One's Origins

Returning to my career after a period of time away to tend to “other life” obligations, I began, as many do, by reaching out to my network and applying for jobs online. Networking has always felt awkward when I sense I’m asking for more than I have to offer. And yet, I love to give; it lifts me. I suspect I’m not alone in that. Job searching, however, can make us feel exposed, as if we’re seeking more than we’re giving. Of course, offering ourselves has immense value. Still, the process can chip away at our sense of worth.

Not long ago, I had a video call that left me energized. The conversation flowed naturally, and the energy felt strong, at least from my side of the screen. As is often the case, I replayed it in my head for hours afterward. And, right on cue, those mental replays surged late at night, hijacking sleep.

One thought in particular stuck with me: lifelong learning. I’ve always embraced it, and I was excited to share this on the call. Maybe that explains why I never went especially deep in one area of my career. Instead, I dipped into many waters—sometimes just a foot, sometimes wading a little deeper—but always learning.

What I forgot to mention on the call, and what kept gnawing at me, is that not only is it learning that I enjoy, but also teaching. Not in the formal, academic sense—with all its structure and politics—but the simple, satisfying act of sharing knowledge to help others on their way. That might mean explaining a process, mentoring someone through a challenge, or helping a colleague find their footing in the culture.

Teaching is the other side of learning. And both give us something to offer—even when we feel uncertain about our value. Yes, employers can survive longer without filling a role than job seekers can without finding one. But that doesn’t diminish what we bring. So let your love of giving lead. It’s always there—and it always matters.

Although I did not start out desiring or expecting this to happen, I wagered most of my retirement on what I sincerely believed was a new way forward—one rich with the meaning I longed for, the meaning I felt viscerally compelled to create. I set out to fully express the most authentic essence of my being and become fully alive. Along the way, I stumbled, erred in monumental ways, and fought a bloodied battle with self-doubt and a crumbling sense of self-worth.

That is all in the past, and I can do nothing about it. What is gone is gone. I cannot go back and undo anything that happened, no matter how frantically I hyperventilate, out of sheer panic and anxiety. All I can do is try to make the most of what now is, no matter how much it seems like it will always be less than it would have been had I not made the choices I made. That is just a good old-fashioned fact of life—one I seemed destined to be retaught every now and then.

The challenge I now face is the realization that, on paper, my financial future now appears to be somewhere between uncertain and perilous, unless something unforeseen and significant occurs. Since I am referring to the future, ‘unforeseen’ is inherent. How big my future unfolds boils down to the same two inputs that have always shaped my life’s success in the past— some hard work and a lot of luck.

From where I stand today, it is easy to peer into the future full of worry and anxiety. But what future am I speaking of? Twenty-five years from now? Fifteen years? Five? One year? I can lament all day long about how my long-term future seems much less secure than it might have been had I not chosen to pursue what I thought was right for me at the time. I had no idea then of the wars that would be waged inside myself along the way. This reason alone is both necessary and sufficient to warrant swift self-forgiveness.

Moreover, although I have no way of knowing what the long-term future holds and have no control over it, I do have some control over the near-term future. What happens in the next minute of my life is much more under my control, as it is shaped by the choices I make right now.

The future I must focus on is not the one that is out of reach. That is where my goals might reside, but it is not the future to which I should give my utmost attention. That belongs to the steps I take now to impact the outcomes one minute from now. Pennies, one at a time, add up to dollars. Similarly, minutes, one at a time, add up to years, and years add up to a lifetime.

In closing, I return to my opening sentence, which stated that I wagered most of my retirement on what, in essence, was and remains a deeply held dream and sense of meaning. I was tempted to include the modifier ‘foolishly’ before the word ‘wagered’. However, it is only in my fear-driven prognostications that my choice appears foolish. Therefore, I opted to drop it.

(Note: Unwrapping is the first word of the title. The entire title will be revealed at a later time.)

I was adopted into a loving, blue-collar home and raised by parents who did everything they could to give me a good life. Yet, despite a good childhood in a good community, I struggled with a deep sense of inadequacy and shame, largely due to the stigma of my Hyperactivity—now ADHD. Growing up near Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line instilled in me a belief that success and wealth were the only keys to validation.

As a teenager, my life spiraled. A traumatic hitchhiking incident left me shaken, consumed by a shame I couldn’t escape, setting me on a path of self-destruction—expelled from school, battling intravenous meth addiction, and experiencing homelessness. I was consumed by shame, convinced I had no worth.

A wake-up call came when my mom suffered a life-threatening incident, forcing me to confront the reality of my own life. As I tried to rebuild, I was hit with another devastating loss—the death of a woman I loved. Even as I later achieved what I thought was the pinnacle of success, a prestigious corporate career, I felt more disconnected than ever. In chasing validation, I had lost two essential parts of myself—humility and gratitude.

True transformation began when I met my biological half-brothers and other family members for the first time. This reunion led me to confront the shame that had shaped much of my life and begin a journey toward self-love—not as an endpoint, but as an ongoing process of embracing who I am with honesty and compassion, free from society’s definitions of success.

Unwrapping is a deeply personal memoir about breaking free from the weight of shame, rediscovering humility and gratitude, and learning that the greatest gift is simply being who we are.

I know not where to begin, so I will begin with gratitude for all of you.

I never would have imagined that something I shared on Facebook recently would have generated the outpouring of concern it did. I never intended to convey that I was ever at risk of or contemplating self-harm. I wasn’t at all. I would be lying if I said that for the past several months, I never wished for the cessation of my own life should it occur naturally. But I could never bring about such a misfortune by my own hand. I still have faith that all I have been through in trying to heal from all I have been through will find its glory at some point. I want to be around to bask in it and share it. I truly do. Yes, I am often at a point where I want out, probably more often than is healthy, but I am not taking myself out. As one popular meme says, “I did not come this far only to come this far.”

Bouncing from the lows of molestation, vagrancy, and a meth addiction as an adolescent who grew ashamed of his own shadow to being catapulted onto a trajectory of a materialistically venerable existence was emotionally jarring. I never took the time to seek healing or talk to anyone for decades. I never reset what I wanted out of a life that odds once suggested would not have lasted into my twenties. My development as an emotionally healthy human being was stifled as opportunities came from all directions to pursue what I was raised to believe were the only noble pursuits: wealth and status – two things sorely lacking growing up in an environment that appeared to idolize both. I had finally found acceptance for how I was now living, and no sacrifice was too great to maintain my chokehold on it, regardless of how little fulfillment there was for me. I even eschewed marriage, family, and all deeply intimate connections, fearing I might lose my grip on the threads of chasing wealth and status that I needed to be worthy of social acceptance. I have broken more hearts and shattered more dreams than I care to recall – including my own many times over. Of this, I am, yet again, ashamed.

In quiet and lonely suffering, I have accumulated much materially; in my quest for healing, I have forfeited much materially. I want to believe it will all be worth it if – no, when – I come out of the other side of this an emotionally mature and balanced individual. Such growth requires believing that the entire world is not against me, as I observed it to be from my earliest days of life. Save for a few brief experiences where I did feel safe in the world, I have lived in fear of almost all people as acceptance seemed unwaveringly conditional on living up to expectations I was not equipped to meet.

As for finding my way out of this darkness once and for all, as I began this piece of writing, I know not where to begin. So, I begin the only way I know how – writing and sharing. Picking up the emotional pieces left behind decades ago is no easy task, but it is as crucial as it is painful. Growth is painful, and the more it is pushed off for whatever reason, and the later it occurs, the more painful it is. I still feel safest alone but my fear and distrust of people must abate if I hope to recover, and your outpouring of concern and love is huge. Thank you all!

I recently confided with a friend about a few things weighing heavily on me about my life, and they shared an idea with me that reminded me of a photograph I had shared on social media a few years earlier. In that picture, I am holding and looking at a 4”x6” print of my kindergarten school picture.

This friend of mine suggested that the younger version of each of us is the person we need to live for. This made sense to me. When we are children, we dare to believe our dreams are verily worth all our attention and energy without fear of rejection from others. As we grow older, many of us, if not most, pivot the expectations we hold of ourselves for the sake of acceptance and approval. For many of us, this fear of not fitting in weighs heavily on the choices we make about our lives. Thinking back on this picture, I was motivated to engage in a brief exercise of looking back at my life at developmentally pivotal moments, and I invite others to give it a go if anyone has ever felt that their life choices, whatever they have been for whatever reason, has somehow disrupted the relationship we once held with our dreams.

I start at the top with my kindergarten picture. On my face, and especially in my eyes, I see a blend of wonder and sadness. I had dreams, but I also felt different based on feedback from the world in response to me simply being me, a behaviorally challenged child who was labeled and medicated. Over time, I would internalize this labeling, allowing it to form the blueprint of my own self-image.

Moving clockwise, I am in my early teens, within a year on either side of being molested by a stranger 100 miles north of home. I was beginning to feel the angst from a burgeoning self-dissatisfaction with how my relationship with the world around me was evolving. I felt like there was nowhere safe from criticism.

One photograph further clockwise is my high school senior year photograph, where angst is supplanted by growing anger. I tried to hide it, if only from myself, but I was beginning to resent how my way of being seemed so damn problematic for many around me, especially those closest to me. Less than three months later and three months before graduation, I was expelled, never to graduate.

Moving to the bottom, I am in my mid to late teens and undoubtedly stoned and speeding my ass off, looking like a skeleton tightly wrapped in a thin veil of skin. My nearsighted eyes are behind eyeglasses, tinted by request to block the deathly view of my eyes. (To my delight so far, I underwent laser corrective surgery fifteen years later.) The look on my face is saying to no one in particular, “Dude, I am so wasted.” I finally believed I was being accepted among my peers – even if only as an addict among addicts. This is what apathy for one’s own life looks like.

Continuing clockwise, and out of nowhere, I am graduating from a high-ranking U.S. university, and my face is saying. “There you go, fuckers; I did it your way.” I chased the popular rabbits of ever greater social significance playing the dream-killing game of Keep up with whoever. I might appear happy and proud, and I was indeed quite proud…of finally finding the keys to approval.

Moving further around, we have me in the present day. I can tell you what I am thinking. I am struggling to find peace in the realization that I have spent my entire adult life – more than thirty years – making nearly every choice with one deeply damned objective in mind, to impress as many people as possible to feel worthy of belonging … to feel worthy of living. My self-directed resentment for my earlier life choices, the shame I felt for the reasons I made them, and my frustration for allowing myself to spend a lifetime chasing success by how others define it, still cut deep to this day.

Unbeknownst to me was that I had overcome one addiction only to pick up another so that I could have a seat at the table of an economic class my family growing up could only dream of. The difference is that my first addiction reaped derision while the second was celebrated.

Long ago, I had so brutally forsaken my own dreams as a means of social survival, and I had almost forgotten what they were. However, there is a boy who clearly remembers what they are, but I rejected him for who he was because I believed the world was rejecting him for who he was. I accepted this rejection as justified and have lived in anguish ever since. I need to welcome this boy back into my life; he is the only one who can rescue me. Both of our lives depend on it.

I regularly see memes on social media decrying the narcissist. Call it a gut reaction, but I genuinely believe that those who share such memes do so for the same reason most, if not all, who share memes do so – because they hold deep personal meaning to the person who posted them. I am willing to bet that if you ask anyone who shares memes calling out the narcissist if they feel they have ever been in the grips of a narcissist to whom they gave themselves, that all would say yes if they were being honest.

But is it narcissism that bedevils these targets of publicly shared gripes? Let’s look at the definition of the word. According to dictionary.com (no less credible than any other online source), narcissism means ‘inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity; self-centeredness; smugness; egocentrism.’ Ratcheting up my own self-awareness, it is not at all difficult for me to see how I could have the propensity to show up for others at times as a world-class narcissist based on such a definition.

I have been called out for being a bit obsessive with my physical appearance at times, and I have often been lost in my own world, seemingly oblivious to the needs of others, as if my situational awareness had become utterly impotent. But why? Am I self-centered? Am I smug? I am confident that anyone who has ever known me well would never say I was smug. I often am complimented on the kindness I show others, including strangers.

This essay is not about defending narcissism. Instead, this essay explores what else might be going on when someone exhibits behaviors conventionally described as narcissistic. For starters, people who are labeled…er, ‘diagnosed’…with ADHD (me among them my entire life) who have difficulty holding focus will often appear aloof and in their own world, which can seem like a complete lack of consideration for others.

What about self-love? Even under penalty of death for untruthfulness, I will bear witness to the fact that I hold more loathing for myself than love. I know I am not alone in my plight. I have lived my life completely ashamed of myself and full of self-loathing devoid of worthiness in acceptance and belonging.

The scatter-brained ADHDer aside, what I believe is likely going on is emotional drowning. When someone is in the throes of drowning, they are in a state of absolute panic for their life. They will flail their arms and legs wildly, trying to hold on to anything upon which they can push down to get themselves above the water line for air so they can breathe. That often happens when someone is drowning emotionally – and I posit that no one is immune from feeling this way at times, no matter how brief or infrequent.

The person wishing to save the apparent narcissist will feel pulled down and stepped on. Simple physics instructs us that the force applied is a force of equal force in the opposite direction. We know this from Newton’s third law of motion. While we are not speaking of mass on mass here but rather emotion on emotion, the same principle applies as the lifesaver feels pulled down, stepped on, and disrespected. This analogy holds further true when neither party is particularly good at swimming. Just like it takes extraordinary strength and skill from training to save someone from drowning without allowing themselves to become submerged by the desperate flailing of limbs of the person drowning, it takes extraordinary emotional strength and skill, also from training and practice, to save someone from emotional drowning without allowing ourselves to feel stepped on dragged down.

I will reiterate that I am not defending narcissism. There are indeed people who unabashedly hold themselves above others and truly see themselves as entitled to the praise of others. Perhaps it is these individuals who are caught up in the most ferocious of emotional riptides. Nor am I suggesting we should not try to save the narcissist from their riptides. I am merely inviting us to consider that we are best to keep our own emotional resolve in as tip top shape as possible so that when we are pulled down by the narcissist we wish to save, we can keep ourselves above the water line and not wind up drowning during the attempts to rescue those we love.

About seven months ago, we moved my mom and dad from the living facility where they had been living for the past two-plus years into my home. Given how things were, it was the prudent thing to help us keep the family’s place in Sussex County, DE, near the lower Delaware beaches – a place quite near and dear to my heart. Living completely on their own was no longer practical, so my 2,200 sq. ft. bachelor pad in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was repurposed to help him, 92, and her, 86, feel at home under my roof.

With the approach of the move-in date and other worries about my life’s next steps, my stress and anxiety levels were going through the roof. I even sought medical guidance to help keep me from completely losing my marbles. My feelings ran the gambit from joy and excitement from providing a roof over their head to depression that the life I had cultivated, for better or worse, was being turned upside down, to downright frustration with occasional outbursts of anger over the challenges I was now facing.

Not the least of these hurdles has been butting heads with my dad over different world views born of a generational chasm. Much of my upbringing had been marked by our significantly different opinions on the role of money in life, leading me to carry some resentment for money’s very existence. Having grown up during The Depression and the years following, my dad seemed to view the world more myopically than me through the lens of wealth.

I, in contrast, grew up far more removed from, or shielded from, such dire economic uncertainty and desperation yet unhealed from childhood trauma (through no fault of my mom or dad). I developed the means to earn enough money to live more comfortably than I ever imagined possible when I was young. Moreover, being childless, I never experienced the modesty and often humility necessary to provide for others when access to means of providing is limited. I grew up believing that filling deeper voids was just as important, if not more important, than earning as much money as possible for its own sake alone. Our different views were often the undercurrent of our disagreements over the years.

Agitating the transition in our new living arrangements, I had come down with a bit of a bug a month a few months after they moved in, and my dad soon came down with what I had. Mom was spared. My dad and I were both more miserable than usual (and that’s saying something).

On one early summer night in June of 2023, several months into our new living arrangements (and after we were back to a healthy household), I was sitting on my back deck facing the setting sun shining through the much-diminished arbor, thanks wholly to my overzealous trimming of tree branches that were hanging too low over the deck. My dad came out and sat on a chair facing me to relax as I did my thing, whatever that was at the time. We exchange chitchat – nothing deep, but nothing pedestrian like his favorite topic – the stock market. I am struck with joy and gratitude that I, a grown man still stumbling around this nutty blue marble, could still chat with my dad – whatever the topic. Thanks to social media, I have often observed the sorrow of others who only have memories, especially on Father’s Day. Some, one whom I have recently endeared as family (because, by blood, he is), grew up without a dad.

I am wildly lucky to have this gift of time with my dad. Moreover, despite my many majestic mistakes, I am also aware of how good life has been to me. There is so much in my life that has long been derailed – or so I thought based on popular standards, but perhaps in no way whatsoever – and triumphing over all of it is realizing just how good my life has been. I have no idea what the future holds, but I will be fine as long I remember on every present day, just how lucky I have been.

This encounter with my dad inspired me to write this essay. As I reviewed and edited it a couple nights later, sitting at the same spot watching another sunset, my dad came out on the deck again, and we chatted about money again. This time I actually enjoyed the more philosophical discussion on the topic. As he got up to return to what had been my office and study, which was now the TV room for my parents, I told him how much I really appreciated these small moments we had to sit and chat. I will remember his response for the rest of my life. “Well, once in a while, we get along.” I chuckled and said, ‘Yep, we sure do, Pop. We sure do.’

Happy Father’s Day, 2023
Matt Gorman

It is said life is a circle. The term circle of life is an oft-used one from philosophy to the theater – though those two worlds are not terribly far apart. Life is thought of as a circle in which we return to some beginning point and continue around and around. In the sense of the culturally popular Lion King and The Legend of Kung Fu[1], the circle of life refers to the succession of generations and the handing of the torch from one to the other.

In my experience, the circle, as defined by traveling around and returning to whence one begins, is in caring for the two people whose life has been dedicated to caring for me. Recently, I began my role serving the greatest privilege I could ever ask for (and I have been the recipient of many privileges throughout life).

One day before Thanksgiving 2022, seven weeks before this essay was posted, I, and my brother and sister-in-law, packed up our parents’ belongings on the back of a trailer and hauled them 17 miles northeast to my home. He is 92, and she is 86. Both lucid and ambulatory. With a bit of shifting around of furniture and a relocation of my office to the basement, we were able to create a bedroom and a separate TV room for them. I keep my living room as a stimulus-free room for quiet time.[2]

Source: Unknown

Indeed, the lifestyle of a post-middle-aged bachelor is laden with a bit of a wrinkle, but adaptation is doable. (We still have the family hideaway near the beach to which I can escape for alone time.) More importantly, this adaptation is well worth it. I am in a position to provide for, care for, and spend quality time with two people who sacrificed to give me so much and support my many second chances in life. I am, if nothing else, a very blessed man.

[1] I never saw the contemporary “Lion King” on stage or on screen, but I have had the privilege to see “The Legend of Kung Fu” on stage in Beijing as part of a business school week-long ‘class trip’ visiting companies in China.

[2] In One’s Origins I share my affinity towards the Quiet Room.