Into The Abyss
Into The Abyss
Into The Abyss
Into the Abyss
The flow of life is filled with highs and lows, gain and loss. Life is a series of beginnings and endings, ebb and flow and for me elation and depression. I have three grand children, that's great. I don't get to see them, that is not so great.
Beginnings are fun and exciting. Endings can be sad and final. As we age we must hatch new ideas or life can be an abyss.
Forty some years ago standing in the bleachers of our high school gymnasium with my graduating class in Millburn New Jersey there were Two hundred and sixty six of us. I was voted the friendliest person in the class so I knew most everyone . The class advisor congratulated us one last time while passing out the year books. We were dismissed and the gym floor came alive with book signing and socializing. I watched sadly as people scurried in all directions knowing they would never return. Everyone was searching for friends for a signature, making plans, or moving toward the parking lot and escaping from the twelve year encampment. I did not locate many friends in the melee. I wanted their last comments or words of wisdom to be recorded As one person signed others escaped. Students who barley spoke to me for a decade signed paragraphs while my eyes failed to hold other people in place. Girls I wanted to talk to vanished through the fire exits. I felt weighted down and my classmates appeared athletic and animated. Twelve years or four thousand three hundred and eighty days associated to this group and now in twenty minutes, its over. Surely this is a mistake and Monday they will bring us back for something.
I didn't want this chapter to end. My friends, teammates and acquaintances were streaming from the building as if seeking high ground with a tsunami eminent. I knew they would never return. The majority were leaving excitedly in celebration. They were moving on to college and I was balking at my US Navy recruiter. My known world dispersed abruptly and painfully today. I used to hear my dad say, "Time waits for no man."
On Monday I called a few people to play football and the litany of excuses all contained the same word. They were clothes shopping for college, visiting colleges, off to summer school at college. High school was over, period. I was not prepared. I let at least five full athletic scholarships lapse from inaction because I felt academically unqualified.
When I realized that everyone I knew in this town was leaving by September I decided to escape also. I chose a mid western college where I knew there was a single opening because a friend was taking a better scholarship offer. I walked in unannounced with enough money for one semester and they gave me a seat.
The next sad end of an era came when I gave up that seat after two and a half years in Missouri. I was transferring to Ole Miss to try to play football on Television. My friends and familiar environment were being left behind again causing the same sickening loss. This time, I had an objective which softened the separation and taught the lesson of preparedness. There were new people to meet and southern traditions to conform to.
The same awful feeling trampled me again at graduation in Oxford Town where I learned a slow draw, cause my skin weren't brown. (Dylan) I was handed a diploma , the students and audience dispersed and I sprinted off to a track meet. Another group of people flung aside for the headlong rush into the future. I had no chance to say good bye gather addresses or spoof them in their year books. I had learned more in my first year of college than I had in the previous twelve of high school so I was elated to be in this learning environment. My time ran out again. I was being forced to mature and integrate into the world.
I loved college life. There was all the food you could eat and it was always available, albeit institutional. My safe dormitory and funny friends were an endless supply of activity, stories, pranks and laughs. Student life besides being a deferment from the Viet Nam war was great fun. There were no worries except tests and they were simple if you learned to study as you went. Sports paid the bills and society honored your achievements.
Also I didn't want to move away from buildings filled with beautiful woman all of whom were gathering culture, educated, well off and free most of the day. The campus is a sanctuary from the real world. College towns are alive with ever renewing young people and activity.
The next sad ending had far reaching family pain, I got divorced. Time flashed by and retirement loomed bringing surprising problems. What could be difficult about having money and freedom? I could go any where and do anything. Then before I knew it, my new girlfriend married someone else. I encountered three of life's most dangerous lessons at once, thoughts of retribution toward him, my lost love and lost identity. Freedom was not so easy, alone.
The feeling of leaving my Miami ocean front fire station on the last day was debilitating. For six months prior, the thought of driving north on Collins Avenue never to return was horrifying. I knew that life as I have lived it for the past thirty years would soon be a sad memory. I would never wear this uniform, this badge or man that station again. There would be no more saving lives, no more excitement, no more chances at being a hero. I'd have no reason to get up or a reason to live. This very special breed of people, the pyromaniacs, would be lost. No longer would you have a gang of friends or off duty repairman available Once your gone your not part of the active team. I was too old. It was someone else's turn to race across town in a loud green truck to rescue the unfortunate. Your identity and worth have vanished. Fire-Rescue had been the best job on earth.
Rumi and Emerson advise us to drop our ego to gain spiritual awareness. To retire from a position of honor is a forced loss of ego. I will relish any gain that comes out of it. Who will I be now? What will I do in the morning? It's nearly impossible to find the level of excitement that fire fighters live each hour. The job is for adrenalin junkies. Now I feel lost with no purpose or stimulus. Now retired and realizing I was not on an extended vacation. I had to climb out of a mental sink hole or die right there as my existence ebbed. Hopefully you wake up soon enough to understand that with out a cataclysmic change in attitude you will join the average fire fighter who dies with in two years of retirement.
For everything you gain, you loose something else, and for everything you loose you also gain something. Emerson. When there is a ebb, there will be a flood. My new purpose was to find an incoming tide. I have recovered some of my lost excitement by canoeing down large rivers. These solo camping trips are defining my life. I canoed nine hundred miles of the upper Mississippi river and I look forward to the lower and faster one thousand miles. I expect these river trips to revel a new direction for my life. In the mean time to become productive I have decided to volunteer. "Ten rules for getting rid of the blues, go out and do something for someone else and repeat it nine times."
Since reading afforded me a wonderful life, I chose to tutor third graders. It is a pivotal year for them, and perhaps for me too. If they are up to reading speed in third grade, statistics show they graduate from High School, and if not their drop out rate is extreme.
When you arrive at the elementary school it's like walking into a room full of puppies, they come running. They scream your name with excitement and you will never feel so welcomed. They absorb information like a chamois takes water off a car There are no discipline problems in third grade, they are delighted to be alive and in school. They need only direction and encouragement.
Unfortunately after many years in the system their excitement is suppressed into a bovine state, their spontaneity wanes. They start out wonderfully curious and are full of hopes and dreams. I believe only the thinkers survive with their imagination and wonder in tact after twelve years of funding related test pressures.
For me with the third graders as the phases of my life close, I'm realizing an escape hatch which can lead to a vast and unlimited future. Im meeting teachers, making friends, learning about life from the perception of a child. "The Child is father of the man" Wordsworth. Its like having twenty excited grand kids at once. The educational mountain these children will attempt is formidable. But the slightest encouragement you offer them turns the climb into a joyful skip. "Nor knowest thou what argument, thy life to thy neighbors creed has lent." Emerson
In my first eight hours they have enlightened me far more than the few words I've taught them. They are bringing me a flood of satisfaction when their light bulb of understanding suddenly turns on. I've scampered out of the abyss and my thoughts have transitioned from words into activity. I hope to have that same effect on them when I find the right way to use "A drop of ink can make a million think"
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