One's Origins

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.

Dedication

To Peter: Your life was denied you so that I could have mine. It has not been easy, and I have fallen down hard, and by grace, I have risen. For as long as my life goes on, I shall always strive to live a life you would have been proud to live.

Introduction

I have lived a life in constant pursuit of approval from others. The term often thrown around in clinical circles is an external locus of identity, meaning that I identify myself based on external characteristics such as physical attributes, wealth, material possessions, and fame, to name a few. Nearly all of us either suffer or have suffered from an external locus of identity.

I was born with neurological abnormalities that impacted my ability to regulate emotion and manage behavior, which struck the ire of many well-meaning people in whose care I was placed. The result was a quiet but persistent humming of criticism for which I never fully developed appropriate mechanisms to process in a healthy manner. As a defense mechanism against criticism, I developed habitual self-denigration. ‘Beat them to it!’ became my way of fending off others’ criticism whenever I did anything wrong. While rarely cruel, the message from the world back to me was, “Just keep your head down, stay out of the way, and don’t expect too much of yourself, and you’ll do ok.” I still struggle with a damning self-image today.

When I failed at earning the approval of others, I began making life choices that landed me in situations where I was molested, expelled from high school without ever graduating, developed an addiction to methamphetamine fed intravenously, and spent a few months of homelessness[1]. Through enormous grace, I physically survived it all, only to sit by helplessly and watch the first woman with whom I felt safe being vulnerable, who persistently encouraged me to not give up on myself, die a slow and, at times, painful death.

All of these emotionally traumatic events occurred in the ten years between my 13^th and 23^rd year. This is when we begin to exert our independence, and our sense of who we are in the world and our relationship with it takes shape. My trust in others, myself, and love itself were all nearly destroyed. Before I had time to even process, much less heal from any of it, I was given opportunity after opportunity to do better than just ‘ok’ – a lot better. But by whose standards?

I grew up in an environment that measured men by money, without which a man struggled to feel proud about himself vis-à-vis his peers. Success was a function of what we got from the world much more than what we gave to the world, and more importantly, showing off what we got earned more admiration than showing off what we gave. Whether it be big and/or shiny things or a big wad of cash in the pocket, a statement had to be made about how well one is making it. If I wanted to belong, I had to do things to belong. Getting (or perhaps more aptly, taking) from the world required drive and a fighting spirit to compete and engage in wars of wit, which sometimes were hostile. For those poorly adapted to criticism, this makes the entire world seem like a hostile place.

Rather than live life towards a desired future, I lived escaping a past that shrouded me in shame. Shame has been what has motivated me to soldier forward every day of my life. I was ashamed of being a social outsider; I was ashamed of being molested; I was ashamed of never graduating from high school; and I was ashamed of being a meth junkie. I was ashamed of giving up on myself, and I was ashamed of being ashamed.

My tribulations pale compared to the misfortunes that have befallen many others. (I am one of the luckiest people I know.) But life is relative, and I have only my orbit from which to compare and draw conclusions. That orbit grew in one direction, a direction which only magnified, rather than contextualized, the heinous choices I made, and I lived my life ashamed of myself, and since I am being honest, feeling sorry for myself.

By sheer luck of a birth and adoption lottery ticket, I was demographically and geographically privileged. Without knowing anything about me, the world at large made assumptions about me that were to my advantage. Indeed, I had to bust my ass and kiss a little ass along the way, but the asses were there for busting and kissing. I had a leg up before taking my first breath.

As I grew older, having given up on trusting my own gut for life choices, I concluded that mimicry, not genuineness, was the only way to survive in the world. I, a square peg, spent 30 years making every sacrifice necessary to fit into any round hole I confronted if, on the other side, I saw a crowd of round pegs. The choices I made in life from adolescence onward through the following three decades were based on the single criteria of fitting in. I eventually found my way to positive appraisal, but it was superficial and, at times, dishonest, but the world is not to blame. The blame falls on me. For the sake of belonging, I became superficial and, at times, dishonest. The reflections were fair and accurate.

I lost faith in my ability to decide what was right for me as a young adult, so I looked to others to advise me on how to live my life. Before I knew what was happening, I found myself on a conveyor belt hustling me through the rigor of higher education, despite never graduating from high school, to prepare me for acquiring all the spoils of a socio-economic class far above any that I grew up believing would ever be available to me. Soon, I was traveling the world for work and pleasure, providing me an abundance of opportunities to meet and work with people from all over the globe.

Once I began receiving the adulation I craved, I was hooked. I was sure I had found the formula for being relevant. I finally mattered. Cheers replaced jeers, and my life became, quite simply, charmed and perhaps even enviable. I faked the hell out of it for the sake of belonging, forfeiting authenticity and losing humility in the process. I traded in what used to fill my heart for what filled my pockets. I learned to covet and chase materiality, and, in the end, it cost me almost everything, including self-respect, peace, and my soul. I earned admiration from many but never from the man I saw in the mirror.

I am human, so feedback from others will always remain essential to my survival. But I can survive no longer with feedback based on a façade for which I tormented myself by propping up for decades. If I want an honest appraisal, I must be honest. If I want raw, I must be raw. If I want truth, I must be true – to others and myself. My emotional development was arrested by adolescent trauma, and One’s Origins is my attempt to get things back on track.

For all who have ever struggled with feeling worthy of love and belonging, One’s Origins is my compassionate embrace of you as much as it is, for the first time in a long time, a compassionate embrace of myself. I wish for us all that we learn to love and embrace ourselves with all the self-compassion we crave. We all deserve that much.

[1] If I had pleaded for mercy, I have no doubt I would have been welcomed back home if I had met reasonable conditions. But I was too obstinate at the time to do so.

“Remember that sometimes not not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”

― Dalai Lama

ONE DAY IN MARCH not long ago, I embarked on what was expected to be a four-hour, 200-mile motorcycle ride to the Chesapeake Bay. I had the good fortune to exploit the day’s beautiful weather. The task of the day was to take photographs for One’s Origins of a place that is dear to my childhood memories and enjoy some time on my motorcycle. (I share more details in the book.)

Because of a GPS faux pas that was only user error to the extent that I might have not completely double checked something that should almost never need double checking, I got lost. Twice! Using early 21st century level technology! How do things like this happen? I was livid. The day wound up being 300 miles over six hours. Each of the two recalibrations sent me in two different directions, each time tacking on nearly an hour to the round trip.

When I stopped the second time I was lost, I realized I was low on gas. I had plenty of gas when I left the house. “This is not happening. This is a nightmare.”, I thought to myself. “I might not have enough daylight to take the pictures I want to take as it is, and now I have to find a gas station in the middle of nowhere?!” I was facing the real possibility that I had blown a gorgeous late winter day for a motorcycle ride (I mean sleeveless t-shirt gorgeous!) and would have to come back another day. I had with me a professional camera on loan for the day from a friend who owns a film production company. I entertained the thought of scrapping it, licking my wounds and going home. I would have to find another sun-drenched afternoon to borrow the camera again and that could be who knows when. Once I found a gas station, I recalibrated for yet a new set of directions and now my ETA was 10 minutes before sunset. Originally, it had been nearly two hours before sunset. I allowed my frustration to channel its way to social media with a profane rant lambasting the team responsible for the mapping software.

I figured I might as well continue on and take my chances. What I was now sure were the correct directions from the gas station was also in the direction of home, so I had little to lose timewise. To add insult to injury, the right place was not all that far from where I had been an hour earlier. In addition to my fear of losing daylight for taking pictures was my concern about falling temperatures riding home after dark. Warm days in March can quickly turn chilly after nightfall, especially on a motorcycle at highway speeds.

For nearly a third of my miles I pulled maneuvers on a touring motorcycle built for comfort for which such bikes are not designed. Nor are they maneuvers attempted by any rational person with a modicum of life-preserving instincts. I was riding as if my life depended on me taking these pictures on this day. I hope I never again believe for a minute that riding that way on this or any bike ever again is necessary, unless it is matter of life or death, which this was not.

I arrived 20 minutes before sunset. I dismounted the bike and grabbed the camera. I walked towards the edge of a steep decline to a narrow beach more than 30 feet below and gazed west by southwest across the bay to see a sun that was minutes away from tucking itself in for the night, and for the first time that evening my breath was taken away. Of all infinite possibilities for the sun’s location when I arrived, it could not have been in any better place than where it was. I knew the beach faced in the westerly direction towards sunset, but I did not know precisely where it set with respect to the place I wanted to photograph.

On the beach below is where I spent long summer hours during many family vacations when I was a child. Not far away from me on my right was an older couple sitting in their golf-cart watching the sunset together. They told me that they do this every evening on nice days. The woman further told me that this is the time of year the sun sets in the best place over the water. She explained that in the winter the sun sets slightly more south favoring the left side of the horizon, while in the summer the sun sets slightly more towards the west favoring the right side of the horizon. But this time of year, she said, is when the sun sets over the center of the bay. I conveyed my sincere appreciation of her telling me this and smiled in appreciation for being where I was at that time.

I climbed down the slightly zig-zag concrete staircase built into the steep hill to the narrow beach at the bottom. From down below, I stepped as close as I could to the water line without my boots sinking into the sand and took a photograph of the hill. The orange glow of the sunset rested on the hill with an indescribably brilliant hue.

I ascended back up the stairs and walked back to where my visual admiration had begun when I first arrived. The couple was still there, and I told them I was taking pictures for a memoir about adoption. The woman told me she too had given up a son for adoption when she was eighteen, the same age as my mother. My breath was taken away for the second time that evening. She continued to tell me that her son had found her many years ago and they have a relationship today. My heart jumped for joy for the both of them and it also broke in two for me. The woman with whom I was speaking had been in southern California when she gave birth to her son and that is where he was adopted, raised and still lives. Her son had found her using mechanisms that were available to me at the same time – several years before my mother had passed away.

I stood in silence for a moment as I realized that all my directional challenges that led me to arrive over an hour and a half later than I had planned were presented to me on purpose. I was not to arrive when I first thought I was to arrive. Instead, I was to arrive precisely when I did.

There was a long narrow horizontal cloud filling the thin space between the sun and the horizon of the bay that would soon block the view of the sun touching the water. But the sun dipping behind that cloud was awe-striking in its own right. The woman pointed across the bay in the direction of the setting sun and said, “That’s Aberdeen over there.” My breath was taken away for the third time. Aberdeen is where my mother grew up. I raised the camera up to take a picture of what not only my eye saw through camera’s lens, but also my heart.

I might never learn the circumstances around my conception, or how my mother and father met, but I have every reason to believe that across the bay from where I stood and vacationed many years ago is possibly where I was conceived. If I was not conceived there, I have learned that my mother spent the first part of her pregnancy with me living at home on the other side of the bay across from which I gazed. She was also likely living there for the first few years of my life, possibly including during the early years of my family vacations there.

After several minutes lost in stillness, I bid farewell to the couple and thanked them for making my visit more special. I walked back to my bike to prepare for the 93-mile ride home. I shook my head in shame for my earlier rant on social media. I pulled my phone from my pocket to delete it and to my greater shame, the platform’s gatekeepers had beaten me to it, and I received a warning about violating community standards. I was truly ashamed of myself in spite of the fact that the evening could not have been more perfect. Every mistake made in finding this place were not mistakes at all. They were gifts. Garth Brooks is not at all wrong. Some of God’s greatest gifts truly are our prayers left unanswered. This day I thought to be destroyed by navigational issues could not have happened on a better day. The weather was picture perfect midnight to midnight and I took pictures that would never have turned out as well at any other hour on this or any other day. Wearing my sweatshirt and leather riding jacket, which I had packed, the ride home was very pleasant.

Riding home I reflected on so many things I observed over the past couple hours. There was of course the shame of my undignified rant on social media. I have to live with that so there is no point in dwelling on it and allowing it to ruin the ride home. What dominated my thoughts was this. I had gone there to take pictures from a place of my childhood memories, but I had no idea I was going to be taking pictures of a place I had been months prior to my birth. I found my origins lying across the bay just beneath the setting sun.