Then, a year after I'd gotten out of a locked psych ward where she left me with acute depression and never returned, I was able to think and write again and began pulling together pieces of memories. That’s the kind of thing you do in a memoir of course, but you try to keep it focused on a specific event or time. The trouble was, the more I wrote, the short version required more background to make sense.
As it grew, recreating a scene opened a small window and I looked in, sometimes reluctantly, and got pulled through, like Alice through the looking glass. Each time it happened, there was a lot going on: long-forgotten conversations, people, and meetings came alive and demanded my attention.
When we’re young, we try to imagine who or what we want to be when we grow up: a scientist, Spiderman, a firefighter, doctor, writer, or whatever, and then we go about trying to become that person. But some people don’t have much choice about the outcome because it’s more predetermined. For example, Prince Charles of Wales was waiting all his life to become King Charles III, a persona he prepared for since he was a child. Or, a little girl in a Haitian ghetto will almost certainly become a poor woman in the same place unless something extraordinary happens.
For some, our futures are not so predetermined. We have more freedom to pursue our happiness and goals. We try to meet the needs that we all have in common with each other. I’m not just talking about the physiological ones in Maslow’s hierarchy but emotional and psychological needs for connection and love, certainty, contribution, growth, significance, and variety.
What then, if after years of becoming a certain person, something happens and you realize you’re not who you want to be? Not in terms of career or profession, but deeper, in the core of your being.
While I was writing, I found this quote by Albert Schweitzer.
He said,“The path of awakening is not about becoming who you are... it’s about unbecoming who you are not.”
“What?” I asked. “That sounds like one of those ‘Confucius says’ riddles,
or a philosophical paradox. I mean, how would you even begin to do that? The past can’t be changed. I am who I am because of it, give or take some genetics.”
The realization that maybe you are not who you want to be is often triggered by a crisis: a life-altering illness, a disaster, losing a job, or someone you love, or a divorce.
“Will anything be the same when this is over?” you ask.
Probably not. It isn’t because the view out your window has changed or someone or something is missing; it’s because an irreparable crack has appeared in what you believed was an unshakeable foundation. The nausea you feel is because the earth has moved under your feet and shaken so badly that nothing feels solid. You’re not going to be able to just pick up the broken pieces and glue them back together as if nothing happened.
When the dust settles there will be some kind of new normal. It will be built on the rubble of the old which is not magically swept up and taken out with the trash. You’re going to have to live with the brokenness and grief, somehow.
Then the question is: how do I do that when nothing makes sense? When I feel hollow and empty? How can I find joy and meaning again? Is it by believing that, “everything happens for a purpose,” or by making meaning and purpose out of things that happen?
That’s what this blog is about: the process of finding meaning and purpose while unbecoming who I was becoming and being for many years.
My parents were east coast secular liberals in every sense, always rubbing shoulders with the elites of that class, except they never had much money. But, in a surprising turn of events, after my semi-privileged upbringing, I became a Pentecostal Christian when I was sixteen at boarding school.
A year later, when I joined the Catholic Church Dad asked, “Really Pete, I can understand that you became a Christian, I used to be one, but a Catholic? Really?”
Then, while I was in college I got married, started a family, moved to Ann Arbor, and joined a conservative religious community.
The second part of My Unbecoming Life, the book, is about the four decades we spent with our nine children in the orbit of The Word of God community. New values replaced some of the ones I got from Mom and Dad, for example, having a family twice the size of theirs. Or, in contrast with their outspoken support of Planned Parenthood, I became an outspoken anti-abortion activist and tried to shut down Planned Parenthood while working for the conservative Catholic owner of Domino's Pizza, Tom Monaghan, at his world headquarters in Ann Arbor.
The third part of the book and some future excerpts which I'll post, describe what happened when my faith lost its meaning, Rebecca and I got divorced, and a year later I went off to make a new life in a different city with another woman. Then three years into our promising relationship I was diagnosed with stage four terminal leukemia and had a harrowing bone marrow transplant. Four months later she asked me to move out but since I was still very sick she relented. Then, six months later, I was moved back to Ann Arbor against my wishes.
I was already trying to find a new normal but this was like pushing a reset button. There was nowhere to live except with two of my sons until I got back on my feet. The next four months were spent figuring out what to do and where to go next.
After moving into my own place, the realization came that I wasn’t going to be able to make it alone. So I started dating, trying to find someone with the qualities I was looking for and who wouldn’t be put off by my condition or history. I was lucky to find Olya and soon after, began writing in earnest. Without it I felt less alive and unable to make sense of what had happened.
Writing was therapeutic, but it was still work, like physical therapy. In that sense it’s like any art form. Writing is like sculpting, finding and liberating what lies within. Dad taught me to get the rough shape on paper then, through multiple drafts, chip away until it’s done. I slowly discovered, as Hemingway opined, “The only writing is rewriting.”
And, “Writing is easy,” Mark Twain said, “all you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”
Of course it's easy Mr. Train, but writing isn’t the same as living. I can’t just cross out all of the stupid or naive mistakes I’ve made, and there are a lot, and rewrite them. After seventy years, I don’t even know how to make amends to the people I wronged, not intentionally, because I’ve never done that, but as a result of being too sure of myself or putting my faith and actions where they didn’t do any long-term good.
I hope this blog and the book are a step towards that, because, at the end of our days, one's relationships and being a good person are all that matters.
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