A man who hungers for the adulation of millions
and puts little importance on the love of just one
often finds nothing mattered more than that love
When the days and the battles of his life are done.
Little things like romance were a petty distraction.
Love taken for granted, vanity none could endure.
And at the end, in a lonely room full of trophies,
He finally learns how big the little things were.
Everyone is a teacher. I met one today. He was reading a Louis L’amour novel called The Strong Shall Live, sitting on a city bench in the outdoor seating area of Porto’s, my favorite bakery in Burbank, California. He appeared to be over eighty years old and wore a neatly-pressed suit and dress shoes despite the warm July weather. Because of his age, I imagined him to be a throwback to a time when men dressed well when they planned to be among others.
I had seen him reading in that spot before but never spoke to him. Today I decided to change that. I asked him how the book was. He smiled and said, “Excellent! I’ve read it a few times but it never gets old.” He said he has plenty of time to read now that he’s retired but likes to be around people. “Some men don’t like to drink alone,” he said with a smile. “I don’t like to read alone.”
I asked him what he did when he was younger. He replied, “What didn’t I do would be a shorter answer, or maybe what I wish I would have done.”
That seemed like a more interesting question anyway so I asked, “Okay, what do you wish you would have done?”
He said, “I always wanted to be a screenwriter. I even wrote a movie, but I never had the guts to share it with anyone.”
I told him that was a shame and suggested that he dust it off and share it now. He said, “Ah, no. I’m afraid the subject matter is as dated as I am. Nobody would be interested.”
I told him I happened to be a writer, offered to take a look at it, and suggested that maybe it was providence that brought us together, but he refused to share his screenplay. “To be honest,” he said, “I don’t even know where I put it.”
My fellow writers will understand how sad that made me feel. At the bottom of some box lay 120 pages he poured his heart and soul into at one time, yet never shared with anyone. He just held the dice, he never threw them. All the work for nothing.
An old line came to mind – “Much talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.” One could say the joy and reward was in the writing, but what is writing without an audience? Without new eyes? Third-party perspective?
He went on to say that he had done some stunt riding for westerns back in the 40’s and 50’s when he was very young. He had learned to ride growing up in Texas so it was easy work for him. He dreamt of being an actor but – and this is the part that really made me sad – he said, “I was never successful at that because I was a combination of shy and ignorant. I wasn’t assertive enough, and even if I had been, I was stupid.”
I felt he was being unfairly hard on himself and tried to make him feel better. I said, “Everybody is shy and uneducated to some degree when they’re young. There’s a reason people say ‘youth is wasted on the young.'” But he kept insisting that he was incurably stupid as a young man, and blamed that for his never being the screenwriter or actor he wanted to be. I tried again to comfort him by saying those businesses are hard for even the most assertive and educated. He conceded that was true.
It’s difficult to see anyone of an advanced age kicking themselves around. They’re the embodiment of what psychologist Erik Erickson described as the final stage of life – “integrity versus despair” – people either feel they’ve accomplished something with their lives or they’ve wasted it, that they were good or bad, wise or foolish. Grumpy old people are usually in despair. Nice, kind, friendly old people feel integrity – satisfaction with a life well-lived. I wondered if my new friend even saw the irony of telling me he never tried hard enough while reading a book called The Strong Shall Live.
This man puzzled me because he was very kind to me but not kind at all to himself. I suppose that’s true of most of us. Most of us occasionally say or think things about ourselves that we would never say about someone else. We really are our own worst enemy. As Mark Twain wrote, “I never met a man who gave me as much trouble as I have.”
So what lessons did this teacher teach me? I’ve been both shy and ignorant. Fortunately, it was many years ago when I was very young. But I’ve worked hard to educate myself in my chosen field, and I’m actually a bit of an extrovert now, so I’ve turned that around, thank God. It seems, therefore, that the only way to prevent that kind of despair in old age is to DO THE WORK, and what the work consists of is a uniquely individual thing. It can only be determined by us individually, privately. What is it that stands between you and your dream right now? How are you going to dissolve it, destroy it, get it out of the way?
Part of the work for me was writing my way out of my shyness, doubt, sadness, regret, guilt or any other emotion I didn’t want. These exercises often took the form of poems – big ideas in little packages. Powerful ideas change people, not lectures. What Joseph Campbell called “ouches and aah’s” – trials and revelations.
One of these poems was the one below about the bullies that hide in the heart. As much as I liked the man I met today, I don’t want to become him. I don’t want to read novels about courage under fire but have none myself. I don’t want to reach old age and wish I would have tried harder. I will not “tip-toe through life to arrive at death comfortably.” No. Lack of effort is failure by default. And the less we try to become who we are supposed to be, the less comfortable old age becomes.
There’s No Way Around But Through
When I was thirteen years old or so,
walking through the hallway to class,
the school bully stood in front of me
And absolutely refused to let me pass.
I moved to the left, and then to the right.
He just laughed and moved that way, too.
It was that moment when it dawned on me –
There was no way around but through.
So I kicked the bully right where it hurts.
He let out a yell and I watched him fall.
After that, he gave me plenty of room
When he saw me coming down the hall.
I really should try to remember his name,
Maybe send a flowery thank you card.
Without the lesson he taught that day,
My life might have been very hard.
You see, a bully doesn’t have to be human.
It’s what keeps you and your dream apart.
So much talent is forever lost to the world
Because of the bullies that hide in the heart.
So whatever it is that stands in your way
And keeps you from living a life that’s true,
Remember the lesson I learned from the bully.
My friend, there’s no way around but through.
I wrote this about twenty-five years ago. It’s about four stages in a man’s life. When I wrote it, I was in the second stage. I’ve completed the third now and hope to complete the fourth gracefully.
Just Live
There once was a bright, young boy
who thought and thought all day
and rarely joined his little friends
when they went out to play.
Even when he would come out,
his mind would keep on turning
and while all the others laughed and played,
his questions kept on burning.
Like “Where did I come from? Why am I here?”
and “Where will I go when I die?”
Very big questions for such a small boy.
Unanswered, his childhood flew by.
***
A young man sat on a sunswept beach,
away and apart from the crowd.
You see, he was thinking quite serious thoughts
and their laughter was far too loud.
His nose in a book, he just couldn’t hear
the young girls when they’d call out his name
and though the sun shone so very brightly above,
had no time for their foolish games.
No, there were too many doors to unlock
and so many knots to untie
like “Where did I come from? Why am I here?”
and “Where will I go when I die?”
***
A middle aged man sat on the same beach,
a place he had come to know
as somewhere to ponder his life’s many why’s
though the answers he still didn’t know,
when a feeling of emptiness, never so deep,
filled his heart and made him afraid.
He thought of the voices of friends, long ago,
but could only hear silence today.
Then he thought, “Oh, my God. Half my life has slipped by
and still, no solution is near.
I think I’ll stop trying to figure it out
and for once, just be glad that I’m here.”
That day, his eyes opened and though nothing had changed,
the world became bright, rich and new.
And as he lay back to blend with life’s colors and sounds,
the great sky never seemed quite so blue.
***
An old man lies on a bed, close to death,
but not worried, not sad or afraid.
He smiles at sweet faces, gathered around
saying, “Please Grandpa, don’t go away.”
He says, “Don’t be sad. I had a life full and rich –
something not many can say.”
But their young eyes were still pleading, scared and confused
so he searched for the right words to say . . .
“When I was young, I had so many worries and fears
and questions I couldn’t get by.
Then one day I stopped fighting and searching in vain
and decided to live till I die.
I traveled the world, drank in its wonders,
found true love in a good woman’s eyes,
had beautiful children, life’s sweetest reward.
Each one, an incredible prize.
Now, one journey ends and another begins
and I was right to be patient and wait
for the mysteries that plagued my troubled, young mind
can’t be solved on this side of the gate.
So do one thing more for me. Know your own beauty.
Always stand strong, proud and tall.
And think of my passing not as the end
but as the summer becoming the fall.”
~ Mark Rickerby
Does anyone know where the little boy went?
The little boy who used to be me?
He’s still alive somewhere inside this shell,
Though the shell is all you can see.
Can you still see him reaching out for love
From behind these time-worn eyes?
The child with a heart as bright as the stars
Hiding beneath this thin disguise?
What a cruel trickster Father Time can be,
Changing our costumes as we age.
From infant to child, and from young to old,
A new character with every stage.
We might as well be four different people.
The adult barely resembles the child.
The external transformation is so complete,
Young and old are rarely reconciled.
But there are some whose eyes still twinkle,
For whom the child within never dies.
The outside world can see only the surface.
Only they know how their surface lies.
What can we learn from all this changing?
From the fact that nothing is real?
How can we judge by a deceptive façade
That hides the way we truly feel?
The way to get the whole picture, it seems
Is to think of everyone that we see
As the child they were, who they are today,
And the old person they soon will be.
We should also see them as dead and gone,
Their short life on earth finally done,
With all their trials rendered null and void,
All their battles either lost or won.
Whitman wrote, “The powerful play goes on
And you may contribute a verse.”
The same is true for every person we meet.
We make their lives better or worse.
Thus, we should measure disheartening words
And make sure they need to be spoken
So we won’t be among those who caused dismay
If they reach the end of life heartbroken.
And when those we’ve known are old and gray,
Remembering years they left behind,
Comforting words we said might return again
With the memory that we were kind.
I once visited Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.
It’s a strange place, full of odd, gothic sculptures, many of which didn’t make me feel any better about death. For instance, I could have done without the skulls with bat wings and couldn’t figure out why anyone would want them on a relative’s grave. Unless Herman Munster was buried there. It might work then.
When I was younger and hadn’t lost anybody close to me yet, death was a fascinating abstraction to me. I was as obsessed with it as your average Egyptian pharaoh. I read all the Time-Life “Mysteries of the Unexplained” books. I attempted out-of-body experiences, astral travel and lucid dreaming. I even climbed over a cemetery wall on a Friday the 13th during a full, blue moon and sat in a freshly-dug grave with a Ouija board and candles. ALONE. Nothing happened, aside from the heebie-jeebie’s of my own imagination.
I stood in that grave and cursed the devil, daring him to appear to me. I was that crazy. For some reason, I desperately needed to know if there was something beyond this life. I had what little faith had been gathered from my mother saying The Lord’s Prayer to me at night as a child. (They didn’t go to church regularly.) But I needed proof.
Looking back, I think my obsession with death mirrored my love of youth. I was acutely aware even then of how transitory youth is, and how many doors opened because of it – professionally, romantically, and otherwise. But as time passed and death actually came to meet me, most notably in the sudden death of my brother and only sibling, I stopped investigating and making a pageantry of it and instead became more obsessed with living completely, with celebrating life, knowing I would grow old and die someday, too. I still feel that way. As Joseph Campbell once said, people aren’t as interested in the meaning of life as much as they are in living passionately and purposefully, and experiencing their lives completely. The human heart can endure anything except endless monotony; years and years of dull, identical days. The worst enemy of sadness isn’t happiness. It’s fun. Good, old-fashioned, seat-of-your-pants, exhilarating fun. Newness. Exploration.
So, because I honor life now instead of death, I don’t remember those flying skulls at Pere Lachaise as much as I remember graves like this one.
What a message. A lifeless body breaking out of a stone tomb to hold up a rose. Now that is honoring the spirit of a loved one.
Shortly after my brother died, I wrote a poem called How We Survive. Of everything I’ve ever written, it has traveled the furthest. I’ve received dozens of very touching emails from gracious people taking the time to let me know it helped them through the worst part of their grief. If you’ve lost someone you love, I hope it does the same for you. Grief is a terrible burden to bear. I lost my father last December, so I’m walking that road again, and doing my best to live up to my own poem.
Peace.
How We Survive
If we are fortunate,
we are given a warning.
If not,
there is only the sudden horror,
the wrench of being torn apart;
of being reminded
that nothing is permanent,
not even the ones we love,
the ones our lives revolve around.
Life is a fragile affair.
We are all dancing
on the edge of a precipice,
a dizzying cliff so high
we can’t see the bottom.
One by one,
we lose those we love most
into the dark ravine.
So we must cherish them
without reservation.
Now.
Today.
This minute.
We will lose them
or they will lose us
someday.
This is certain.
There is no time for bickering.
And their loss
will leave a great pit in our hearts;
a pit we struggle to avoid
during the day
and fall into at night.
Some,
unable to accept this loss,
unable to determine
the value of life without them,
jump into that black pit
spiritually or physically,
hoping to find them there.
And some survive
the shock,
the denial,
the horror,
the bargaining,
the barren, empty aching,
the unanswered prayers,
the sleepless nights
when their breath is crushed
under the weight of silence
and all that it means.
Somehow, some survive all that and,
like a flower opening after a storm,
they slowly begin to remember
the one they lost
in a different way . . .
The laughter,
the irrepressible spirit,
the generous heart,
the way their smile made them feel,
the encouragement they gave
even as their own dreams were dying.
And in time, they fill the pit
with other memories,
the only memories that really matter.
We will still cry.
We will always cry.
But with loving reflection
more than hopeless longing.
And that is how we survive.
That is how the story should end.
That is how they would want it to be.
Mark Rickerby's Blog 