The World Belongs to You as Much as Anyone Else and other Saccharine Sentiments
Today, I cleaned the flagstone steps with my power-washer. Yes, they were revolting after 70 years of neglect. Delivery people complained that the “black steps” were dangerous. So, of course, they required cleaning. I also did this because the voice inside me that is on continuous alert told me “Clean the steps. Don’t sit still, Don’t relax. Lazy people read books in the afternoon.” It is the same voice that put a real damper on a trip to India last January. Rather than enjoying the extraordinary culture, art, design, and people, the voice kept saying, “You’re missing meetings. The time difference is inconvenient. Nobody with any decency takes more than several days away from work.”
Why is that voice there? It’s a response to the fear that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, or we must work hard and suffer to be good people. One would imagine I was raised with a rigid Calvinist approach. But, the opposite is true. While my grandparents were solid and responsible people, my parents had a rather liberal approach to life. They divorced when I was five. My mother remarried several times and we moved 22 times by the time I left home for college at 18. For some, this would be an adventure. For me, it instilled a sense of impending doom if one did not take precautions with a sense of hyper-responsibilty. I spent much of my twenties and thirties looking for the one loose thread that would unravel the sweater.
I continue to battle the need for constant work and movement looking for any cracks of irresponsible behavior. But, in the absolutely saddest response to a philosophy that lightens the load and provides a sense of lightness, I think about the final speech to the graduating class in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel:
It's the custom at these graduations to pick out some old duck like me to preach at the kids. Well, I can't preach at you. I know you all too well. I brought most of you into the world, rubbed linament on your backs, poured castor oil down your throats. I only hope that now I got you this far that you'll turn out to be worth all the trouble I took with you. I - I can't tell you any sure way to happiness. I only know that you've gotta go out and find it for yourselves. You can't lean on the success of your parents. That's their success. And don't be held back by their failures.
Makes no difference what they did or didn't do. You just stand on your own two feet. The world belongs to you as much as to the next fella, so don't give it up. And try not to be scared of people not liking you, just you try liking them. And just keep your faith, and your courage, and you'll turn out all right. It's like what we used to sing every morning when I was a boy. Maybe you still sing it: "When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high." You know that one? And don't be afraid of the dark.
It may not be Simone de Beauvoir, Immanuel Kant, or Paramahansa Yogananda, but not too shabby.
