The compass
One of the big concepts that came into my life when I was working with Mindy was the moral compass.
I came into her office one day needing to talk about feeling unaccomplished among my peers. Some people I knew were famous, I said, and others were happy. Some had created homes and families* while others had made books. I admitted that it pained me to have done neither.
More specifically, though, I talked about the embarrassment I felt around a particular friend. He was accomplished in the way that I believed mattered most. His life was consistently oriented toward his passion for environmental justice. Whereas many people talked about justice while continuing (like me) to mostly drift and party, he actually did things, I said. The list of his projects was long and varied, but the trajectory did not waver.
I admired him. In his company I felt inspired to become more focused and deliberate and productive. Equally, I felt ashamed that I wasn't those things already.
"It sounds like he's living in sync with his moral compass," said Mindy.
"Yes, and I want that for myself," I said. "The trouble is, I think my compass is broken. The needle constantly flitters all over the dial."
And so a new awareness was born: the moral compass.
For a while I feared that I was doomed to live with my broken compass, my natural milieu being those who also wandered. And then I began to notice something barely noticeable, something so pervasive I could hardly see its effects anymore.
Today I would call it interference.
At first, I simply began to wonder if it was true - could be true - that my compass had no bearing. And then I suspected that it wasn't. My compass has a bearing, I thought, but I'm afraid of where it's pointing me. So afraid that I can't even see it clearly.
My first glimpse of this uneasy possibility had come in a dream, six months before the fire that destroyed my house in 2002. Here is what I wrote then:
I was moving through the streets of the Mission on my way to somewhere else, a party or gathering of some sort. On the way I encountered fire shooting up from a crack in the sidewalk, the sparks flying into my face, burning my forehead and threatening my eyes. I saw the police hauling a corpse out of a bus shelter, the face was purple and bloated, covered in blisters; a woman stood nearby crying and reaching out to everyone who passed, for solace. I held her hand lightly for a minute as I waited for the light to change, that tenuous feeling of contact with a stranger on the street, offering a moment of comfort and afraid for my own safety at the same time. She gripped my hand and I pulled away, not looking back when she shouted and cursed. I heard gunshots and saw boys running. Later there was a motley parade down 16th Street, a stranger I knew bringing up the rear, doing a jig with a flute to his lips. I thought it was lovely and chaotic, and that I needed to get to where I was going.
In my dream the other night I realized that I was not part of the parade.
*Of various sorts
I came into her office one day needing to talk about feeling unaccomplished among my peers. Some people I knew were famous, I said, and others were happy. Some had created homes and families* while others had made books. I admitted that it pained me to have done neither.
More specifically, though, I talked about the embarrassment I felt around a particular friend. He was accomplished in the way that I believed mattered most. His life was consistently oriented toward his passion for environmental justice. Whereas many people talked about justice while continuing (like me) to mostly drift and party, he actually did things, I said. The list of his projects was long and varied, but the trajectory did not waver.
I admired him. In his company I felt inspired to become more focused and deliberate and productive. Equally, I felt ashamed that I wasn't those things already.
"It sounds like he's living in sync with his moral compass," said Mindy.
"Yes, and I want that for myself," I said. "The trouble is, I think my compass is broken. The needle constantly flitters all over the dial."
And so a new awareness was born: the moral compass.
For a while I feared that I was doomed to live with my broken compass, my natural milieu being those who also wandered. And then I began to notice something barely noticeable, something so pervasive I could hardly see its effects anymore.
Today I would call it interference.
At first, I simply began to wonder if it was true - could be true - that my compass had no bearing. And then I suspected that it wasn't. My compass has a bearing, I thought, but I'm afraid of where it's pointing me. So afraid that I can't even see it clearly.
My first glimpse of this uneasy possibility had come in a dream, six months before the fire that destroyed my house in 2002. Here is what I wrote then:
I was moving through the streets of the Mission on my way to somewhere else, a party or gathering of some sort. On the way I encountered fire shooting up from a crack in the sidewalk, the sparks flying into my face, burning my forehead and threatening my eyes. I saw the police hauling a corpse out of a bus shelter, the face was purple and bloated, covered in blisters; a woman stood nearby crying and reaching out to everyone who passed, for solace. I held her hand lightly for a minute as I waited for the light to change, that tenuous feeling of contact with a stranger on the street, offering a moment of comfort and afraid for my own safety at the same time. She gripped my hand and I pulled away, not looking back when she shouted and cursed. I heard gunshots and saw boys running. Later there was a motley parade down 16th Street, a stranger I knew bringing up the rear, doing a jig with a flute to his lips. I thought it was lovely and chaotic, and that I needed to get to where I was going.
In my dream the other night I realized that I was not part of the parade.
*Of various sorts