Originally posted on 05-26-07:
Last night I read the story of Chi Tschang in Po Bronson‘s, book, What Should I Do With My Life? and a realization Chi came to about himself struck a nerve with me. “Chi, like many Asian Americans, is very aware of being what they call ‘lottery winners,’ A parent’s choice to come to America radically improved their chances of thriving.”(p.287) He had struggled with the question of what to do with his winning ticket; whether he had an obligation to his parents, or to all those less fortunate Chinese, to accomplish some particular goal. His realization was that it was more important than simply becoming prosperous, that he had a chance, “to do something great, to be Great.” The particular kind of greatness that appeals to him involves changing the lives of disadvantaged kids.
In reading his story I became aware of my own aspirations for greatness, and the roots of those aspirations. In a way, I was a “lottery winner,” too. I was in the first generation of kids in my extended family who were able to go to college—winning ticket #1. Part of what made that possible was that I was way above average in intelligence—ticket #2. My intelligence had been recognized at an early age, and many of my teachers along the way had encouraged me—ticket #3.
Example: I’ve told this story in the most recent installment of The Journal, but I’ll retell it here: The senior class had put on a little program in the school auditorium that involved my singing a song, and afterward I ran into my seventh-grade English teacher in the hall. During the program she had been sitting next to Mrs. Evans, a teacher and mentor of mine since the seventh grade, who had begun her mentorship by urging me to read the Harvard Classics. (I only read a few of them.) Mrs. Young reported turning to Mrs. Evens and saying, “I didn’t know Norman could sing,” to which she replied, “Is there anything he can’t do?”
Being told a story like that, along with everything else, contributed to my belief that I could do anything, and that I should, in fact, do something great, rather than settle for being an ordinary person. Once I left the little world of high school, of course, I learned that there were limits to my abilities, things I couldn’t do, but those limits weren’t confining enough to remove my aspirations for greatness.
Chi’s story reminded me of how I have been driven all my life by that early conditioning. There was some relief in the early years of smoking pot, but the demon eventually raised its head again, even with drugs.
It might seem that the 31-plus years I spent on the railroad were a deviation from those aspirations—plodding away at an ordinary blue-color job—but during all that time I was looking for a way out: I would become a great writer or artist, and free myself from the grinding life of the working man.
The great joy of retirement, I supposed, would lie in the freedom to pursue greatness full-time—although I didn’t consciously put it in those terms—and in fact I’ve had a lot of fun learning things that I could only scratch the surface of all those years in my “leisure” time. But there have been times when it became a struggle—stressful drudgery. It’s the feeling of having a deadline that I mentioned a few days ago. At times like that, the thought sometimes emerges that it would be a great relief just to be ordinary—watch TV, walk in the woods, give it up.
Thanks to Po, I’m getting a multi-faceted reappraisal of myself—driven, wanting approval, striving for greatness. Another aspect of it, which he has also prompted me to re-examine, is that along with the self-aggrandizement, there is the desire to help others. In the writing, that’s obvious, but there’s something else I haven’t mentioned in public before, a hidden agenda: the hope that the eye candy on my web site will lure people to sample the ideas. At the same time, I enjoy the beauty of the photography, 3D, etc., and I get a boost when other people enjoy them, too. I would like them to enjoy each instance as a thing-in-itself—no more the accomplishment of a person than a waterfall is.
One of my recurring themes is that none of us is a unified whole, except that we occur in a single, identifiable body. Each of us combine and manifest different aspects and versions of ourselves that are not reducible to one comprehensible entity. It’s not that simple.
Natural Forces Made This Wall; They Made Me Too