One's Origins

“The ultimate experiment in nature versus nurture is the one who is engaged with in a constant battle between what he was an what he wanted to be.”

― Larissa Ione

In Part Nineteen, I shared my musings on labor as a means of exchange with the world. Part Twenty is a discussion of what I have learned about not only nature versus nurture, but more profoundly, how the two seemingly have a relationship that is both dynamic and beautifully symbiotic.

As an infant adoptee raised in a nuclear family and reacquainting with biological relatives as an adult, I believe I meet any and all reasonable qualifications necessary to weigh in on the topic of nature versus nurture. I have made huge strides in emotionally processing my identity from these two most powerful forces. This was, after all, the initial primer for beginning the One’s Origins journey. From these, might the classical thinker in me find solace in understanding more clearly my own composition? In so doing, I will be left with little debate. My genetic makeup predates any influence my environment could have had on me so I shall begin with nature.

Nature

Who am I by nature and how does my nature shape how I interact with the environment that has always provided me nurture? In Part Seventeen, I introduced my biological uncle and cousins during our union/reunion in July 2019. Here, I began to learn of a few genetic predispositions. To start, my father’s mother, Elvira (nee Taylor) was a beautiful writer who poured her pained heart out on paper. Her first husband, my father’s father, from what I have learned, gave her plenty about which to write. That’s her environment but I suspect her ability to emote came by her naturally. She also had a very curious mind and enjoyed learning new things. She learned braille for no other reason than to help the blind read. Physical fitness was very important to my father and he was smitten with strumming the six-string from what I have learned from my one remaining biological uncle Bruce. More beautifully for me to learn is that my paternal lineage is also rich in other artistic creativity. My cousins, through the struggles they faced together as children got through things in no small part thanks to music, more specifically, singing and dancing. Based on several stories I have heard; we are also a resilient lot. There are a few other genetic medical dispositions that, for privacy reasons, I will not discuss. I will only say that some lesser asked questions are finding their own answers as well.

I very recently came in contact with my father’s stepbrother George who shared this true story. “Buddy [my father’s nickname] was a free spirit and we were both living in Tahoe in the early 60’s. I remember him walking to work playing a flute with a half dozen big huskies and malamute dogs following him enjoying the music!”

I think it is fair to say that by and large, emotional expressiveness is a genetic trait. My nature mandates expression. My nature sees the world through the eyes of the romantic. As I reflect on my career in a world dominated by classical thinkers, I now understand the conflict that was always at least on simmer and occasionally eruptive like an active volcano. Let’s now see what nurture has to say about things.

Nurture

Nurture has quite a bit to say about several things. This section on nurture is more content rich but that does not mean its contribution is any higher. I am merely able to provide more detail as I write from a life lived in my environment. Too start, when it comes to music, by my mom and dad’s own admission, any draw to musical instruments little, if any, credit goes to them. They did support my interest in music as I touched on in Part Four.

Very much like my biological grandmother, Elvira, my mom has always been drawn to journaling. In the years following her brain aneurysm, my mom would often write how she was feeling. Over the years, I would stumble over a few notebooks lying around and would thumb through them. The words I read were heart wrenching. Her prose and poetry would be short, rarely an entire page. The words left no doubt of her sometimes sense of both helplessness and hopelessness. I was aware that she battled challenges with depression in the aftermath of her aneurysm. Somehow and for some reason, which for both, I haven’t a clue, I compartmentalized what I read and never brought it up. I guess I figured that was then and this is now.

Because my mom and I were in sync on curiosity, we were often more candid in conversation than I was with my dad. I will get to that in a minute. My mom’s curiosity would sometimes be about the most mundane and trivial things, in my opinion, but I could always appreciate the heck out of it even while rolling my eyes.

My mom is also an extraordinarily compassionate human being. She is not vengeful in the least. I provide the background for this in the book version of One’s Origins but in 1974 an incident occurred to our family, specifically my brother (he was five), where awarded damages could have easily surpassed seven figures, but all we asked for was that the best of care and treatment be paid in full. Beyond that would be nothing more than revenge. More recently, her wallet was stolen while she was at an appointment. The thief was caught days later and arraigned. All my mom wanted were prayers for the person who stole her wallet. My mom was more saddened by the life one must live to have to resort to theft. She vehemently stood against going after the weaker and more disadvantaged among us. Is it any wonder that I never got beyond level one of office political games? I grew up learning that taking advantage of people who are less fortunate is simply wrong.

Unfortunately, the closeness my mom and I share, has not always been a walk in the park, especially for her. My mom was as many times too often the receiver of the brunt of some of my flare-ups. Too often, it was my patience that would be too quickly exhausted, and if she was in the room, I did not hold back my frustrations. I am ashamed to admit that if nearly anyone else was present, I would have held back. What a crappy way for a grown man to treat anyone but for the love we all hold dear, certainly not his own mother who is in her 80s; who, with his dad, chose him as their first adopted child.

Allowing myself to be more conscious of how I feel I am becoming actively vigilant against such things happening ever again. I still often stumble, and sometimes hard. But this vigilance I must keep practicing.

What about a boy and his dad? That’s no less instructive, I assure you. My dad grew up with his own issues as we all have. Self-esteem was often a challenge for him due in large part to the environment in which he was raised. He was the youngest of five in a family that was often too busy operating the family dairy home delivery business to address his childhood emotional needs. On Father’s Day a few years ago, I called him in the morning to wish him a happy Father’s Day and apologized that other events that weekend precluded me from making the two-and-a-half-hour one-way trip to visit him. He was weeping, which is something I haven’t heard him do since our family dog died when I was five years old. I asked him what was wrong, and he shared with me that he had no recollection of hearing either of his parents tell him they loved him. For the first time in my life I heard my dad speak a word of anything he was missing from his childhood. It was beautiful and I was not prepared for it. Nor was I prepared for what happened next. He told me how much he loved me, my brother Andrew and my mom. It was the first time I recall hearing him utter the words, “I love you.” With all my might I was holding myself together long enough to tell him I know he loves me and that I love him too. We hung up and I just sat there and immediately began to cry.

My dad was born in 1930 the year after the world fell into The Great Depression. His most formative years that would cement his world view for his entire life were spent in a decade where everything material was scarce, very scarce. Conservationism was, for all intents and purposes, his religion. As a child, this conservationist mentality was difficult for me to understand because I did not witness it much in other families. As a child, I internalized this as a shortcoming for which I somehow felt ashamed. As I got older, I began feel ashamed for feeling ashamed. Somebody stop the shame train! I gotta get off this thing. There is nothing at all to be ashamed about. In fact, I am both proud and grateful for “inheriting” a conservationist mindset from my dad. He was never a man of many resources, but he was resourceful. To borrow from the oft told fable, my dad never had many fish at once, but he knew how to fish, and he knew how to get the most out of each fish he did catch. Much more importantly however, he was grounded in understanding which fish were necessary and which were not. The lesson I learned was a catch of 10 fish was just as respectable as a catch of 100 fish or even 1,000 fish, as long as you knew that 10 fish is all you needed to provide the necessities in life. To this day I find myself conserving resource so they last as long as possible. In Part Twenty-one I will explain further how this has been critical for One Origins. For now, let me just say, “Thanks Dad!”

My mom and I have always been able to chat about many things but my dad and I rarely, if ever, got below the surface of anything when I was younger. This journey has helped shepherd me to a place where I can stand with him and love him for the man he is and all he sacrificed for me and not stand against him as the man whose dream I felt obligated to fulfill.

My relationship with my parents is not the only one benefiting from this experience. My relationship with Andrew is growing richer, at least through my eyes. He and I drifted down along the river in the same boat together as children and young adults. He came into a home with three inhabitants. He was hit from three sides with environmental influences, not the least of which was me who, early on, predictably saw him as a competitor for my Mom and Dad’s attention and affection. I squandered some opportunities to step up and be the best big brother I could have been for him when I was living recklessly many years ago. This means nothing at all for the opportunities to be there for him in the years ahead.

My conclusion as to who I am by nature and who am I by nurture is less complex than I might have imagined. In my paternal bloodline is an affinity for creative expression. I am an emotional being. By nurture, I am also an emotional being but one who pursued paths where artistic expressiveness was not particularly valued. My nurture put me on my life’s path. I am product of my past experiences as much as I am a product of my genetics.

“In the real world there is no nature vs. nurture argument, only an infinitely complex and moment-by-moment interaction between genetic and environmental effects.”

― Gabor Maté

I have been winding down One’s Origins examining my relationships with the world at large, followed by my most immediate influences. In Part Twenty-One, I will conclude One’s Origins with a fresh examination of the relationship I now have with myself. It is this relationship alone that defines every other relationship I have with all other beings. See you there!

In Part Eighteen I revealed a few of my most vicious demons. In Part Nineteen I will begin to share a few things I have learned while confronting them. I will endeavor to share them with you in a way that invites you to reflect inward so that hopefully you too will learn a little bit more about yourself of which you have either not been aware, nor have yet accepted.

In the hopes of maintaining some semblance of organization, I have arranged all I have learned into three areas where we engage with the world and universe. We engage though our labor, our family and ourselves. In Part Nineteen I will discuss labor.

Labor

Labor is a catch-all word I chose to describe how we contribute to society. Our labor, physical and mental, is how we contribute to the pool of resources available from which all are to benefit. In many cultures, one’s labor is predetermined by the family or class in which they are born. For most of civilization, childhood dreams took the backseat to the needs of the family or village. That we now have the freedom to choose how we contribute to the world is a relatively recent shift that allows us to do so while pursuing our dreams. This is both a blessing and a curse. Some of us latch on to a dream and the script for getting there is pretty straight forward. Get good grades in school and become marketable in high paying professions. Others don’t have scripts written for them. Some in the arts might dream of wealth but wealth does not dominate their dreams. Creativity dominates their dreams and creativity has no script. Some of us find conflict between these and the tug of war between heart and mind can be merciless.

We were all once children and we all had dreams. (The lucky among us still do dream regardless of age.) Some of us have the courage to follow our dreams and some of us don’t. There is not a one-size-fits-all answer as to why. I believe much of it has to do with fear. Success is the unknown and the unknown is what we fear. This explains why the successful appear to become more so over time. For them success becomes less of an unknown, so fear diminishes. I have become aware that success is what I have feared more than failure. Graham Nash nailed it.

“Look around. You know you must go for what you wanted.
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved.”[1]

Dreams are our compass. Following that compass involves three steps. Step one is faith. We must have indomitable faith that we can accomplish anything we wish. Our faith must be so strong that we see our success as a foregone conclusion. I do not mean this in an arrogant way but rather a confidant one. We have more input into the creation of our lives after birth than most of us realize. Those who do realize that we ourselves hold the reigns of our own lives are the ones who have successfully developed faith. Step two is commitment. We must be fully committed to our dreams, or we never make it out of the starting gate. At our core, it is our commitment that gives us the strength to pick ourselves up when we are down. This level of commitment is needed to have the fortitude to bust through any obstacle. We first need the will to get back up, faith provides that, and commitment is the muscle. Step three is where most dream chasers begin to falter. Step three is only completed when we rid ourselves of all concern we might have for the opinions of others. Regardless of whether they are opining on us for our dreams or how we pursue them, or they are opining on a subject of which is of personal importance to us. We cannot let it matter. It is only their opinion and we are DOA at the doorsteps of our dreams if we allow the opinions of others influence us. Again, this is framed in the context of confidence, not arrogance. Those who master this third step have little left with which to contend on their path to the fulfillment of their dreams and satisfaction in life.

So, what do I do with this information now? I look back and I see clearly that I had always been a romantic but eventually tried to conquer the classical world.[2] This, I feel, is where so much personal suffering can be found in people who constantly wonder and wander throughout their lives. It’s no wonder we cannot find what we are looking for. We are looking in the wrong place.

It would truly be senseless for me to scrap any part of my past in the wild hope of becoming now who I might have become if I held true to my romantically centered dreams. I am who I am now. I am not who I was then. I will never be who I might have become because I will always only be who I have become. I can always be who I want to become.

I now have been classically educated and employed for over 30 years. What I can do is relieve myself of old dreams of amassing prestige and wealth for their own sake and re-acquaint myself with the romantic I was born to be. Given what I have consistently observed in the classical world, an infusion of the romantic view is long overdue. Perhaps, just perhaps, being romantically born and classically bred, I might just be where I can contribute what I am meant to contribute to the world.

What does this mean for Matt Gorman going forward? Life is never that easy as to just give me or anyone a magic answer. We are given hearts and within them we will find our answer. While I was writing One’s Origins, I was invited to give a phone interview for a job for which I was, by-and-large, well-qualified. I was out for practice for interviews, but I believe I held my own with the technical discussions. I was asked at the end of the interview what I enjoy doing. I am a staunch believer that the higher up one ascends the ranks to roles of either management or leadership, personality and relatability become at least of equal importance with technical competence[3]. I made the assumption that her question was to learn a bit about my non-technical side. I hesitated for all of about one second before answering, “I enjoy writing.” If this was the kind of answer she was looking for, then that’s great! If this was not the kind of answer she was looking for, then that’s great also. It’s great no matter the outcome because it’s the truth. I enjoy writing. I enjoy writing more than anything else but why is this? When I go back and read what I wrote in journals over the past twenty or even thirty years, I read words of complaint and bitterness. I read words written by a man crying out in pain. That’s it! I have been in pain for most of my life and not until I began this journey have I ever granted myself permission to share one word of this with anybody. Hell, I would not even allow myself to acknowledge my pain. Revealing pain is for the weak I thought. The written word has always been the only place where I could find safety in intimacy.

My emotions are found in my writing. My labor is found in my writing. I am found in my writing. Realizing this, I can cease my labor instructing my identity to allow my identity to instruct my labor.

Now that I have a better idea of my identity where labor is concerned.  What does Family have to say about my identity. That will be the subject of Part Twenty. See you there!

(If you are wondering, the outcome from my phone interview did not lead to anything further and that’s ok.)

[1] “Wasted On The Way” written by Graham Nash; Lyrics © Spirit Music Group, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

[2] Refer to this video for an explanation of the romantic vs. classical personalities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=16&v=5QmJofRAB9M&feature=emb_logo

[3] Authors Chris Malone and Susan Fiske brilliantly illustrate the relationship between warmth and competence in their 2013 book The Human Brand.

Trying to “fit in” might provide an illusion of escaping isolation from others but it will indubitably isolate us from ourselves.

― Matthew E. Gorman

My Journey from Adoption to Identity is approaching a milestone. I began this journey with no particular end point in mind. My only objective was to travel in time throughout my life in hopes of reconciling the place from where I came with where I have been, where I am and where I am going from this moment forward. One’s Origins was a journey back through my life moving forward in time while looking backward like driving a car with the windshield and rearview mirror switched. While conventional wisdom might argue that this holds no value, I emphatically disagree. This opportunity to reexamine the motivations for decisions I made and lessons I failed to learn throughout life the first time has helped relieve me of so much emotional turmoil. I may have had no particular end point at the onset of One’s Origins, but the healing of unsurfaced wounds has been the greatest gift I could have given myself. The journey is by no means complete and with God’s grace it will never end. However, it will never again be the same because the lens with which I see my relationship with the world and others has changed.

The more I learned and shared, I would often receive feedback that there was much resonance among others as they could identify some of their own inner conflicts with my depiction of my own. It is in learning of such drawn connections with the reader that has had such a divine impact on the way I view the value of all with which I have struggled. I am not alone. No one is alone. Many of us feel alone, but we never are alone in often hard to grasp cosmic ways. At our core, we, as a species, are bound by experiences of both pain and joy. In Part Nineteen I will share with you the joy that emerges from confronting pain.

What follows will, at times, read like a manifesto of grudges, in other words, it might appear that I am complaining or venting, or worse yet, whining. Perceiving this as such is understandable. In the introduction of the book version of One’s Origins, I share the need to draw our demons out into the light of day if we hope to conquer them. In part Eighteen, I summon my demons to introduce them to their maker and their demise. My demons are Fear, Remorse and Anguish. As you read what follows, I invite you to think about what still haunts you today. Once I acknowledged my burden it immediately and noticeably diminished. If there is a whiff of complaining as you read the below, it is in pursuit of enhancing my endearment to you. I promise it will be faint and quickly passing.

Fear

Nothing more and nothing less than fear has kept me from pursing my dreams. Nothing ever stood in my way, EVER except my own damn fears! I feared more than death itself both rejection and ridicule. As a child with behavioral challenges attributed to deficits in my ability to pay attention[1], I was very often on the receiving end of rejection and ridicule. Like the child bitten by a dog who never outgrows a fear of dogs, I never outgrew my fear of rejection and ridicule. Because of this I was often left on the outside looking in. I concede that I might recall this happening more than it truly did, but it did often enough to have a lasting impact on me. This culminated in my rebellious lifestyle years later and the mistakes that ensued.

The same fear followed me throughout my career. My fear of rejection and ridicule triumphed over self-confidence, so I adapted to my environment by doing what and being who was expected by others. Being nonconformant years earlier had not turned out so well, so I figured conforming was my only option. Paradoxically, conforming, or “fitting in” did little more than isolate me from myself. I did so out of fear of being shunned again. ‘Fake it until you make it’ often is a fruitful strategy if your heart is into what you are trying to accomplish. Otherwise, you can easily appear disingenuous and untrustworthy. This would ultimately lead to perhaps not complete rejection but certainly being shunned. Ultimately, I was rejecting myself.

Lastly, I have feared loss. To avoid loss, I would avoid deep connections. This fear frightens me so much that I have not even been willing to have a pet of my own, let alone emotional dependency on another human being even though both would immeasurably benefit me. The death of every pet in my home as a child as well as anyone I have loved was always unbearable for me. It is said it is better to have loved and lost than never to love at all. What about having loved and lost and lost and lost and…? I will address this in further detail in Part Nineteen.

Remorse

Throughout One’s Origins I hope I have done an adequate job in communicating my awareness that I have been inordinately blessed and that I am a very fortunate human being. In union with my gratitude there also lies remorse. My fear of not fitting in diminished my sense of self-worth and all the shame and blame from my youth would be adopted by me as deserved and justified. I know no ill will was ever intended by anyone. When I was young their intent was almost always of a corrective nature even if intimidating. Resultingly, shaming and blaming myself was how I was conditioned. I was quick to be harshly self-critical of every mistake I made. More regrettably, to a lesser extent I became critical of others for their flaws and mistakes. I was a product of judgement because of my differences and as a result I became a very judgmental person.

It is in the pain of the aftermath of this that has impacted me the most. I would go on for over three decades believing my worth as a human being was below that of anyone else. Because of this, I invested a lot of time and energy trying to be someone I felt was more worthy of admiration than myself. I was constantly trying to be someone other than who I was, hoping to avoid being judged by others for being flawed. The result was that I was always judging myself and often quite harshly.

I was often told that I just needed to forgive myself. However, I did not believe I owed myself an apology. I knew I was harsh on myself, but I believed deeply that I deserved it. I absorbed enough shame and blame all throughout my youth because of my behavioral challenges that I adapted to the belief that it was all justified and there was nothing for me to regret. That is why the idea that there was actually anything for which I needed to forgive myself never occurred to me.

I wish to reemphasize something I mentioned in Part One. In the very first paragraph of One’s Origins I wrote these words. “…and that home is the place to where my memory carries me to this day when I desire peace and warmth.” My childhood home was my sanctuary. The harshness I internalized my whole life came from outside the home.

Anguish

Following remorse is Anguish. I have been anguished for allowing myself to fall into the pit of despair over all decisions in my life that I had perceived as unforgiveable mistakes. Hell, I even held anguish for the perceptions that my mistakes were unforgiveable. The result has been a catastrophic self-perpetuating cycle of disharmony. Everyone makes mistakes and many of us spend far more time than is warranted stewing over them.

I have been anguished not that I sunk three quarters of my annual salary at the time into a highly ranked two-year MBA program or that I invested nearly as much money and nine years into a highly specialized technical undergraduate degree. I have had amazing experiences and developed life-long friendships. My anguish comes from my motivations for doing so. I did not do these things to further my career per se, I did it to further my image in my own eyes. I can pretend I wanted respect and admiration from others but in truth what I wanted, no, what I needed were those things from myself. My ego needed me to. I enslaved myself to my ego. I am now also aware that I wanted to honor my dad’s wish for a better life for me. These are the reasons I chose to stay on the career path I was on for so long.

I remain anguished for feeling ashamed of myself, not because of my mistakes with substance abuse many years earlier, but rather because I refused myself the forgiveness I so much both deserved and needed. The way out of this hell has been right in front of me with the door as wide open as every other door I have ever walked through to get me to where I am today.

Finally, I am anguished that until now, my only outlet for this has been anger. What pains me the most is never learning how to see the good in myself that others did. Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to reciprocate any, let alone all, the love I was ever given. I was the only one standing in my own way. Of all that still haunts me today, this one continues to drive me to tears.

I had become co-dependent on the trifecta of Fear, Remorse and Anguish. Those three emotions wrapped up in one, personified the person I would see in every mirror for most of my adult life. I saw a person in whom I never had any confidence. Is it any wonder why others lacked confidence in me as well? It has been only in emotional outbursts that my pain would find its escape.

These are my demons. Now that they are out in the light of day, I have the upper hand in confronting them. In Part Nineteen I will share my plans for doing just that. I look forward to seeing you there!

[1] As a matter of personal conviction, I decline to use any description of a human quality the includes the word “disorder”. In my rather unwavering view on this, negatively labeling any quality of mental, neuro, or emotional differences as a ‘disorder’ causes a significant part of the challenges those possessing these qualities throughout their whole lives. Diagnosed is better than undiagnosed all day every day but we mustn’t compound their struggle with negative labels. During the course of writing One’s Origins, I came to learn of a growing hypothesis in the field of child psychology that what is referred to today as ADD might be a manifestation of depression from very early life traumatic event.

Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.
It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?

“How Can I Keep from Singing”
Songwriters:
Camilla Kerslake; Michael Damien Hedges; Robert Lowry; Sally Herbert
Recorded by Enya

In Part Sixteen, One’s Origins began charting its course homeward to the present moment. I closed Part Sixteen reintroducing the meeting of my two half-brothers. I also alluded to meeting a cadre of family members. This is what Part Seventeen is all about. I would, for the first time ever, see the road for which I have long wandered this earth searching; the road to more complete belonging.

Shortly after meeting Scott in April of 2019 (Part Three) there were rumblings of a large family reunion being planned for the summer. This reunion was going to serve two extraordinary purposes, one sorrowful and one joyful.

A weekend in the middle of July was selected and the location was to be near Donner Lake in Truckee, CA, about 15 miles northwest of the north rim of Lake Tahoe. Six of us would be arriving from Utah, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. The remainder would be coming from within California. All things on balance, this location was most centrally located. What a divine coincidence it was that this northeastern region of California, where I had visited only once before on a bicycle tour twenty years earlier, was of very somber significance of which I shall soon share.

My father, Lawrence was the middle child of three boys. His older brother is deceased and the younger one, Uncle Bruce, is alive and well. Between my two uncles there are 10 children who are all first cousins to Dan, Scott and me[1]. With the only exception of Dan, Scott and myself, everyone else had grown up with each other or at least knowing of each other. Most had not seen each other for quite some time, and a few had not seen others in thirty years.

Dan, his family and I were meeting everyone for the first time, and all the same, there was a mysterious sense of familiarity. We all felt familiar with one another from the moment we all laid eyes on each other. This should not surprise us since the origin of the English word familiar means “belonging to family”.

This was apparent from the very beginning of my visit. My cousin Donna, along with Dan, traveled nearly two hours from Truckee to meet me at Sacramento airport. I don’t believe we were more than five miles on our way back before Donna began to open up with me about some of the details of her life. I strongly doubt I would have had her courage to be so forthcoming so soon. That she did, however, immediately relieved me of all my apprehensions to be fully and swiftly reciprocal. Her openness softly disarmed me, and I found this quite freeing.

Donna; Matt; Nina; Uncle Bruce; Dan; Mary; Ann; cousin Bruce (missing: Donny)

Once we arrived back at the house, I began to meet many others with whom I share my paternal linage. Most were already there when I arrived, and a few would be arriving later. With each relative I met, I was overwhelmed with the feeling of how much I had missed them while never hitherto knowing they existed. I felt this way when I met Dan and Scott and I felt this way there and then as well. I fail to find words to describe the sensation of missing someone you never met before. There was no denying that our pre-life cellular bond had never been quiescent/dormant. As much as this was a true reunion for my uncle and cousins and for the others (myself included) it was ostensibly just a union, this was indeed a reunion for all in a near cosmic sense. Dan was accompanied by his wife, Jenny, along with their five children and five grandchildren. My cousin Nina was accompanied by her husband and son. In total, we would have 21 beautiful souls gathering to reunite. To accommodate us all, two full-size rental houses five minutes apart were secured.

Matt; Bruce; Donna; Dan at Fallen Leaf Lake

In Part Two, I shared that the first meeting of Dan and I took place at the sight where our father Lawrence is buried at Santa Rosa Memorial Park in Santa Rosa, CA. On the Saturday of our reunion weekend, July 13^th, Dan and I along with Uncle Bruce, my cousin Donna and her companion Larry, set out for a midday road trip to Fallen Leaf Lake, about two miles south of the southern rim of Lake Tahoe. As our reunion was north of Lake Tahoe, this would be about an hour’s drive each way. Particularly for Dan, Uncle Bruce and I, this visit to Fallen Leaf Lake had a very special meaning. On July 23, 1969, at approximately 4:00 PM local time Lawrence Stone, father to Dan, Scott and me, had drowned in this lake three weeks after his 24^th birthday. Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, Scott was unable to attend the reunion. Almost to the day, 50 years after his death Dan, Uncle Bruce and I stood on one of the docks near the café and gift shop looking out over the lake. It is often such a cliché to say, ‘Miss you and wish you were here.’  On that day and at that place, Scott’s unfortunate absence was mightily felt.

It gives me chills to recount that the only time I had ever been in this area before was 20 years earlier on a road cycling vacation that traversed the Sierra Nevada region. I had spent a week riding my bicycle over these same mountains and around these very lakes oblivious to the fact that my father had drowned nearby 30 years earlier.

Throughout the weekend the music played, and everyone enjoyed.

I’d like to now turn to happier times. Let’s return to the reunion. Our lodging was split between two homes since we had a near-sellout crowd in attendance. One of our two rented homes served as our main reunion headquarters where all our congregating took place. This multi-level cabin was nestled deep within the lush green arbor salad of tall Jeffrey and Lodgepole Pine along with a bit of White Fir. Off the backside of cabin there was a large deck strong enough to support us all at once. From anywhere on the deck one could not escape the breathtaking views of the sun slicing its way through the tall trees. The visual wonders that poured through the cornea would soon be matched only by the auditory pleasures that flooded the ear canals for the duration of the weekend. The weather was picture perfect for the entire weekend. Nights were chilly making for pleasant sleeping and days were warm with clear skies.

Nina and Larry harmonizing beautifully.

On the first full day of our reunion, my cousin Nina, who is a professional karaoke artist, began to unpack her equipment on the deck. This was followed by Larry who has been playing the guitar since before I was born. He and Donna traveled nine hours each way from just outside Salt Lake City to be with us and Larry had his guitar and acoustic amp in tow. For the next two days, the auditory delight I would hear from the voices that would sing would echo throughout the valley and envelop me.

Three of Dan’s children (my nieces and nephew) Sara; Thomas; Kathryn.

Nina and Larry’s singing voice both could hold their own on any stage and commercial radio anywhere. One by one, all my cousins along with Dan’s family alike would take turns singing songs – and all possessed amazing singing voices. Two of Dan’s grandchildren, one six and one five, collaborated on a duet of “Tequila” by The Champs. They nailed it! I confess that I found the coincidence unsettling that each time I took a turn at the microphone, the vast majority of them would head indoors for a change of scenery. My singing voice, apparently, was enough to make one’s eyes tire from the ever-perfect views of nature outside that surrounded us.

At one point, Dan and I took a short drive to a general store a little further down the mountain.  As we walked from the car to the store and back, we could look up at the mountainside towards the cabin and hear the trees singing with the voices of those I had long loved but with whom I only recently became reacquainted.

Not bad at all for a makeshift bedroom for the week.

Shortly after returning home from Lake Tahoe, plans were being made for Thanksgiving to be held at Nina’s house less than twenty miles south of Sacramento, CA. Most of us who attended the Lake Tahoe reunion also attended Thanksgiving and many stayed for several days. My cousin Matthew who I met in the very beginning and introduced in Part Four joined us along with another cousin Donny and Nina’s daughter. These three were unable to join us in Lake Tahoe. I myself arrived Monday and returned home Friday to avoid the two busiest travel days connected to the Thanksgiving holiday. There was singing, of course, just as there had been at the Lake Tahoe reunion. If in the coddling arms of mother nature is the first place I’d want to be listening to the voices of angels, a music studio is the second place. Nina, our karaoke maestro and lead vocalist, houses her wares inside a detached garage converted into a no holds barred music studio. Due to yet again an overflow situation for sleeping accommodations, I along with one of my cousins slept on air mattresses in the studio. Imagine a five-year boy, with a fascination for Batman that only a five-year-old boy could have, being told that he had to sleep in the Batcave for a few nights. That was me.

A Thanksgiving week full of song and dance.
So much for which to be thankful.

The week was filled with music and song just like in Lake Tahoe. I am sad to report that the verdict was that I hadn’t improved much since Lake Tahoe. I know it has everything to do with confidence. Music and song, as well as other artistic outlets for emotional expression, is so tightly woven into the fabric of my paternal genealogy that all I received from each and every one of them was the sincerest of encouragement.

One afternoon, Dan and I took a ride to his house about three hours north on Nina’s home where I would spend one night. Along the way, we stopped to visit the man who raised him; the man he grew up referring to as Dad. Their relationship is as beautiful as any relationship between a grown man and his dad can ever hope to be. It’s the very beauty my eyes continue to see in the relationship with my dad with every passing year. Meeting Dan’s dad was a most pleasant surprise. Surrealism has no bounds.

I conclude Part Seventeen with this astonishing realization. Less than one year has passed since our Lake Tahoe reunion weekend and all people on earth are living in the throes of emotionally turbulent times as COVID-19 wreaks havoc on the world. If our learning of each other occurred just one single year later, or if the current global pandemic occurred just one year sooner, we would only have progressed as far as learning about each other and that’s it. There would quite likely be no meeting Dan and there would certainly not be any meeting of Scott. This weekend would not have occurred, nor would Thanksgiving be what it was. If nothing had happened beyond learning of one another had occurred, One’s Origins would never have been born and this life-giving journey, where I have found so much healing, would not have had this opportunity to begin.

In Part Eighteen I will begin to bring One’s Origins home where it belongs. The journey will continue on for as long as I live, and hopefully long beyond.

[1] Our aunts, uncles, and cousins are all connected to us fully by only one of our parents, unlike full siblings which must share both parents. A sharing of only one parent is a half-sibling. However, as long as my father and my cousin’s father are full siblings, then my cousins are full cousins. If my father and their father were half-siblings, then we would be half cousins. More interestingly, my cousins have a younger half-brother who all share the same father – my father’s brother. So, for me, as well as Dan and Scott, they are all full cousins to me but the youngest among them is a half-sibling to the others.

“All that is true and real is always simple and natural, and life-supporting.”
― Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Upon returning from Rwanda (Part Fifteen) I found myself forever changed, except, that is, in my employment situation. I remained void of any career rejuvenating prospects, in part, I cannot deny, due to my underwhelming level of motivation. Rwanda was truly impacting my paradigms and my prioritizations. I was conspicuously being relieved of my ever-artificial lust for outsized material wealth. Rwanda revealed to me that a life in pursuit of material wealth for its own sake alone truly held no meaning or redeeming value for me. My definition of success did not have to be as myopic or grandiose as I had come to believe it had to be.

I was rapidly approaching middle age and could only go as far as to believe that I would find peace on the same career path if I only slowed things down a little. In contrast to my ill-conceived ambitions of a few years earlier, I had to come to terms with the fact that a high-profile business executive was not the person I am deep down inside. Given the paths I was invited to walk along and all the investments I made in time, money and energy, this was sure a bitter pill to swallow. I had skills of how technology and business works (apart and together) and that was all I needed to know to make a very respectable living for myself. I had amassed a far greater understanding and respect for the world at large and all people in it. Every human is a living and breathing story, and I LOVE a good story!

What I yearned for was not prestige or outsized earnings. I yearned only for more learning. I had the moxie to do whatever I wanted and go wherever I wanted, so why the hell didn’t I just do it? Courage. I lacked faith and courage. I knew I had wings, but I did not trust them. I did not begin to trust my wings until after I met my biological family. I do not know how or why that became the missing ingredient, but it has irrefutably been every bit that. Well, maybe it does make sense the more I think about it.

I became a little more involved with Patrick’s film production company which had only been established within the prior couple of years. He and I worked out an arrangement whereby I would provide management consulting support and I could learn about the creative side of film production. Hmmm…. something new that I now find challenging and interesting.

My earnings from this? Each time I brought in new business I would receive a percentage of the revenue. Nothing more. I had never held much desire to be in sales which is a prescription for starvation as an independent consultant. My gregarious side (a must-have for sales) only comes out after I assess the environment and determine I am safe to let myself out of my shell to play. Too often in the past when I attempted to sell, by the time I could develop the courage to be more assertive, the opportunity would cool off a little. A more confident individual would have progressed anyway. We never defined my role in terms of sales but considering my comp package, I was every bit the sales guy.

Such was my life at the moment. Earning a paltry fraction of the earnings with which I had, over the years, grown comfortably accustomed. I was in the midst of parting (sadly but also peacefully) from a relationship that culminated in co-habitation and a subsequent move to Baltimore. After a less than a year after moving, I would make my way back to Pennsylvania with my belongings and a prayer that someone with cash in the bank, but no income of any real measure, could find a comfortable apartment. My prayer was answered. I found a place just shy of a thousand square feet nestled in an area about an hour west of Philadelphia that would quickly become to feel like home for me.

Over the next two and a half years, I would work an odd consulting gig here and there. That along with the few bucks I might have made with Patrick was still less than I earned during my first year after completing my engineering undergraduate degree. Patrick and I began to ideate a platform for executive video portraits that provided professionals a short video sharable on websites or social media to help market themselves in their careers. We provided structure and post-production along with coaching for being on video. We had do-overs and outtakes and all involved had fun with it. I thought were we really onto something. This was in 2012-2013; either the wrong time or the wrong place. Today, video has become ubiquitous and I have since been told that if we were located nearer to Silicon Valley rather than the east coast, the odds of it becoming something would have been more substantial.

In the Fall of 2014, I received a call from a former colleague with whom I had worked prior to the trip to Rwanda. I was pleased to hear from him. The work to which I was introduced through him then was mentally riveting and the people with whom I found myself working were intellectually invigorating. Nearly all had Ph.Ds.  I, with a degree in Chemical Engineering and an MBA, was often the least educated person in the room. And I loved it! My acquisition of new knowledge had nowhere to go but up. To this day, my work with him between 2008 and 2010 remains among my top three favorite professional commitments with which I have ever engaged throughout my entire career.

He had recently cultivated a relationship with someone holding a significant position in R&D at a large agricultural company who was eager for assistance with simulation and statistical modeling to improve decision making in plant breeding. Basically, given what was known from data and experience, how can it be algorithmically determined where and when to plant and which varietals would be selected for advancement and which would not? Enough of all that shop talk. The client had requested a dedicated manager for the growing list of projects being offered. The salary was commensurate to where I had left off the last time I was fully salaried and I was intrigued by the prospect of learning a new industry. Moreover, the client had a global presence. While I did not know this at the time, throughout the next four I would travel to several countries on three continents and meet many more amazing people.

But wait! Is this not just one more episode of a door being opened for me where I walk through without any meaningful evaluation? Fair question. I was truly pleased, and in some ways relieved, to have this opportunity present itself to me. But notably distinctive here is that this felt more like when I was invited to join the technology team at the engineering firm where my professional career was launched. I was filled with wonder and excitement about learning something new.

I accepted his offer and for the next four years I would manage client relationships and a variety of projects. In much contrast to the pretense and game playing I came to equate with the contact sport of office politics, I was around highly educated people who, by and large, were not duplicitous in any way. It was rather refreshing to work with highly educated and dedicated professionals whose office attire kept them prepared to visit the crop fields on a moment’s notice without a wardrobe change. I appreciated this noteworthy contrast in the degree of pretense I observed during the earlier elevations of my career. In its own way, the authenticity in people I observed now had far more in common with my experiences in Rwanda than when I was waist-deep in high-pressure corporate environments. There was a bonus. Up to this point, nearly all my travel for work had primarily been within the United States and Canada. This new client was headquartered outside the U.S. and had a global presence. My time here sent me to several countries on three continents where I would meet many more amazing people.

Four years into this job there was a shakeup at the one client for whom I was exclusively hired. My days were now numbered. Within the same fortnight, I would be given two months’ notice of termination, I would make plans to visit a friend in Sonoma County, and I would open a very special email. Upon reading this very special email, I would make a few phone calls and before I knew what was happening, I was on my way to California as planned. But this trip would have one additional special purpose; to meet a gentleman I had hitherto never known or knew existed with whom I share paternal ancestry.

This brings us back to Part One where this whole journey began. So now where do I go from here? Within the next few months, haven already met two half-brothers, I would be finding myself planning to meet nearly two dozen more beautiful souls who are descended from my paternal grandmother.

I am filled with so much excitement and joy to share my experience of this reunion with you. What will I learn? What will I accept? What will I deny? What will I carry forward and what will I leave behind? I am really looking forward to writing and sharing Part Seventeen. I believe it will be as fun as it is evocative.

I hope to see you in Part Seventeen.

“The path to light and redemption often appears barren and desolate.
It is when we struggle most to see the light, we need the help of complete darkness.”
― Matthew E. Gorman

In Part Fourteen, I was beginning to draw conclusions about the world in which I now lived. What I had not realized then is that as I ascended in roles and responsibilities, I was becoming more entrenched in the operating principles of every man and woman for themselves. Long gone were the days when one could safely assume colleagues had your back. Gone were the days of trust as I had come to know it. In this new world, my value as a human being it seemed to me, became more tied to the successes I had hitherto enjoyed. In hindsight, this is certainly not surprising. I developed the belief that worth equals achievement. Without the latter, the former could not exist.

One year after completing my MBA, I resigned (not without being requested to do so) from my employer of eleven years without another job waiting for me. Despite the respectful relationship that existed between my boss and me, neither of us could deny my withering zest. I had been bombarded with stories about people who left consulting employment to start their own independent consulting businesses and find themselves on stronger financial footing. The year I resigned was the same year that the recession of 2008 and 2009 was beginning to bloom. I don’t believe I could have chosen a worse time to take such a risk.

I was feeling pains of withdrawal from the intellectual stimulation I immensely enjoyed from the academic environment. I could feel my intellectual muscles begin to atrophy and I was growing melancholic. I was now pretty certain that fulfillment in life for me was not down this path. I began having conversations with other academics about returning to school for a Ph.D. I had not yet understood was that my career did not have to be where I found fulfillment. My career did not have to be my identity. Since pursuing a Ph.D. would unavoidably and significantly impact my career and earnings, the threat to my identity was too much to bear.

In the fall of October 2011, an opportunity presented itself to me that would invite to me re-examine so many ill-developed conceptions of who the person I had begun to believe I was meant to be. My friend Patrick, a film producer and owner of ProCine Sound and Picture, was retained to create a faith-based documentary on the 10^th anniversary of the Vatican approving Kibeho, Rwanda as an approved Marian Apparition site[1]. (Rwanda is predominantly Roman Catholic.) Such a production requires several pieces of equipment, most of which were rather expensive.

Yours truly capturing sound at service in Kibeho Rwanda.

He needed someone to aid with sound capture and management while he focused on image and motion capture. The fundamentals were easy enough to grasp. A brief crash course on the equipment and I was ready to go. I won’t provide a play by play of all that unfolded during our trip. However, I will share a few experiences that were rather jarring to the paradigms onto which I had recently been clinging. At the end of this blog, I provide a link to a six-minute video which is the short version of the final product.

The first evening of actual filming was for a vigil service. Our driver dropped us off at the entrance to the church grounds. Patrick and I retrieved our equipment from the vehicle, and we were immediately surrounded by a couple dozen children and teenagers. Patrick and I are both over six feet tall and white. While the group with which we traveled included two caucasian women who were also from the U.S., they each stood at about five and a half feet tall or so. Patrick and I literally stood out like sore thumbs. Factoring in our equipment, we were like a carnival attraction to the people with whom we had come to congregate.

The young people who were fascinated by our presence and armloads of equipment flanked us on all sides. They wanted to learn what on earth we were all about. A few offered to help us carry our equipment wherever we needed to go. Since we wanted to capture footage from several places and angles, we had to move around a lot. This meant our new roadies and fan club would be taking on a bit of work. It should be noted that Patrick and I did not know a single syllable of their language and likewise for them with English.

Although the threat of rain was small, clouds covered the sky. It was near dusk, so the dark of night was quickly edging closer. Once the evening turned into night, the people’s celebration would move to the indoors of the church. As we began to gather our equipment for the trek inside, which took several minutes, the supply of electricity to the parking lot light poles (which were not much more than a few weather-ready light bulbs hanging from poles) would be disrupted repeatedly leaving us in the dark. I mean pitch black dark. If you held your hand in front of your face you would not see it. Whenever this happened, I felt the grasp of the hands of those helping us. In so doing, they communicated to us that they were still with us and we need not be concerned. This struck me at once as both reassuring and transformative. I instantly became keenly aware that their primary interest was in taking care of us and not in any physical possession of ours.

Once we were through with filming on our first night, we began packing things up and we were discussing how to handle tipping the kids who helped us. I figured in my head how many Rwandan francs would be the equivalent of a few US dollars for each kid. When we gave them the money they were as excited as they were dumfounded. “Why on earth are they giving us money?” They seemed to be wondering. The others nearby who were less involved in carrying the equipment but still followed us everywhere we went, looked at those who did receive money equally perplexed. “Why did they give that to you?” It dawned on me that their willingness and downright eagerness to assist us was not motivated by any want of material compensation but merely to explore their sense of wonder. I was witnessing in my life for the first time in a long time, true beauty in humanity.

The following day was the main church service. The link to the video at the end of this blog goes a little bit more into this but I want to share the experience of observing a section of the service where gifts are carried to the altar to be sacrificed for the good of others. Commonly, this is merely ritualistic and the gifts include nothing more than what the celebrant will be using for the eucharistic portion of the service and it takes up no more than a couple minutes. That was not the case here. For what possibly lasted nearly a half-hour, if not longer, there would be a sea of people carrying to the alter items they bought from home to offer to those less fortunate than themselves. Think about this for a minute, by first-world standards, these were people who are unimaginably impoverished, and they still acted on their sense of duty to assist those whom they realized less fortunate than they themselves were. They had nearly nothing, and still felt they were fortunate enough to give away something – so they did! Contrast that with first world countries where there is an overabundance of things we need for sustenance and we still feel we never have enough.

Once the service was over, we had several days planned to travel around to learn more about the 1994 genocide that factored into the stories behind the apparitions. In the spring of 1994, between 800,000 and one million Tutsis were slaughtered, commonly by machete, by the Hutu’s. The bloodshed was so widespread and intense many rivers and waterways were tinted red during this time period. For a historical account of these events and the events that led up to the genocide, I welcome you to visit this link to a BBC article published on April 4, 2019.

The village youth enjoyed following us around.

We visited other churches as part of the documentary. One church we visited was connected to a bakery that made communion wafers. They also made bread and rolls. Outside the perimeter of the fenced-in church grounds were more neighborhood kids intrigued by what they saw from a distance as we went about our business. While touring the bakery operations, we purchased several dozen rolls for about one US dollar per dozen. We walked out beyond the fenced area of the church grounds to offer rolls to the children lingering about. Our group comprised about four or five people and dozens of children swarmed us once they realized we were offering them bread. With each one of our hands holding out the bread, other hands from all directions would grab and pull to get a piece despite our attempts to assure them we had more than enough to go around.

Things we take for granted, would often be sources of fascination and wonder for the children.

Occasionally, a roll or a piece of a roll would fall to the ground landing in the mud. The contest for that piece would follow it down and the victor would rise smiling as they ate their mud-soaked piece of bread. If that is not what real hunger looks like, I have no idea what does, and I have no desire to observe it. As I stood more than a foot above these children, I realized how much I looked up to them as well as those who helped us earlier.

The rest of the week included visits to mass graves (some rather horrific) and other memorials honoring the souls slaughtered in the Spring of 1994. Our journeys also took us to locations where we would meet people who had lost loved ones in the genocide as well as those who had served time in prison for their part in the genocide. One such encounter our host, Immaculee Ilibagiza[1] who lost nearly her entire family herself, negotiated, in front of our eyes and ears, a reconciliation attempt between a grieving young woman and a man believed to have been responsible for the death of at least one of her loved ones. In place of scathing hatred, the voice of the grieving was full of deep sorrow and pain. The pathway to forgiveness and peace was being laid before the feet of these two individuals and I had a front and center seat less than ten feet away. I could not understand a word being said, but I could feel every ounce of emotion being exchanged. I was in a country and among people, that, seventeen and a half years later, were still in the process of healing.

Our group left to right: Yvan (our driver); Immaculee (author, speaker and our host); Renee; Patrick; Chantal (genocide survivor); Margaret; yours truly

As the week came to a close, I found myself pondering many responses, some emotional and others intellectual. One thought that oddly stood out was the notion of chance. As a business-minded person who, at home, was trying to embark on an entrepreneurial pathway, I held the belief that financial success primarily comes from blood, sweat, and tears. Indeed, grit and perseverance are essential components of success, and those things rely solely on us. The most significant factor is one that no one individual can ever control or even influence. The environment into which we are born, in my case in the United States with a favorable cluster of demographic characteristics, is a random draw, pure and simple. What we do in our environment later on is up to us. The other revelation I had was that I, as a citizen of a nation whose overarching values breed abundance in material worth and depravity of gratitude, was now congregating among a people who possess little if anything of any material worth, but whose hearts overflow with gratitude. I am reminded of the saying I once read but to whom it is attributed, I cannot recall. “I feel quite sorry for many wealthy people. The only thing they have in life is money.”

Yours truly at the entrance to Hôtel des Mille Collines (cinematically known as Hotel Rwanda).

I conclude Part Fifteen with a brief tale of our lodging. We did not stay in one region throughout the week. Rather, we traveled to and lodged in several areas. The accommodations were quite basic. A bed, a sink, and a toilet. On our final night, we were back in the capital city of Kigali where this amazing experience all began a week earlier. We stayed at a hotel that is heavily frequented by foreigners; Hôtel des Mille Collines. The story of the hotel and its manager at that time, Paul Rusesabagina, was later used as the basis of the 2004 film ‘Hotel Rwanda’.

I look forward to seeing you in Part Sixteen. In the meantime, I invite you to watch this six-minute video to learn more about the experience of my week in Rwanda. https://vimeo.com/34709750

[1] Immaculee Ilibagiza is a survivor of the genocide and her astonishing story of faith, survival, and forgiveness is told in her seminal book, “Left to Tell” ©2006 Immaculee Ilibagiza

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition