“The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing” Mahatma Gandhi

As soon as I finished my last story on all of us now living in a reality TV show, I wanted to do what I am about to do. The reason for the vagary is I am not really sure how to go about this. 

The last story had some history and statistics, making it seem like I knew what I was talking about, which is the last impression I ever want to impart in these stories. 

It is the morning before Thanksgiving and I was just sitting outside in the sun, drinking my second cup of coffee. You would have to be fortunate enough to live here to appreciate the chill that invades your body as winter approaches. Before noon, the sun warms up and the joy of that experience hypnotizes the body into forgetting its prior discomfort. Why bring this up just as I am getting started on a serious story? This is not a serious story and I am not a serious writer and that’s the point.

I have always liked knowing things. However, in my sophomore year in college, I realized becoming a doctor was not going to happen. My mind raised a white flag, leaving me to drown in the swamp of “I Dunno”. It has been that way ever since.

I would never confuse experience with expertise and I am not going to do what I did in the last story, which would be to look up the Latin root. From the time I was a waiter in a delicatessen in the sixth grade, I have been working, without a break, no kidding.

I know a little about a great many things. In a way it has provided a fertile soil for my word weeds. All of this writing is not about anything in particular, because I have really never been motivated to know too much about anything. Like the quote above, I do look for words of encouragement from people I admire. I love what Albert Einstein had to say about all this, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand,”

I confess to crying at this moment, something I seem to have no control over. Over the years, my heart has grown closer to living outside my walls, less concerned with protecting me and more concerned with unfettered feeling.

When I left NYC in ’87, I left the box we can unknowingly build around ourselves. From the time I became an outpatient to the world of premed, I ever so slowly took on an identity, because you have to be somebody. The walls of this box grew thicker with time and breathing became harder and harder. 

Survival is a very powerful instinct. I could feel myself dying, becoming a stranger to myself, even though I had know idea who the fuck I was. In some ways, leaving was an act of desperation, but at the same time, there was a grace, hiding just beyond that heart of mine, still tucked away inside. 

I am always careful, when it feels like I am romanticizing that move. I knew the world of broadcast advertising about as well as anyone in the business, working at a TV network, four ad agencies, three cable networks and more. Leaving it behind didn’t bother me at all, as if I was turning my back on reaping the rewards from my professional investment in it. 

Somewhere in my thirties, I started being very uncomfortable in that world, like I didn’t belong, because I really didn’t. Leaving my sons, who were barely in their teens was a price I paid and I won’t waste words on the timeless pain it caused. I had hit my early forties and the rest of my life was no longer a distant concept. I had to do it.

I learned as a very young boy that pain is part of life and inescapable. I carried it with me back then and I still do. Invariably, there is always the other side of choice. I am still on that journey I began when I headed my blue Dodge Colt west to Santa Fe, NM. I do not know what happened to fear in all this, because I was definitely not a Medal of Honor contender. It had no name back then, but through the clarity of hindsight, it was faith, a fathomless feeling, my companion from that moment on.

Now, I don’t want to take a detour into the details of my life and  write a different story than this one. I could blow your mind with all the things I did during my 15 years in Santa Fe, but that would be more of the same. I was everything from a volunteer fireman to a concert promoter to a nature tourism consultant to writing stories on Yogi Tea boxes and that ain’t nothin’.

All these years later, I am still learning and maybe that’s my expertise, but I don’t like the word. It carries with it the stigma you know what you are talking about. It also implies there are answers and that doesn’t apply to my life’s work, if you could even call it that.

In a real stretch, I could say leaving my entire world behind in NYC and heading to the seemingly endless southwest, was just a little, very little, like the Buddha leaving his palace of familiarity to learn about the world. Wait, don’t hang up on me! This has nothing to do with Sidney Arthur, which is what I like to call him. He and I are part of legions of people, who have gone on journeys to make sense of their worlds.

He provided me with an internalized map, one that has steadfastly remained my own path and I am eternally grateful for the light he has provided. I confess to regularly checking in on my spiritual TripTik, because it is terribly easy to get lost. It is completely behind my reaction to the reality TV story.

When I started this whole writing thing, it was about sharing my life history with my too young grandson. Long before this, I had come to understand my life was meant to be an internal journey and sharing it started becoming more important to me. The idea of writing was terrifying, because I had no expertise. When I began my story for him, I no longer cared about being good at it. I cared about being honest and humble, writing in the voice I spoke. I was the only one to read it until it was published, a 300+ page love letter.

I know I will inevitably write more stories like the last one, but I will never be more than one story away from why I started this in the first place.

The older I have gotten, the less I know, which seems counter intuitive. I remember being much younger and so certain about so many things. In a way, I think that certainty is a protective device, masking the truth of not knowing. I feel so fortunate for having outgrown that cocoon of confidence, clumsily embracing the unknown. 

I am shameless in my ignorance and I am not here to provide answers. I am here to share my fallibility with you and to touch that within each of you as best I can.

Thank you for reading my stories.

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1292459/episodes/16195575-expertise