I started volunteering this month. Last night was my first time to teach a class, and it was an ESL course for adults that are aspiring to speak English better, or at all.
I had a short discussion with a man taking the class, Sebastian. He’s probably in his late 40s, very soft-spoken, and warm. He is taking the course, he told me, because he cannot get a promotion at work. He lacks conversational English that will allow him better opportunities to provide for his family. So he is taking the steps to learn, to fill his shortcomings, if you can even fairly call it that.
I spent years of my life wanting to get involved, to make a difference in the lives of people who are struggling, like myself, to get ahead. I never took the opportunity; call it laziness, or perhaps the fact that I was willing to volunteer, to help people, was enough to make me feel good about myself. Like an armchair activist, you know?
The point is that now I am actually doing something with my life. I’ve started writing to you, which I had always intended it the past. I am volunteering. I am working (maybe temporarily, but that’s another story) to build a really solid career so I can provide for you. I’m reading again, which I let slip away too, for a time. So I am going through a bit of a renaissance. I’m thinking about getting my Masters Degree, or maybe even attending Law School.
Every so often we have to reevaluate our lives. Some people do this around the New Year, some people buy convertibles and start banging young chicks. I typically find myself in situations that I have the opportunity to sit and think; like the world slows down just enough for me to realize that I’ve fucked everything up and I have to start fixing it.
The first time was when I got a divorce when I was young–too young to get married. It’s a long story to be addressed sometime later, but there was a moment when life stopped and I realized I was on the wrong track. I had fucked everything up, so I needed to change something: sink or swim.
Again, recently, a similar situation occurred. (again to be addressed later) I realized that I had grown complacent. I had lost the person that I worked so hard to become in college. I was full of life and energy and optimism, most days. There was also days when I was quite disappointed in myself then, too. But as we grow older, we get to see ourselves outside our own skin, and if we do it right, we can pick the best aspects and leave the rest where they belong, far behind us.
So I’ve picked out some of the bad, replaced it with some good, and I’m trying to recapture a little of the spark I had when I was younger, before the world started growing heavy. I’ve made some progress, but only enough to keep me from sinking lower, so I feel stagnant. As time passes, you just wait, little guy, you’re going to see your daddo at his best.
So don’t be afraid, one day, if you see that your life has hit a wall. You may feel like you’re sinking, or maybe keeping your head above water. It’s these moments that we get to define ourselves and become the men we want to be. We create our own destiny or fate or potential or opportunities.
And I’m here to help you with that, always.
I salute at the threshold of the North Sea of my mind
And I nod to the boredom that drove me here to face the tide
And I swim, I swim, oh swim
Dip a toe in the ocean, oh how it hardens and it numbs
The rest of me is a version of man built to collapse in crumbs
And if I hadn’t come now to the coast to disappear
I may have died in a landslide of rocks and hopes and fears
So I swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Swim until you can’t see land
Are you a man? Are you a bag of sand?