DUKES
FANS:
“What if?” and “If this
had happened rather than that…”- always two great ways to start a story.” writer Lawrence Block
“I think there is often a 'what if'” proposition that gets me thinking
about all my novels" writer John Irving
I was having a cup of coffee with some
friends a few mornings ago, and somehow the subject of our conversation turned
to “What if.” and “If only this had happened.” One person started talking about
it, but it quickly involved all of us. It became a fascinating and somewhat
intense conversation that had all of us looking back at our lives and the
various ways we got to where we are. We all started talking about choices we
had made in our lives, some of the ways those choices had affected us, and ways
they led us to who and where we are today. This is something that is often in
the back of my mind, but I don’t regularly talk about it out loud, so it was
great to share ideas and thoughts about this with a few friends. Some of it was
a little painful and humbling, of course; most of us easily mentioned choices
which we now regretted and wish we hadn’t made. We all embarrassed ourselves a
bit when we shared some of those things. But we were also able to recall a
couple of choices that turned out to be very good and important ones-major ones
in leading us to who we became and how we turned out. In some cases these were
conscious choices- things that we did willingly in response to a situation that
presented itself. It could have been responses to situations parents gave us,
things friends faced us with, or something that life unexpectedly threw at us.
We had to make choices, and we consciously did. In other cases, though, there
were a lot of decisions we made without really thinking about them or realizing
what we were doing. At the time we just made them, and we were totally unaware
of how important they would turn out to be. Some of those were choices that had
long range effects, for better or for worse, but we were totally unaware of
that at the time. There were definitely a lot of those occurrences in my life,
and it was interesting to reflect on the effect some of those decisions had on
my life.
This led to ideas of ‘chance” and “fate.”
Were the things that happened to us just the result of coincidence, or was
there some force or power guiding and planning things? Or was there some
mixture of both? This was especially fascinating for me, because some of the
most meaningful and important things in my life seem to have “just happened”; I
seemed to have just stumbled into them, followed where they took me, and,
BOOM-I was somewhere else. These things did not come from my planning or
intention; they happened and my life changed. Teaching, for example. I did not
set out to be a teacher. I did a guest seminar on Jazz and the Literature of
the Harlem Renaissance for a professor friend’s freshman lit class at Temple in
the early 1970’s. There were a couple of high school kids auditing that class,
and they invited me to give that seminar at their high school. I gave that and
a few other seminars at that high school, got to meet the kids and other
teachers, and suddenly, somehow, before I knew it, I had quit my regular job
and become an underpaid part-time English and history teacher, something it
turned out that I was quite good at and thoroughly loved. And it took off from
there; that was my career for some 38 years. I just stumbled into it, and it
was one of the greatest stumbles of my life.
Likewise visiting the Art Museum as a junior
high and high school student led to some major changes in other aspects of my
life. I started going to the museum with some friends to see art by Black
artists and modern masters such as Henry O. Tanner and Pablo Picasso, but I
also stumbled onto French impressionism, and in particular, the seaside and
country road scenes painted by artists such as Pissarro, Monet, and especially,
Eugiene Boudin. This was totally new to me, and something about the way they
painted the sky and trees just captured this kid. I would return again and
again to the museum to look at, study and bask in those wonderful paintings.
When some of them were moved or temporarily taken down, I was upset. When they
were restored, I was excited. It was those paintings that led me to become
fascinated by clouds and weather and skies: to start looking up and out at the
natural world. And I am sure they were a big part of what led me to
birdwatching, hiking and surprisingly, camping. Somehow this row- house raised,
urban, West Philadelphia kid has been a camper and birder for nearly half a
century. Looking back, I have to say that it a lot of it got started with
stumbling onto Boudin, Pissaro and those amazing trees and skies.
So that morning coffee conversation was a
great experience for me, and I think for all of us. I know it was good for me
to take the time to look back, think about how I got to where I am now, and to
marvel and be grateful for the many twists, turns and plans, both successfully
carried out and not, that have helped me get to where I am. And it definitely
made me more aware of and appreciative of unexpectedness and chance and the
roles they play and have played in my life. Often people in US culture like to
think that for the most part we are pretty much in control of our lives-we lay
out our goals, go to the right schools, invest wisely, marry the right person,
envision and plan for retirement, etc, etc, etc. And those things we plan
definitely make a difference, no doubt about it. They put into place many
of the things that play a part in our lives; I was able to retire when I did in
part because I planned for it. But if we take a careful and as dispassionate as
possible look at the whole of our lives, we have to acknowledge that a lot of
our lives took place way beyond our plans and way outside our control. We were
affected by things both beneath and beyond our consciousness. And they have affected us as much as if not
more than our plans. I believe we need to notice that and appreciate it-to know
that much of our world and our lives are really beyond our control and that is
not scary. That is relaxing and refreshing for me. It is important for me to
know that I am not in total control of everything, and that I do not have to be
in total control. If I can let go of that need to have control, then I can get
to be aware of and enjoy coincidence, surprise and chance. And stumbling. They
have already often provided some much better things than I would have had I
been making all thew plans, and they may very well do it again. “What if?
"If this had happened rather than that?”
There can be a lot of beauty and wonder hidden within those phrases if
we just give them a chance to play out
(here is a link to the
complete works of Eugene Boudin:
|
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||||
|
“
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment