The other day, driving and listening (because that’s what I do), I was wondering, almost wishing, I could get my father to listen to some of these podcasts about introspection and the internal self. I don’t think he would do it. I started to think of it as a potential mission – to maybe save his soul or make him kinder and softer in his approach to other people and the world. Of course, I had to consider that my entire attraction to a kinder, softer world is because I’ve built my life in opposition to his approach. And I’d like to be cautious here, because he can be kind and generous and he often says a lot of the right things when it comes to justice and the down-trodden. Like all of us, he is a bag of walking contradictions. He fully believes in humbling himself before books and learned individuals, but when it comes to things like spirituality, psychology, or people he disagrees with – the willingness to be humble and open and listen slinks quietly out of the room. When he argues or needs to make a point, he does so with such certainty (backed up with all of his reading) that you realize it’s less of a conversation or debate and more of a lecture or verbal assault. He calls people dumb and ignorant. He belittles their education or any accomplishments that are not academic, and even in the realm of academics, he holds little value for accomplishments that he doesn’t understand. For example, he doesn’t have much regard for engineers because, to him, it is more of a trade than an education. And so, he argues against a narrow focus on a given subject, yet avoids widening his view on other subjects.
I’ve been thinking about converting my father because I’ve been thinking about my own disposition and recent moments of enlightenment. I believe or suspect that I have always been a quiet observer. I have always been drawn to the slightly melancholy. Some of this thinking has been triggered by these thought-provoking interviews that I’ve been listening to, but some of it has been triggered by listening to The Beatles and my earliest contemplations on being alone. In 1982, when I eight years old, my parents went away to New Orleans to see Penn State play Georgia in the National Championship. My brother and I were deposited at my grandparent’s house. It was New Year’s. They had shrimp. I spent a lot of time alone (I think). I don’t know what the correlation was, but I remember listening to Manfred Mann’s version of “The Mighty Quinn” on an old record player, and I had also brought my tape deck and listened to Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. I listened to The Beatles album over and over again. There are two songs on that album that I had a like/hate relationship with, “Blue Jay Way” and “Fool on the Hill.” Both have a slow, eerie, and lonely vibe to them. “Blue Jay Way” came on the other day, and I could remember my parents being away and eight-year-old me singing the refrain in my head, “Please don’t be long… please don’t you be very long.” I missed them and wanted them to come back. I suspect I never wanted them to leave in the first place. I don’t have a very accurate memory of all of the things that were going on at that time. I know their marriage was in trouble and that they got divorced shortly after that (though “shortly after” could have been anywhere from months to another year or two).
I’ve been told that I was an introspective child – I spent a lot of time looking out windows. I was the sensitive one… or as my father once put it when a girlfriend asked what I was like as a kid “he cried a lot.” My father was sometimes volatile and demeaning. It wouldn’t be uncommon for him to say to me, my brother, or my mother, “how could you be so stupid?” I grew quiet when they got divorced. I stood on my head a lot. When asked why I was doing it, I would say it helped me think or something like that. They worried that it was a real manifestation of my small world being turned upside down. A year after their divorce, my tiny rebellions set in – though I don’t think they were intentional rebellions. I started having trouble in school in fourth grade. I hated my fourth-grade teacher Mr. Elias. What I remember of him was that he ran the school store, he was strict, and he had curly/wavy hair that probably reminded me of my father. I didn’t want to do anything that Mr. Elias had asked me to do. When everyone else memorized the states and capitols and presidents, I tuned it all out. To this day my memory is crap and I don’t know any of those things.
Another strange personality quirk that I might tie to my upbringing is that I hate being in other people’s way. I’m very, very self-conscious about it. I am constantly scanning the room for where I am, how I fit, and if I’m an obstruction to someone else. Ironically, it may also be that I hate when other people are in my way. If I’m trying to parallel park and someone is waiting, I’ll be tempted to drive away so that I don’t have to make them wait. If I’m in the grocery store and someone is hovering to get to where I am, I’ll feel this urge to hurry or leave. On the golf course, it’s the same thing – everyone gets to play through. When people ride my ass on the highway, it’s not so much how close they are that bothers me, but that I haven’t had time to get out of their way. It’s a thing for me and happens nearly every day. I’ve tried to think of where this minor neurosis comes from and as best as I can tell it’s a combination of being taught to be quiet and small and having this unpredictable force from whom I learned it was best to disappear into the background.
It’s odd to find myself not just returning to these moments from my childhood, but to be identifying with them as though I’m finding the quiet and thoughtful (maybe forlorn) child I used to be – or at least some part of myself that took seed a long long time ago. I am, as far as I know, the only one in my family who has taken an interest in Buddhism and poetry and quiet observation of the people and world around me… who has taken a deep dive into how to be compassionate towards those I might otherwise despise… how to live a purposeful life. Psychology and revisionist memory suggests that I had a lack of stability at a young age – a parent prone to mild forms of abuse (verbal and physical). Like all children, I developed coping mechanisms – for me it was to become the peacemaker, the negotiator, the one who goes quiet so as not to make waves, the one who doesn’t want attention or to be in the way.
There is a whole lot more to all of this, and none of it may be true or very accurate. These are all just inklings and speculations. I’m glad that I can write or think about these things without blame. I have a good relationship with my mother who has expressed regret for not standing up to my father… though that’s not really what women did in their marriages at that time, and I feel bad about any inner turmoil that she might have had or still has. I also have a pretty good and honest relationship with my father. I’ve told him when I thought he was being unfair or disrespectful. I’ve told him that I know he was doing the best with the tools he had, but that in some respects, it wasn’t good enough and was damaging – especially to my brother. For me, that’s an important part of compassion – believing that other people are trying and doing the best they can with what they have… trusting that people don’t act out of malice. I wouldn’t expect him to convert to a deep sense of looking inward in the way Buddhists try. Years ago, he might have mocked it, but he has softened a bit. He seems to acknowledge there might be a value to the practice, but also that it’s not who he is. And as much as I believe this type of introspection is beneficial for anyone and everyone, I’m also coming to recognize that for me, it may have started when I was 8 and has been nearly 40 years in the making. I’ll end with the lyrics to the other song I uncomfortably identified with as a child at my grandparent’s house, “Fool on the Hill.” When I hear the song now, I almost chuckle because in some respects, I’ve become a less defiant version of the fool on the hill, and I’m glad that I am.
Day after day, alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin
Is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he’s just a fool
And he never gives an answer
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
Well on the way, head in a cloud
The man of a thousand voices
Talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him
Or the sound he appears to make
And he never seems to notice
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
And nobody seems to like him
They can tell what he wants to do
And he never shows his feelings
But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
Ohh oh-oh-oh-oh ohh-oh-oh
Round and round and round and round and round
He never listens to them
He knows that they’re the fool
They don’t like him
The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round
Ohhhh
Round and round and round and round and
Ohhhh