self-invention as I had thought. It was a result of the attention of my mother.

I, as a parent, thought my job was to create an affluent climate in which my children would find their own way, as I thought I had found mine. How arrogant.

I had forgotten those conversations with my mother, forgotten her prodding, of saying when I came home from school with three A’s and a B, that it wasn’t four A’s.

I never urged my children on as she had me. I left your mother and your uncles and aunt on their own, on what I guess could be called automatic pilot. I did them a disservice. They found their own way, but without my help. My mother installed a moral compass in me, a direction finder. Do my children have such a guidance system? I don’t think so.

My mother’s wisdom and drive contributed much to my surprisingly easy life. Some may say she lived through me, and perhaps she did The point is she understood her son’s personality was much like his father’s, and therefore knew that she had her work cut out for her to see her son got more smiles than frowns.

Discipline, direction, pain and risk, and making choices that enhanced what I had to offer came because of the compass my mother installed in me. You have had to install yours in yourself. That is admirable, and much more rare.

* * *

THE POWER OF PERSONALITY

It is a gift to be liked by most people as you are, to be able to make them laugh and feel comfortable and not threatened, to take pleasure in seeing you succeed and being happy for you.

You could have a chip on your shoulder but you don’t. In that sense, you are the superior of your grandfather. I say this to give you some sense of how I’ve handicapped myself with my personality whereas you have not. I confess that I think personality is rated much higher than it should be. I would prefer it be in balance with our essence, that is, our talent. That said we tend to surround ourselves with people like us, which exaggerates our weaknesses at the expense of our strengths.

Over the years, I have hired people and interviewed many more as part of an interviewing team. I have always rated competence higher than personality. Stated another way, being qualified for the job has been my primary interest.

My colleagues often differed with me on this seeing the most important criteria:

(1) Being comfortable with the person, and
(2) Seeing the person fitting in the organization as it is.

Once these criteria were satisfied they assured themselves that the person was also qualified or that he or she would prove to be so in time.

It should then come as little surprise that performance appraisals, promotions and raises were likewise associated with these same criteria.

I am speaking to the choir, I know, because you have already worked this out. You listen, study, observe and absorb information with a smile without saying anything, or you make a joke to relax others, and not appear threatening.

Even so, there will be some people who will be more comfortable with you than others. It is not always the people with whom we are most comfortable that are best for us.

For example, I appreciate people with ideas. I am attracted to people who question things, but they don’t always like me to question their thinking. They may withdraw, go silent, and no longer seek my input much less my questioning mind. That is all right with me. I still contact them. Why? I appreciate their minds. I’m not interested in their approval. To put it another way, I’m not looking for friends or to influence people. I’m looking to learn. Ideas turn me on.

You are a social person and like the company of friends. Choose friends, as my mother would say, wisely, that is, that enhance you as you are and as the person you want to be. Your grandfather’s friends are primarily ideas, and ideas are often in books, ideas often of people who no longer walk this earth.

It took South Africa for this to register. I love privacy and the freedom to think in the loving company of your grandmother Betty. It has nothing to do with me being a good or great thinker. It has everything to do with the person I am and choose to be. There are no absolutes in this calculus, only the flawed personification of the personal. Ultimately, life is all about choices.

* * *

THE POWER OF BEING

We have this idea that security is the end all, that we should do everything to enhance our security. We as a society have given up much of our freedom and privacy for this security. We even stay in jobs we hate because of security. We think one day we can embrace the security of retirement when we have never found time to live. .

The greatest threat to being is not security. That is like putting the cart before the horse. The greatest threat to being is fear of life.

So, many people work themselves to death; burn the candle at both ends to keep their stress levels down, and then limp into old age broken in body and spirit needing transplants or a score of prescription drugs to keep them vertical.

You are a good listener. I have not always been one. Several people along the way told me I should be doing what I’m doing here, writing, but I put it off until “I could afford it.” Now most passion is spent, most of that light that could change random thoughts into gold is gone. Do I exaggerate? I don’t think so. Most scientific breakthroughs were made when men and women were young; the same is true of great art, literature, and music.

Now, I know I said earlier you should listen to your gut. I repeat it now because your gut is that voice that bombards your senses. It is that nudge from inside that speaks to you. It would be wise to give it a listen.

I work harder now at my writing than I ever did at a well paying job with much less to show for it economically. That may surprise you but it is true.

The irony is that had I started a writing career when I was nineteen as a professor advised me this would all be academic. For you see, do what you love and the money will follow. I don’t need the money now so I am content to entertain myself by scribbling.

* * *

THE IMPORTANCE OF LUCK

It is safe to say that I have had more than my share of luck in life.

In fact I have often fallen into things. For starters, I was born at the right time in the right place with the right industries opening up, while the world was exploding in Post-WWII expansionism.

I also developed the right skill base at the right time when there was a demand for such skills. Again, through the encouragement of a mentor, I managed to get a Ph.D. when such alphabetic letters after your name got people to take you seriously.

I would like to end this cliché driven conversation with yet another cliché:

Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

My mother once told me that I was insecure. I would have to agree. It is why I am so self-centered. Alan W. Watts taught me the wisdom of insecurity. My mother had no idea who Watts was. She knew there was only one way for me to deal with my insecurity, and that was by being prepared. I took her advice to heart.

Luck is always out there waiting to be grasped like a brass ring. Luck demands that we do our best and accept the consequences of the doing, that we treat ourselves as our best friend by being kind and understanding of our limitations. This is the only way to be sincerely kind to others.

When you see people who are hard on others, count on them being much harder on themselves. Kindness is a virtue of self-acceptance.

Finally, life was meant to be our story, a story that others can build on, like I hope you can build on mine.

With love,

Your Bumpa