The Mirror of Personal Semantics

There are words I have started to avoid. They are words I have come to think of in an entirely different way than I did for much of my life. Maybe it’s simply my maturity, or maybe it is cultural influences. I’m not sure.

The other day I was reminded of one of these words when I was catching up on news and wasting time on Facebook. It was the day that Prop 8 was ruled against in court in California, and the posts hitting Facebook all that day were a mixture of elation and disgust, with a majority of them crossing my page in favor of the court’s ruling. In some of the celebratory postings and comments, I was beginning to see the word “tolerance” surface frequently, and I began to think of that word and the context in which it was being used. Although those using the word meant something positive, I began to wonder if it were really true to be doing so and what it meant about us when we did.

When I tolerate something, it usually means it is something I may not like or agree with, but that I am willing to live with, or ignore, or dismiss as something too trivial with which to bother myself. It means I see my position or status as preferable, and that I see the other position in a negative manner, or maybe slightly above the mark of acceptable.

I don’t think I like this word “tolerance.”

I’m not sure it applies here. In fact, I think it marginalizes someone in this case, only because they were born with a sexual preference different than mine. And different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it as a negative.

I guess that bears repeating: different is not necessarily properly placed when we see it in the negative. Not when we define someone by their sexual preference. Not when we define them by their religious views. Not when we define them by the color of their skin. Not even when we define them by their lifestyle, no matter what it may, or may not, include. Different is just that: different. Different should mean parallel in value and significance, particularly when it comes to another person. There should be no positioning beyond that.

But “tolerance,” and “acceptance” are two words—the latter only slightly less potentially offending than the former—that are among those I feel are somewhat judgmental and that I try to avoid using. I’ve come to dislike them. I see them as condescending, and I know I have a history of using them before I came to feel about them as I do now. I dislike that I used to include them in my vocabulary, and I feel better knowing that my feelings about them, something as simple as those words, helps keep me a little more humble.

The extreme of this, or at least what I see as the extreme, is when I hear someone define themselves or someone else as either “straight” or “gay.” If you think about it, we apply a great deal of positive inference in the word “straight.” We think of it as true, as correct, as morally upstanding, and the best path from point A to point B. The opposite of “straight” is “crooked. Just about everything we think of as not being straight we think of as being wrong, or possibly not the norm.

I don’t think I like this word either, this word “straight.”

I posted something on Facebook that day that stated my dislike of the word “tolerance,” and I was a little surprised by the discussion it prompted. It eventually led to a debate about the use of certain words that many use in the positive, but that might mean something much different than what we intend when we use them in reference to someone else, or our relationship with someone else. Eventually we hit on a word that I have come to dislike for a long time now, that being the word “sympathy.”

Most of us see sympathy as a positive trait in ourselves. We see it as an ability to feel for someone else who is either struggling, or disadvantaged, or suffering in some manner. When we believe we feel sympathy for someone else, we feel we are being compassionate and understanding, and that we care about that other person.

But are we, really? Could it be that when I feel sympathy for someone I am not really feeling compassion, but instead feeling something entirely different, something that might even be considered selfish. If I feel sorry for someone, am I really wishing they were in a better state, or am I only affirming my own as the one I see as preferable?

Oddly enough, this is a word I came to feel differently about when I was a younger man, before I thought myself capable of such contemplation. At the emboldened age of 19, when young men tend to think themselves both invulnerable and wiser than their years, I set aside college and went to work for a railroad contractor. It may not have been the best long term strategy, as far as career decisions go, but it proved to be a springboard into my management career, and an experience that would serve me a lifetime.

I spent the next eleven years—including all of my twenties—roaming the continent, and getting paid for it. Much of my travel was through rural areas, and the largest portion of it spent in the deep south, where I often thought of myself as far out of my element. I had a dim view of the people of the rural south, because I saw them as people trapped in a way of life that was uneducated and apathetic. I felt sorry for them. From my perspective as a suburban-raised, modern, and “enlightened” boy, I thought their lives both difficult and backwards. I wondered how they could enjoy their lives, and why they never chose to leave them or do better for themselves. I defined their lives by the four-wheelers I saw parked on their front lawns, and, by their manner of speech. At times, I mocked them.

And then, I met O.D., a man assigned by the railroad to work with me for an entire week. O.D. was a big man, the epitome of a rough and tumble railroader who had worked the rails all of his life. He was adept at every nuance of the communication and cooperation necessary to expedite my work, and he was respected widely by peers and supervisors. He had an affable air about him and an infectious laugh, which was easily stirred even though he seemed a serious man as he went about his tasks. I grew to like O.D the first day we worked together, because he was candid, not self-conscious, and a little rough around the edges. He made me comfortable. We began to click, and the work flew past us.

On the third day of working together O.D. had me pull off the rails in a small town just north of the next major rail yard, deep in the heart of Arkansas. It would be a stretch to try and make it all the way in before the dark and other rail traffic caught up to us. I raised my gear and pulled on to the road at the crossing, and looked at O.D. from across the cab to ask him which way I should head to find a motel.

“We’re not staying in a motel tonight,” he said. “That right there’s my house.”

The house that O.D. was pointing at was a somewhat-kept, brick ranch not more than 50 yards from the tracks, with a beat up and muddied Chevy 4-wheel drive parked in a driveway hard to pick out in the sparse lawn. It was one of only about a dozen homes that were clustered in between an expanse of rice fields and the railroad. On the front lawn was also parked—you guessed it—two equally muddied four-wheelers. I felt immediate dread, and desperately reached for excuses to not stay with him and his family, all of which failed. O.D. was having nothing of me driving to a motel, and if I could even manage to convince him I should, he was not about to let me do so on an empty stomach.

O.D.’s wife met us in the drive. She was a pretty, petite woman, who seemed dwarfed by O.D.’s heft as he enveloped her in a bear hug that lifted her off her feet. She laughed as he did. She seemed a little embarrassed by his affectionate exhibition in front of a stranger.

“This must be Co-o-ody,” she said, in a syrup-thick drawl, and she extended a hand to me to shake. Her smile was warm. “Supper’s ready, come on in.”

What followed dinner that evening, and for the next three days I was rained out of working, was an education about people who live differently than I do, and an education about myself. Because of the kindness of O.D. and his family, I came to understand that my sympathy for people in their lifestyles was misplaced, and I felt humbled to understand I had ever thought less of them. These people loved life, and loved their lifestyle, no less than I did. In fact, I felt ashamed of how they could be so kind to me, when I had previously thought so little of them without really knowing them. I came to care deeply for them, and I stopped in and stayed with them every time I was in the area over the years. Without fail, they always welcomed me, and they treated me as family.

Because of O.D. and his family, I came to dislike the word, this word “sympathy.”

And I came to distrust and examine other things and people I had long held thoughts and opinions about, including words I often used to define or describe them. Over the following years, and through my life’s experiences, I would hold these words and my beliefs up in the mirror and ask myself if they pass the test that earns them the meanings I assign them, and what might I learn about myself in my examination of them? Do I carry nuances of bigotry, or judgment, in what I say, even when I mean the best with what I say? And if I do, how do I go about eliminating those shadowy errors, and say what I really intend? How do I act and reflect the best of someone else, without posturing, or without minimizing or marginalizing someone else?

I haven’t entirely figured that out yet, because I know that not only my vocabulary is loaded with things like that, but that my actions and deeds are as well. Actions and deeds are habits more deeply entrenched and rooted in our psyches than any words. I, like many people my age, have lived through ages that have seen rapid cultural changes on many fronts, and in our struggle to accept and live with those changes, we’ve had to go through the process of unlearning what we’ve often been taught and had reinforced. Our families may have engrained things in us that we later decide are wrong, or learn are wrong through changes in our lives, and changes in ourselves. Sometimes we even have to do so reluctantly, because we have to reconcile what we’ve known with the cultural changes going on around us. Sometimes we have to adapt, or we suffer for it in some way, or unwittingly lessen our quality of life by remaining steadfast in our outdated and erroneous beliefs.

Either that…or we tolerate it.

© 2012 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

Little Victories

I was speaking with a friend whose life is going through a bit of an upheaval. They’ve begun the long and tedious task of putting their life under a microscope, identifying the pieces that they’ve only viewed as a whole thus far, and determining what should be kept and what should be dissected out.

At the end of our conversation, my friend said something that struck a chord with me: “I know it’s a cliché,” they said, “but we all really do have to find ourselves.”

“Indeed we do,” I thought to myself.

I’ve long been fascinated by the intricate webs we weave when it comes to how we see ourselves, how we portray ourselves, and how others actually perceive us. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to write about, but I've been unable to explain or piece together on a level I hope to understand or define. It seems as difficult a question as the meaning of a life itself. Honestly, I find that frustrating.

But, for whatever I can’t understand about my identity, or its components, this much I do know: that my best life, my truest life, can only be reached through a transparency that unifies all of those three things—my perception, my reflection, and others’ perceptions of me. A difference between the three, to me, signifies a break in an important chain of integrity that I value.

These ideas about identity and one’s true self were not always important to me. Like many, I believe I spent a great deal of my life content with the distractions we accumulate and surround ourselves with in the mistaken pursuit of adding value to our lives. In fact, I think my life became something where I let those distractions define me, until I reached a point at which I experienced a dramatic change, something similar to that through which my friend is going.

During that transitional phase, I struggled to hold on to, cling to, the things that had become important to my life. For me, it seemed like a fight to keep what I thought I had earned, what I had become comfortable with, and what I thought I was, to myself and others. I fought to keep my life the “same” as possible, and I met each wave or stage of change that came at me with a countering denial of equal strength.

It took some time to realize that my denials were doing nothing more than draining my strength, prolonging my difficulties, and postponing the inevitable. I finally recognized what I was doing, came to understand why I was doing it, and then made the conscious choice to stop.

I remember that time, not as the moment at which I lost, but instead as the point at which I began letting go of the trappings I’d surrounded myself with in order to insulate myself from the external world. And, as those things began to fall away, I felt more and more released. I felt more and more freedom.

Stripped bare of those things material and emotional that had long been too important to me, I found it easier to fill my life with the simpler and less complicated things that would give me equal, and sometimes even greater, pleasure. I rededicated myself to being an even more involved father. I began writing again. I reached out to friends, and I put more effort into the quality of the relationships around me.

Yet even those things couldn’t keep all of the questions crowded out of my new life. They were only replaced with a new set of questions. Instead of asking myself why this was happening to me, I was instead left with the time and ability to ask myself about who I was, who I had become, what I had done with my life and what imprint I had made, and what I thought was the meaning of my life.

I think we all face these questions sometime in our lives, be it because of a forced course change, our age, or simply a moment of curiosity prompted by the monotony of our routine existence. We want to understand these things, I believe, in order to either validate our lives or our choices, or assign some purpose to our existence.

They can be painful questions sometimes, and they can be further complicated, or more difficult to explore, when they come at a point where you may be traveling the path solo. There is a tendency to let doubt creep in when you are in that situation, and let it add another “why” to the list.

The answers are often elusive, or are at least so for me. At times they seem as difficult as my efforts to solve the perplexities of identity, and I have to admit that I enjoy continually pondering them anyway.

And, when I can’t answer those things, or I tire of contemplating them, or I grow frustrated with some other aspect of my life, I often find myself falling back on the “little victories" of life. The gleeful abandon of my daughters’ laughs. Watching them take shape as persons. The satisfaction of seeing and bringing together a few friends for fun. Giving someone a laugh. The feeling of being healthy. The knowledge of having given something my best. Being able to compose something that expresses well. The warm embrace of a close friend. Giving back through some service to others. Listening to, or offering some small advice that helps a friend.

I don’t know if those things define me, or if, by discovering and acknowledging them I have found myself, but those are the things I carry around with me now, and that carry me.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

"All That We See or Seem..."

I was digging around in some old boxes the other day, in search of something I just knew I had stashed and kept somewhere for safekeeping because I knew I would surely want to have it as a memento later. I was not having any luck finding this particular item, but I was finding all sorts of other memorabilia that I had long forgotten I'd kept. After a few minutes I gave up on what I thought would be a few minutes of searching, and let it turn into a much longer trip through memories.

Among the things I found which were most interesting was a list of the “100 Things I Want to Do In My Lifetime.” I can’t remember at what age I originally wrote this; it may have even been prompted by a speech I once heard by Lou Holtz, the then-venerated coach of Notre Dame football. But I had not heard that speech until I was in my thirties, and I am pretty sure I remember dreaming up this list in my early twenties sometime.

The list ran the gamut; it hit on everything from visiting that rare travel spot (“Tour an Aztec or Incan ruin,” or “See the pyramids”) to civic or charitable tasks (“Help with A Habitat house,” and “Fulfill a Dear Santa letter”), and even the less ambitious (“Handcraft a piece of furniture,” or “Have a recipe published”). There were the obvious ones that I have had all of my life, like getting a novel published, or doing a photographic safari in Africa, and some that I will now never get to do in my lifetime because they can no longer happen. Not unless Pink Floyd comes back together, or Dean Smith returns to coaching the Tarheels again.

Most of the list is very ambitious, although I did not think so at the time, I'm sure. I am betting that I believed it would all happen one day, with little doubt. I believed I just had to keep pushing toward the opportunities, keep hoping, keep my eyes open, and keep that hunger for seeing and learning new things. I think I've always had a hunger for learning (although my high school teachers, or Principle Klaasen may not have thought so), as well as a thirst for a certain level of adventure.

At one point in my life I let that hunger and thirst get dulled, blaming it on the responsibilities of being a father and a husband, and of providing a living for my family. I took it even further—too far—because it became more of an excuse for not living life to its fullest, and became an excuse for not even living life well. I let it make my life…well, a little mundane.

But I must have had that urge still living in me somewhere, because it tried to manifest itself in other pursuits. Instead of feeling the need to “Dive the Andrea Doria,” or “Drink a beer in Munich,” I set my sights on clawing my way up that next rung on the corporate ladder, buying a bigger and (supposedly) nicer house, or a bigger SUV. I became very good at all that.

Funny, but the one thing that was not on that list was finishing my degree in college, even though it would later become one of the most significant (for myself) accomplishments in my life. It was unfinished business, so I can’t imagine why I would have left it off the list, unless I wrote that list during my somewhat angry “I don’t need a sheepskin to be successful” days. That would date that list to somewhere in my early twenties, when I had run out of money for school, was rising fast in the ranks of the railroad contracting company I worked for, and traveling quite a bit. To know when I wrote it, it also helps to see the nature of what is on the list; there is nothing there that a father could reasonably run off and do with a family in tow.

The completion of my degree would later happen at a crucial time for me. I was forty, and my marriage was in trouble. In fairness, it was likely in trouble—at least in part—for one of the very reasons I was working so hard, to be a good provider. I was a certified workaholic. I thought that hard work would get you everything you needed, or all the rewards you hoped you would one day earn. I was always chasing that proverbial carrot that dangled just out of my grasp, sure that my equally proverbial ship would come in if I could just reach out and grab it. Every day was just one more lunge. But the time and effort I invested in that took away from what I should have been giving more energy and attention toward, and so that ship hit tough waters, and eventually rocks.

In the midst of all that, I began looking around for other ways to satisfy my need for learning and new experiences, and finishing my college degree was just the thing. I had a campus less than five minutes from my office, they offered a number of the classes I needed online, and I was alone in the town since Michelle and the girls had already moved back to Des Moines ahead of me. I thought it was a productive idea that would fill my time, my mind, my curiosity, and keep me out of trouble. And, that it did.

I was soon drifting further and further away from career ambition and enjoying more and more of the other things in life. A different perspective of Corporate America began to take shape in my mind, and I began to see myself as having been a little bit foolish in my addiction to work. I approached my role as a father differently and relished it more. I tried to be a different and better husband, thinking that I could still save our marriage.  It was a little too late for that.

Eyes opened, I moved on, with the desire for learning and experience now returning to replace the need to achieve career success and material possessions. I no longer needed those things, and instead wanted a life enriched in a different way. I wanted my dreams back.

Sometimes I worry if I am too much the relentless dreamer, and that I am sometimes fooling myself with what I think I can achieve, or am addicted to whatever it is that I do not have in my life and feel the need to pursue. It reminds me, when I think about it, of a gambler who is sure that their one big jackpot is surely going to happen for them, if they can just keep playing, just keep in the game. It’s probably a good thing I don’t gamble.

But still, I believe in myself, and I believe in the different types of pursuits that I have in my life now. I believe they are better than I’ve had during the “middle” of my adult life, and more in line with my true self. They may still be only dreams at this point, but I think we all have to harbor some sort of hopes for ourselves that are outside the scope of our everyday lives. Without them, a little of our spark dies, and we let more and more of our spirit and core erode, or just fade away. Can you imagine a life without any dreams, or something similar to a dream?  Something to which we look forward? I can’t. I could only imagine it to be like a slow death.

So I keep alive the thought that I am supposed to—no, destined to—do something more with my life. I’m not sure I could kill it even if I wanted to, anyway. It has always been a part of my life, further back than I can remember making that list of 100 things those many years ago.

When I was looking back over this list, I noticed that—for all the dreaming and wishing I did back then—I had a pretty fair amount of them I could now cross off the list. I know that they were things that were (then, when I made that list) far removed from my life and its possibilities. But, I have forty-two of them completed at this point, which puts me just about on track, given that I am only about to the halfway point of my lifetime right now.

I guess it pays to dream.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

When Opposites Attract

A few weeks ago, I went home to Kansas City for a week, to spend time with family, with Bill and Mary, and with a couple of hundred other friends who were all converging there for a weekend-long reunion. It was a week filled with a great deal of fun, some meaningful conversations, and an invaluable sense of belonging. But, by the time the end of the week had arrived, I was ready for it to be over. I was tired, and I longed to return to my normal routines, believe it or not.

That I was a little fatigued by the time of the final picnic on Sunday is probably not surprising itself; I had invested substantially in my role in making it all happen, and was personally engaged on an emotional level that made it kind of a week-long high for me. But, after returning home and trying to put it all in perspective, I was unable to write about the experience, largely because I was not moved by it as much as I was the much smaller reunion preceding it.

Don’t get me wrong; everything about it was great. It just lacked the intimacy of the smaller group, and it did not have quite the emotional impact on me as the time when I first came home, 30 years after graduating. This last event was more an opportunity to see and reconnect with more old friends who were also coming to Kansas City, so—as emotionally valuable as it was—it was not quite the same. For me, the homecoming I had needed had already happened.

The last couple of years have been a time of reconnection for me with myself, with friends, with skills and dreams, even family. It has been a healing process, and it was long overdue. I had turned my back on people who truly cared for me for far too long. Whatever the reasons were, they seem silly now, no matter how valid they seemed all those years I was away and staying away.

Now, I find myself driving the highway from Des Moines to Kansas City at every opportunity I can find, because I live in a town where I have few friends and even fewer opportunities to see them. I can’t point to any one reason why that is, but I know a few of the factors: a career in management doesn’t necessarily help (We can’t fraternize with the help now, can we?), a somewhat nomadic life of moving town to town and neighborhood to neighborhood contributed, a focus on the needs of the family, and I spent too many years as a workaholic. Things just evolved that way.

So, when the family changed, I was left with a bit of a void to fill, and it was not the easiest thing to do. But, I made due, just the same, and never really paid much attention to what might have awaited me at the end of my efforts to drive the one hundred and eighty-six miles south, to where I spent the majority of my life. What matters most now, is that one day I did, and I enjoyed it immensely—so much so that I kept coming back for more.

When I think about what that reconnection has meant to me, I understand it to be my own, a product of my life and my circumstances. It may not mean as much to others, whether they were a part of that small, close-knit group that gathered last fall, or the larger mass of us that jammed into Minsky’s pizza or the Embassy Suites ballroom this last summer. But, I think everyone came for a reason of their own, be it on an intensely personal level or just out of some sort of passing interest and curiosity.

I wonder if we all needed it on some unspoken, basic level because of the times we live in now. I’m not sure I have ever witnessed more divisive times. Our politics seem extremely polarized, our ideals pushed toward the far ends of the spectrum, and our social and economic circumstances spread further and further apart. I can’t remember a more acrid time in our culture than it has been over the last decade, and I can’t identify any other time in my life when there seemed to be a more defined difference between the “have’s” and have nots.”

So maybe a little trip to KC to see old friends was a bit more than reminiscing and nostalgia for all of us, at least on our personal level. Maybe we all wanted to feel some of the unity that we remember from those times as well, when our differences were of another, seemingly less significant nature. Maybe we wanted to remember and relive a time in our lives when we were more defined—to each other—by what we all shared together, rather than how everyone around us is so different from us, or has differing priorities. Maybe we wanted to spend a few days with people with whom we had no desire to argue, or could at least set aside any arguments easily, for the sake of just enjoying time with each other.

For one weekend (or more, for some of us), our differences were minimal and even forgotten about at times. We saw each other in some of the same light we used to back in the day, when we all ran the gauntlet of one of the most troublesome, puzzling, worrisome, and emotional periods of our lives together—with a little more added. We framed each other from our memories we had of each other then, but with the added nuances of what we had recently learned about each other over the last few months. But through it all, we were connected by what we shared, more than we were separated by what we didn’t share.

And there was more to it than that, actually. While we were all together, we didn’t just lose our differences; we also lost, or forgot about for a while, the mundane responsibilities, the stressful pressures, and the sometimes hectic pace of our everyday lives back home. We were, in effect, on vacation from our real lives, the “pause” button pushed and all the noise of what we deal with daily silenced for a few short days. I don’t think it was anyone’s unhealthy denial; I think it was just a welcome respite.

I wonder how many of us, once it was all over and we returned home, suffered from some sort of a vacation hangover. I wonder how many of us had a hard time going back to the first day of work, or the laundry and the bills and the necessary upkeep of our daily lives. And I wonder about how many times, as we dragged ourselves back into our routines, we caught ourselves going back and reliving a memory or two from the previous week.

I know I did. I still thought about it for several days during the week after, when I returned to work and my life in Des Moines. Because, no matter how tired I was at the end of that week together, or how different it was from the time fewer of us got together the year before, it was still the best days of my summer. It was still time well spent seeing people whom I wondered about from time to time, people I was glad to see were still around to be there, no matter our differences.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.