Achieving achievement

When I finally graduated college in my mid thirties, my employer presented with me a book by Dr. Seuss entitled, “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” Leafing through the wisdom of “Oh the Places You’ll Go” I recognized many of the obstacles that Dr Seuss described. I’d offer that the book contained far more educational value than my entire college experience.

Although “Oh the Places You’ll Go” masquerades as children’s faire, the text is written for adults. In rhyme and reason this is the tale of the physical and emotional challenges of finding your way, while struggling to remain true to ones beliefs-especially through the rough waters of societal judgment, fear of failure, and the disapproval of ones peers. I still remember that day, the recognition and familiarity that resounded as I chased each page. My life experience has proven that 100% consistency is impossible, that our species long ago perfected eating our own, and that finding value, hope, and sustainability in our lives is often allusive.

Yet at the end of our forever last day, philosophy courses suggest that what we value in our lives is what marks the long term currency of our lives. From Spike TV to Logo to ESPN to Lifetime Network to CNN, these struggles are the storylines of our greatest passions and biggest misfires. As a society, because we don’t read much anymore, the high and low points of humanity seem destined to land on Entertainment Tonight rather than something penned by Shakespeare.

What today is considered a milestone might tomorrow be a source of great embarrassment. A current, horrific shame may one day be interpreted as the fragile seeds of enlightenment or achievement. Irony is the way of the world. Making sure one ends up on the right side of history is the stuff of Seuss and “Oh the Places You’ll Go”. And if we are really honest with ourselves, few of us have much control over which side we’re landing on. A lot of very good people endured the Hitler regime. A lot of very good people are enduring the Bush regime. Without wanting to, we often get stuck mired in circumstances beyond our control.

Yet some disasters, some catastrophes, especially the ones that have been quietly spoiling, rotting and laying in wait for the most opportune moment of release, are of our own making. I think Seuss saw this human tendency, our flair for glorious public implosion in his sing song tale. These tragic hero flaws are the stuff of some of the most celebrated classics, complete with greatest literary lessons, and still they appear with regularity across the sphere of humanity.

Which leads me to ponder, how Senator Larry Craig or Alberto Gonzales would view a copy of “Oh The Places You’ll Go”?

From “picking up toilet paper behind the toilet” in Minneapolis to picking apart the US Constitution in the Bush White House, is this the destination they imagined when they began their careers? As the ultimate illumination of history confronts the reality of who they are and what they’ve done, do they rise to the challenge or just become another familiar example of motivations over morals. Are they content with the status of their current achievement or in the quiet places of their conscience do they know regret? Has their hold on power truly silenced that still small voice coming from within that usually screams louder than all the combined voices coming from outside?

Do they themselves really believe their press releases and sworn testimonial justifications? For the Senator from Idaho, is the quest for power worth the compromises? For the former Attorney General, is the dismantling of a countries Constitution worth the adoration of a chronically, tragically, failure prone and forever castrated president? Must the truest equation of humanity always equal the result that our most fearful men are also destined to become the most powerful?

We mark personal progress by our resumes and our vitas. By design success in our society is defined as starting small and moving toward ever greater responsibility. Lateral moves, reducing influence and downsizing are not considered the measures of accomplishment. Bigger, better, faster, and more efficient is the key to our endowments and any tenuous hold we may have on a legacy.

Throughout my life I’ve struggled to balance what marks my hold on talent, capability, and expertise against the standards of relevancy and accomplishment. Serenity and achievement are not equal lovers. Success in writing, success in career, success in research, success in love and success in faith are my platforms but what elevates can also quickly depress, as any dedicated perfectionist will attest.

While I have found measures of completion in all of these, I have also known tremendous failure. When I quit the Washington State Attorney Generals Office and suspended my first run at college to drive truck, my step grandmother was horrified and proclaimed that she could never brag about me again.

I’ve always found it quite depressing that achievement is always filtered through the eye of the beholder rather than the creator. This isn’t exactly rocket science. Some live to criticize while others live to find inspiration. In affairs of the heart, Just Passing Through reigns more often than satisfaction and repose. Love, as the Pet Shop Boys report, comes quickly. It can also depart, even more quickly.

What is viewed as achievement in each community is a moving target. In the gay community, definitive achievement might be viewed through the lens of a tattooed and leathered bar tender, who reigns over those seeking relief at the bar. That muscled, handsome man pouring the Miller Lite enjoys perfect placement standing at the eye of the turnstile, announcing his approval on an ever changing social circle. Representing the definition of male perfection, the tip jar stands as the ultimate bearer of what pays.

These traits of what passes as accomplishment in our species are not isolated to the gay community. We have more than enough examples of beautiful celebrities, whose consciences are empty but whose tip jars runneth over. To occupy that sought after space is to live forever in transit. Perfection, at least as I have known it, is always temporary. Reflecting ultimate physical achievement is not a game for the undedicated.

Even going further, I know several very beautiful people who remain unsatisfied with their appearance. In a bonfire of the vanities embrace of artificial nip, tuck, pluck and plump, I’ve learned that these days to be anybody, anything and everything can be altered. We delight in tummy tucks, tush implants, chin sculptures, and botox buffets-all just so we can feel good about ourselves.

I have also known some of the most highly accomplished people who delight in finding the most salacious gossip. Salivating, they lick at the tremendously painful, open wounded details of their subject matter, all the while laughing at the ruins of other peoples lives. In hushed feigned shock, as the stories unfold, they gasp and giggle, clucking their tongues and shaking their heads as if they care. Often this is accompanied by some sort of moralizing and a sub theme that somehow most misfortune is self created.

I’m always caught off guard when I encounter this venomous exploitation of the hurt in the lives of others. It is almost as if through exploiting the latest news and by repeating the missteps of those who fail, these beautiful people can hold at bay their own dance with misfortune, disfigurement, broken hearts, or failure. But life is rarely that gracious and it seems we all have our date with humility, divorced hearts, and societal judgment. Sometimes, those dates can last a lifetime. Oh the Places You’ll Go is just as much for these hopelessly unlucky readers as it is for the gifted and the optimistic.

In the trucking community achievement stands representative of those who operate profitably, with their long hooded, trophied-up, show trucks. Sporting custom sleepers and dedicated runs, these standard bearers of a tight run ship also boast clean mvr’s, still intact marriages and enough reflecting chrome to power the sun. They ride through the night lit up like a Vegas skyline and in the dance of so much bling, other drivers can only dream of owning such a first class ride, arriving in purring style.

In the midst of all the changes I’ve encountered in my life, achievement has been subtle. The sum total of the choices I’ve made have not always been pleasant to digest. I have tasted my own blood and seen a reflection in the mirror that sometimes I didn’t want to recognize. Especially as I struggled through the remains of relationships and unfulfilled dreams, I can recall thinking it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. But crystals balls are in short supply for most of us; we struggle to make good choices with the information at our disposal and then let the cards fall where they may.

If the cards turn disaster- it’s your bad. If it comes up all aces, your luck is considered a reflection of God’s blessing. Regardless, I sometimes wonder if we really have any control over how life lands. I sometimes question if God is really all that interested in our Mc Mansions and our Hummers and our upsized breasts and that if we have these things, if it’s really any reflection of how good we are as humans? As I’ve been working on certain projects over the last few years, I am more inclined to lean toward life is bitter and it is sweet and it’s often difficult to distinguish which side of the equation you’re standing on at any given moment. Staying focused on the possibilities life affords rather than the limitations we struggle under seems to be the only the difference between the have’s and the have nots.

I can recall a conversation that I had with the former webmaster of http://www.ruralgay.com/, David Knutsen. We were talking about writer Andrew Holleran’s vision of aging and gay culture. I found the author’s views of what it meant to be a single gay man living a rural existence to be stereotypical, dark, and unrelentingly apologetic. I also saw Holleran’s vision of a life well wasted, especially when his characters were tunnel vision focused on pursuit, acquisition, and rejection of any number of sexual liaisons. I reacted strongly to Knutsen about what I saw as another Fire Island Brat Pack interpretation of what it means to be gay.

Still, I can see the author’s point-if all your identity revolves around the quest to get laid, and all your capital is invested in youth and keeping one’s corpse as pretty as possible. Then and only then, it would seem that life after 30 might not be that kind.

But having been partnered and having been single in a rural place, I don’t really buy into the obsession with place as being the center of what ails us. Another urban friend of mine, as he stumbled (and not so gracefully either) head long into a reckoning with 40, became increasingly obsessed that his life was valueless if he wasn’t young and handsome. Yet he was an amazing man! Handsome, young at heart, intelligent and gifted in construction, still contradiction ruled his life. Just hours after applying tons of moisturizer, and eating the healthiest vegetarian Thai and sushi, he’d load up on crystal meth and lose time on the streets of Seattle. The fear of aging, which he translated as the approach of irrelevancy in our community, had him doing equal times of preservation and self destruction. As the cycle increased in its viciousness, I could easily see him being the star of a Holleran work.

The reality remains that we are all under the gun. Time is short. The amount of resources we have to strike that place better known as “achievement’ is very, very limited. As the wildly successful hit TV series Six Feet Under showcased in a flurry of finality on their wrap up show, “Everything Ends”, our mortality outlives us. Oh the Places You’ll Go is the meat of that story, as best portrayed the final extended scene in “Everything Ends”. As each Six Feet Under character’s journey danced across the screen, the totality of their lives sped up into a climax of finality.

“Oh the Places You’ll Go isn’t about our achievements. These events are so limited that they can’t begin to define us. Few of us have any control whether our pursuits will count as major or minor ones. Rather, I am learning to borrow from a few very cynical advertising campaigns that I’ve recently encountered as I try to understand achieving achievement.

For the record, initially these campaigns made me want to hurl. Yet as I’ve endured several of these doublespeak wonders, I’ve realized after I quit fighting the lunacy of their approach, I began to get their message. Rather than improving the product- advertising and marketing agencies are focusing on adding “value” to the customer’s experience. Whatever the “value” that’s added never seems to get defined. And it definitely seems that the “value” isn’t new. Indeed, it was there all along. But now, thanks to the wonder of marketing, it’s finally being recognized. Value is in! It’s a good thing. It’s a commodity worthy of hype even. And how totally cool is that?

In keeping with that value added theme, last year Dolly Parton and Brad Paisley released one of the most beautiful, unknowing tributes to all the places we’ll go. “When I Get Where I am Going.” caught me by surprise. Yet I can’t help but embrace every sentiment expressed in the lyrics. It’s the ultimate PS to “Oh the Places You’ll Go”. Just in case you weren’t paying attention, especially as you read Seuss, there’s the brilliant lyrics of this lullaby to remind you of your end game. It’s a calming reassurance, a map, of the all the places we can go. Today.

Indeed, When I Get Where I am Going could be a statement of where we’ve already been. Which is usually a bigger achievement than most of us realize.



When I Get Where I am Going

By River Rutherford/George Teren

When I get where I am going
On the far side of the sky
The first thing I am gonna do
Is spread my wings and fly
I’m gonna land beside a lion
And run my fingers through his mane
Or I might find out what it’s like
To ride a drop of rain

Chorus

Yeah when I get where I am going
There be only happy tears
I will shed the sins and struggles
I have carried all these years
And I’ll leave my heart wide open
I will love and have no fear
Yeah when I get where I am going
Don’t cry for me down here
I’m gonna walk with my grand daddy
And hell match me step for step
And I’ll tell him how I’ve missed him
Every minute since he left
Then I’ll hug his neck

So much pain and so much darkness
In this world we stumble through
All these questions we can’t answer
So much work to do
But when I get where I am going
And I see my mothers face
I’ll stand forever in the light
Of His Amazing Grace
When I get where I’m going
There’ll be only happy tears
Hallelujah I will love and have no fear
When I get where I am going
Yeah when I get where I am going.