Ted's Reflection (continued)

The costs entailed in discovering who we can become are daunting. But what could be more costly than not discovering our true identity and destiny? Someone has said that life is a great teacher but her tuition is steep. What a waste if we pay the tuition - correction: since we must pay the tuition - and don't ever learn what the lesson is all about!

I have paid my goodly share of life's hard road tuition payments: a loving but non-cohesive family of origin; absence of father; abusive step-father; degrees of separation from family members, friends and college; dysfunctional marriage and painful divorce; cancer; loneliness; broken heart, more than once; typically harsh self-judgment; a career that was financially rewarding but that entailed unhealthily long hours, unremitting pressure, increasingly spirit-stultifying, meaningless work; a weak back-hand; and rooting for the chronically hapless Detroit Tigers.

I have also experienced my goodly share of life's blessings: a pervasive sense of divine Grace in my life; possessing an authentic personal faith; a loving mother; family members becoming closer; the joy of fatherhood and raising two wonderful sons; daily experiences of beauty, love and mystery; many kind, most generous friends; using my own distinctive talents and gifts; an improving back-hand; finally rooting for winners. (I like both the New York Yankees and the Red Sox, although I liked the Sox more when they were perennial tragedians - I believe they have strayed from their true calling).

Rumi, a 13th century Persian poet, said, "When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the soul laughs for what it has found." While my adversities and blessings seem like opposites, they are not. I now affirm that deeper than the seeming gains and losses of my life, but always present in them, is my life's journey toward becoming the unique person God intended me to become. Some events may be trials, others pure joy, but none is wasted. I now regard this journey called my life as an amazing gift and high challenge.

Through the roller-coaster ups and downs of my life, Grace has incessantly and implacably led me toward actualizing the full and unique potential of my own self. The point of the trip, for me, is this: becoming fully human, Ted version. That might not seem like much. For some people, maybe it isn't. For me, it has been a full-time job, albeit a job I often didn't even know that I had. Becoming fully myself encompasses a call to exercise leadership: to encourage and empower first myself, and then others, toward our maximal well-being and well-doing.

Events in our lives often present themselves as imposters. We need to see through the disguises. A personal example. A while back, toward the end of a 10K run, I collapsed and lost consciousness. It was rather unexpected, especially since I thought I was very fit. Afterwards, I learned from my son that, after having collapsed, I got up twice, asking people to help me finish. Finally, a fellow runner (who is a hematologist/oncologist from the same office at which I had - unbeknownst to either of us - just recently scheduled an appointment) came to my aid and persuaded me to stop trying to finish. I have no recollection of any of this. Evidently I was on "gotta finish" auto-pilot. The next day, in meditation, the meaning of the event became clear to me (I do not know how one knows this): if I continue to strive, to try to prevail by sheer will power - including trying to maintain toxic relationships -- I will kill myself. I subsequently learned that cancer (lymphoma) had already begun its work.

Ted and his son Dan

A couple of weeks later, when the "positive" results of the biopsy were relayed to me, my first reaction was one of great sadness and loss (denial has never worked well for me). No more playing catch with my boys? Leaving this life with an aching sense of incompleteness? The cessation of touch, smells, seeing, feeling? I wondered if the angels envy our sensibilities. Then I became angry, believing that I had been gaining great momentum in my journey toward true authenticity and wholeness, only to be struck down.

What began then I can best/only describe as a dialogue between myself and a/the Spiritual Reality. (I call this "God." As a former philosophy student, I don't try to justify my experience and language to others as a truth claim.) The crux of the "conversation" was crystal-clear: I had to "rejoice and be glad" or I would die. (I immediately spotted the classic "something or something" sales ploy.) My initial response was spirited, i.e., very hostile to the offer. A crummy, surprisingly insensitive sense of divine humor, I thought. However, my Dialogue Partner was unrelenting: no concessions, no middle ground, very disconcertingly take-it-or-leave-it. I sensed that I was in a rather weak bargaining position.

Interestingly, I had absolutely no question about the reality and necessity of the choice. I did have grave doubts about whether I was capable of affirming the goodness - especially to the point of "rejoicing and being glad" - of having contracted cancer. The answer came back to me: that is what Grace is for. And so it was and is, I believe.

Post-cancer, I find myself striving less and being grateful more. For example, I am now grateful that I had cancer. Far more difficult, and I am still working on this, is being grateful for being me. Cancer - that is, the Divine Spirit working through the cancer - forced me to answer this question: Was my own particular self and my own particular life worth fighting for? I affirmed "yes." But, was I actually living my life in a way that was worthy of my self, my life and its distinctive purpose? I hadn't been. I am trying to do so now, with God's help and with the help of so many people who are walking life's journey with me.

I forget who said that it takes courage to finally become the people we really are. It takes courage and a lot more: Grace, hard work, hope, imagination, and other caring people. It takes leadership to make this happen for other people, not just for ourselves. That is why my good friend David and I created Tarxien Partners.

The story line I want to be true for the rest of my life's journey is this: to be a catalyst for helping others, along with myself, to become fully human. I had always believed, theologically, that God was Creator. However my concept of creation was severely qualified: God had certainly not created me as I was, with all of my tiresome particularities, and God did not act creatively in this present world, my world, my life. Now I see that the Chaos that confronts us at every turn is not the deepest truth. Rather, Chaos is an incubator for new, creative possibilities, whether in the quantum world, in so-called chaotic systems, or in the quagmires of our own individual lives.

My own affirmation is that within the chaos and quagmire of our lives there is a call to order, to beauty, to authenticity, to creating new possibilities. Our role is to attend and to respond, with gratitude. In his wonderful book Callings, Finding and Following an Authentic Life, Gregg Levoy describes the well-being that ensues when we follow our calls:

"We clean out the gutters and downspouts, get a load off our chests, feel at peace with our own innards. We get to get on with it, to lay our hands on whatever it is we've been hankering to lay our hands on - freedom, adventure, peace of mind, our own talents, our own souls, reconciliation, right livelihood, a sense of movement, a feeling of fit. We experience genuine satisfaction…. We feel gratitude even in the face of hardship and exhilaration at doing our thing, and authenticity comes to have real meaning for us."

I have been experiencing what Levoy describes, and I am grateful. I am enjoying terrific relationships with my two marvelous sons; nurturing an ever more honest, affirmative personal faith; helping to create a meaningful, spirit-enhancing enterprise (Tarxien); finding myself more joyful, less lonely; enjoying more the manifold blessings of life, such as music, art, nature, life-long learning, sports; learning more how to appreciate and put to good use my unique self, with its limits, warts and all. I am experiencing the zest of putting my distinctive gifts into a worthy enterprise and into teaching. I am becoming freer to play and have fun. I have become - all false modesty aside - far more effective at what I do than ever before. I can lead.

It is never too late. The German philosopher Schopenhauer said that when he looked back over his life he had the distinct impression that someone or something other than himself had composed it. One of the deliciously impenetrable concepts of quantum theory is that time may not move in just one direction, that is, forward. I have come to believe that God as Supremely Creative Being can retroactively re-compose the meaning of our lives, so that what seemed at the time, and for years after, to be just meandering cul-de-sacs, meaningless pain, and bitter disappointment and defeat, can become seeds for new possibilities. Deeper than Chaos is Grace. We cannot force re-compositions of past events or of our own selves. Rather, we must stay open, face our fears, listen with faith and imagination, give and ask for help, be grateful and take the next step.

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