Date: Fri 5/26/2006 3:57 AM
Random Thought: The Race
My cancer was and still is like a pencil sharpener. It has honed my awareness of
myself, this moment, others, and things around me. It has made me realize more than ever
that the sin of everything I do in my personal and professional life is that of
inadvertence, not being alert, not quite awake. It is the sin of missing each moment of
life. It is the sin of not unwrapping the present that the present offers: to live with
unremitting awareness and intense gratitude. It's the commission of that omission--not to
do something empowering, something joyful, something positive, something meaningful,
something creative and imaginative, and something valuable each moment--that causes anyone
to grow old, atrophy, and diminish the passionate fires. It's an awareness so acute that
I have little or no time for fear, agony, resentment, and resignation. Awareness is my
best friend. It permits me to go anywhere I chose. It transforms every challenge from
forboding and forbidding into welcoming and allowing. It allows me to speak with my own
voice, think with my own mind, create with my own imagination, and act according to my own
vision. It shows me that I am the solution to any problems I face and the answer to any
questions I pose. It keeps me young, alert, adroit, and vibrant. It sets me in motion
and does allow me merely to go through the motions. It insists I live my words rather
than merely be satisfied with uttering them. It inspires me to keep on making changes in
my life, do more for myself, be truer to myself, and do more for others. My cancer always
reminds me of my need for a "just to...." place, an introspective personal time and
secluded place for quiet refueling of my inner fires, for reviewing and renewing my
personal and professional values, needs, and priorities. In fact, we each need to learn
that we would all do well to take personal quiet time and make use of life review. I
assure you that such a time and place improves your mood and vigor, increases your energy,
heightens your desire to take care of yourself, as well as better stacks the deck in favor
of better physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. In other words, it is my
private and public litany that I will not, I simply swear I will not, go quietly into the
still night. That is what keeps me in the race during the entire race.
Talking about races, as I enter my 40th year here at Valdosta State people
incessantly have been asking when I plan to retire or why haven't I already retired. It's
almost the opening sentence of every conversation. I don't get annoyed. No, I chuckle.
My universal answers are either "Retire to what?" or "Why retire when I'm enjoying myself"
or "Because I'm having so much fun!" I sometimes think people ask me this question
because they unfairly believe everything exciting happens between the ages of 18 and 40.
After that, it's all about thinking about stopping work and retiring. Well, those who
have not particularly liked the classroom or see it as holding them back look forward to
the day they can leave it all behind. They're staid before their physical years and
middle-aged in their youth. Retirement, for them, has already been decided on. Me? I'm
not a dawdler of either the past or the future. As an historian, I can assure you we do
with the past what we like. We each handcraft the world ago. "In my day" were the "good
ole days" only because we have chosen to forget the bad days; we have decided in
self-protection not to weave in the tears, hurts, deprivations, missed chances, missteps,
and lost loves into the fabric of our memories. As for the future, it makes for good
musing. And I'll be damned if I'm going to dwell on the ignominies that have crept up on
me and the possible physical assaults that might appear. I think we dwell on them too
much. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's denial. Whatever it is, my cancer has brought to home
that truth that I don't know which will be the spring when I won't be here to walk the
pre-dawn streets or stroll through my garden or meditate by my koi pond. So, while my
body may not be as capable, my spirit is as cocky and youthful as ever. It's a sagging
spirit, not a sagging body, that's the critical determinant of where each of us is and
will be. To be sure, the flesh may be announcing its limits and I take it almost as a
personal affront, but the spirit is not. I have no choice about getting older, but I can
refuse to get old. I have observed in my sixty-five years on this Earth that being old
and spiritually decrepit is a decision. I have observed that some people become old long
before their time and simply decide to take to their beds and retire long before they
start collecting their retirement. It all has to do with temperament, the nature of the
individual. So, each day I give myself the spiritual equivalent of Botox and the
plastic surgeon's knife. I put myself in an empowering place. I savor each moment; I
experience and enjoy and live it out each day. For me, teaching is more playing than
paying. It lines my soul more than my pockets. It does my spirit more good than does
retiring. It's true my future is shrinking and my past is expanding. When that
inevitable day comes, and it's far closer than I want to admit, it will be as if a large
piece of me fell crashing away like a huge chunk of a glacier's edge.
And so, I'm beginning to see this state of my career, as it inevitably approaches
the finish line, as something of a race. No, I'm not talking about the proverbial
dehumanizing and enslaving rat race. Just a race at a track meet. It was easy to start
out my career strong. Everyone begins a career at the crack of the starting gun with a
youthful vibrancy filled an energetic and starry-eyed enthusiasm. But, I think the real
achievement of any career comes to those who can also finish strong. It's not the runner
who leads at the starting line who wins; it's the runner who, on the final turn, stays
determined, digs deep, finds that something extra, picks up the pace, and sprints home.