Early this week I was sitting in the library of a small community college in northwestern Connecticut, trying to decide what kind of talk I would give that evening. A childhood friend who I had not seen in over a decade invited me to speak at her home in Granby. I anticipated at least thirty people, many of them also hailing from my past, people from whom I had drifted far away. No matter how many times I stand in front of an audience I get tremendously nervous. The prospect of a pseudo high school reunion made me doubly nervous. I wanted to address them directly. I wanted to somehow combine the story of the orphanage with the story of what in the name of God had happened to me all these years. Searching for inspiration I moved about in the library from workstation to lounge chair to periodicals to the rare books room. My mind drew nothing but blanks.
The sun had sunk into that three o’clock low that always seems so disorienting this time of year. I considered heading out early. I could get to my friend’s house and spend some time loosening up with a beer or two. Then I thought better of it, not wanting to put myself in the position of having no compass at all. I walked down the stairs to a remote corner of the library and sat looking out a window at a narrow river flowing by. This was not going well at all. To let an audience down would be my own singular failure. I fell asleep with my head on a writing desk, my yellow-lined note pad tucked under one elbow, betraying my emptiness. I imagine I was in and out for half an hour. Pressure was building in my stomach, in my head. I had to do something to jar my body into action. I opened one eye. Several shelves filled the center of the room in the fashion of all college libraries. There they were, hundreds of books, potential sparks for whatever ideas can be hatched. Who knows when last any of them had been handled? In a burst of spontaneity I got up from the little desk and, randomly entering one aisle I closed my eyes, reached up and removed the first book my hand touched. It was a little thing, thin, the size of an address book. On Caring, by Milton Mayeroff, published by Harper & Row in 1971. I almost replaced it on the shelf, but decided the better thing would be to at least look through it. Maybe somewhere I’d find the auspicious information that would ignite my pending presentation. One hour later I was still reading.
In Mayeroff’s book there are identifiable segments to caring that include an effort to know, sensitivity to alternating rhythms, patience, honesty, trust, humility and courage. What is so capturing about this text is it gives lift to those words, injects them with astonishing vitality that equates the act of caring with being truly alive. It is not, as our collective consciousness seems to have it, an easy thing to care. It is, however, a human need so strong as to rival the need to eat or procreate. The repercussions are not as blunt as starvation or extinction, but they are nevertheless daunting. I think of how much the history of the world turns on the need to feel alive.
The light outside had dimmed into gray the way only November can do. I began to scribble words on that empty notepad and they could not materialize fast enough. It occurred to me that all my life I have been searching for freedom. Hitchhiking ten thousand miles around the continent, jumping from an airplane, skiing high in the Rockies, kayaking with whales. I wanted every aspect of my life to be infused with this sense of freedom, including my relationships and my non-career. How is it that not until I was sequestered away in an orphanage from which I couldn’t even show my face had I ever been truly free? How odd that I had to randomly choose a book from the shelf to find a reasonable answer. What a dangerously misguiding word, carefree.
I knew what I would say to those thirty people. Who knows what they expected. An hour and a half they listened, then another half hour of questions and answers. The children of Mehan once again lit a flame, but this time they shared the bill with the story of a crippled man stumbling and then clawing his way to their doorstep. It turned out to be the biggest single fundraising event thus far on my “tour”. They gave $745. People everywhere, of every age and every political persuasion are dying to care in a world that in weaker moments seems devoid of it.
As I peruse this open journal from beginning to the present entry I realize here is a simple account of how I learned to care, and in so doing for a little while became free. Must it take such a journey? Whether in spirit or in body Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces would undoubtedly say yes. Implicitly this includes the journey home, and most importantly the offering of a “boon” to the world. I cannot say how important it is for me to recognize something of my own path in this universal map. I have experienced dark evenings these past weeks; sleeping in a kid’s room, on the floor, an army cot. There are times when for a moment I do not know where I am. And people back home in Vermont shake their heads as they pass the “for sale” sign in front of my house, as I do just thinking of it. It is not a good time to hinge upon property to sell, or a book, or a grant of some sort. But I do have a compass, and I keep it there in the palm of my hand. It directs me straight to you.
