Life Beyond Measure (21 page)

Some of the men of courage I have mentioned were grandsons or great-grandsons or great-great-grandsons of some of those same people, but they had an education. Robeson, Bunche, Marshall, and Robinson had magnificent educations; Nelson Mandela was educated as a lawyer. But even though my father was not learned in a formal sense, there was nevertheless a connectedness between him and all sons and grandsons and great-great-grandsons of all the slaves who ever lived and died in the Caribbean area. There is a sense of self, of character, and of personal self-worth and kindness and hopefulness and embrace that is characteristic of such people, educated and noneducated alike.

My father was not ashamed that he did not have much of an education. He had a point of view in life, and I think that is where his character was. I see in my mind’s eye a gentle, firm, meaningful, courageous person. He would discipline his children with a sense of fairness. He expected of them a certain kind of response, and when
that response was not forthcoming, he whipped some bottoms and punished his kids for particular kinds of misbehavior.

Among elders of the village, he had their respect, and they had his. I can remember that. Even now I can hear him talking with his compatriots, I can see him spending an evening with his peers, sitting around on a moonlit night, drinking and sharing thoughts on what they perceived to have been the endless complexities of life. He was quite a person; he was my frame of reference. He was the male I knew who took good care of me, spent time with me, and talked with all of his children. I remember his speaking in terms of what a person needs to do, how a woman should behave, how a man should behave, how respect should be observed—all such things that spoke to the elements of character.

Looking back, retrospectively, the man I now see my father to have been was of such texture that I would put him against any man in the outside world. What I judge him on today would be his character, his heart, his courage, sense of fairness, compassion, humanity, on his sense of himself. I think he saw himself as a good man, and he charged himself with the responsibility to remain a good man, despite the difficult life he lived. I could see him contemplating a question, looking for the right answer, searching for the proper response, examining whether it was honest or fair or reasonable or worthy of him, or of the person he was trying to help, or of the person who was seeking to help him; all of that is both in one’s body language and in one’s internal attitude. You can tell; that’s how I learned: watching how differences were settled. And I never witnessed a fight between two adults that involved my father—except for the time when my uncle attacked him.

More than anything, the true sense of him came to me from how he was with my mom. I never, ever heard an unkind word pass
between them, not one. I would watch her listen to him, and he would listen to her. They would talk about their family, their neighbors, the seasons, when the rains were going to come, the hurricane seasons and being prepared for them. And while they didn’t know about the world materially, they knew about the universe. And they knew enough about the universe to know that they were a part of it, that there were forces and energies and connectedness between human beings and the stars and the oceans.

D
earest Ayele,

My mind reels at the passage of the days. Yesterday, or so it seems, I met you for the first time, on your second day of life. Then just a week ago you turned two years old. You are now entering your third year of history, to be written later by you, perhaps in correspondence like ours, that you write to your great-grandchildren.

As I approach my eighty-first birthday, I intend to conclude this last handful of letters by returning to those large universal questions of existence that I posed early on—together with such answers as I can provide, along with thoughts and suggestions of further mysteries to be unraveled by you and your compatriots in the years ahead of you.

There is no rite of passage to my knowledge for the passing of that torch, but it is well established that the search for answers to the fundamental questions of life falls to every generation. It will to yours, Ayele, as it has to your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents, among whom I proudly count myself. How and when that search takes form is subject to many factors, especially the subtle and unpredictable influence of time, as I know all too well in the rapid acceleration of years left to me on my watch.

Therefore, Ayele, as time continues to fly, I will try, through these last letters, to pass on final insights that have worked their way through the grapevine that includes at least the six generations of our family that, we know for sure, have walked the earth in the past two hundred years—all of whom, each in their own individual and generational manner, have already undertaken or will undertake the search.

Let me state for the record that in my compulsions to be a better person, to search for truths, to be in constant deliberation—like unraveling the knottiest balls of yarn—it has not necessarily been a pleasant experience.

Indeed, Ayele, there is so much turmoil inside me. Big questions, little questions—you name it.

There’s turmoil when I am alone, there is turmoil when I am at work, there is turmoil when I am trying my best, in a supposedly relaxed circumstance, to feel at ease.

I don’t know why this turmoil accumulates inside me. Where is it coming from? Is it coming into me from the outside? Is it triggered by the way I live, by my reaction to things around me? Is it long-buried guilt, struggling to surface out of my subconscious? Is it shame, trying to claw its way through a wall of denial? Is it the suppression of long-overdue apologies owed to self and to others for
wrongful deeds, conveniently forgotten but still festering in some dark corner of my subconscious self?

I know that I am not alone in this dilemma. Many of us are preoccupied with countless necessities, overlaid by hopes and dreams, by obligations we do not necessarily want to service. There are the times when we are unhappy, dissatisfied with ourselves, or when our ego is kicking us because it is not getting its perceived due.

Seeking to satisfy someone else often causes problems. We wonder,
What am I being asked to do? Am I obliged to do this thing? But then I can’t say no to friends, so I’ve got to work this thing out, when really I don’t want to do it. But I am tortured by a certain obligation to my friends, when I should be in a position to say, “I don’t want to do it and I ain’t gonna do it.”

When I watch a television news program by myself, I often become aware that I am being maneuvered. The television has no interest in my well-being. The interest is in keeping me there because they have something to sell me. They don’t say, “Well, you come back any time you want, and we’ll be here and can talk if you like.”

No, they say, “Don’t go away.” And in order to say, “Don’t go away” in the most profound way, the ploy is often: “So-and-so shot somebody, and you’ll want to know about that. Don’t go away.” So you sit there, waiting to see who shot who. That kind of manipulation affects you, because you can’t just sit there and watch without it having some effect on you.

We also have a set of reflexes to certain activities in life. When I am at a dinner table with friends or family, there comes a time, whatever the conversation is wrapped around, when certain portions of the body respond to what I’m thinking, or the direction in which the conversation is going. So if the conversation is beginning, unintentionally, to dance around something that I am involved with, or that I
find highly embarrassing or painful or simply don’t want to deal with, certain parts of the body get the message even in the smallest degree, and the shoulders begin to go up a little bit. If somebody asks me a question that I don’t want to answer, or if I don’t know the answer and I don’t want to embarrass myself, the shoulders go up, and sometimes the stomach muscles tighten a little bit. It is then fight or flight.

My experiences as a public speaker have tested this reaction many times, but have also taught me to be prepared with talking points as much as possible, in order to avoid the turmoil that arrives uninvited at the least opportune time or on the most banal occasions.

But even with preparation, it’s a conundrum when it does happen, which is most of the time. And much of the time, in that absence of ease, when I’m in the throes of it—like being thrashed in the undertow in Acapulco—I don’t know how to eliminate it, how to detach myself from it, how to rid myself of it.

Of course, this turmoil that taunts me now has been in me since I was a kid. I have lived with it for some time, as if this was a natural state, in that I have long been drawn to circumstances in my life that create tumult—although it can be a more difficult process to handle at this age, simply because it can wear a person out!

Maybe I put up with turmoil better when I was younger—because I was stronger, more on the go, able to use it and put it to some kind of use. As an actor, for example, or in facing challenges to my survival. Besides, nothing got in my way; I had my focus, I knew where I wanted to go in life, and I was prepared to endure whatever hardships arose, including the turmoil in my intestines.

That said, as I have gotten older, I’ve been increasingly aware that I am more desirous of less turmoil. So I began to think,
How can I get rid of this turmoil in myself?
It manifests itself internally—first the unease, then the preoccupation with trying to figure it out, adjust, organize,
as the head constantly deals with issues and their opposites—until I accept that it’s my nature, I suppose. Now, if I am going to accept that as my nature, I have to have some control over it. And the control I want to have over it is to be able to keep it at a distance when I feel a need to rest myself or to find my focus when more important issues are close at hand.

How do others gain control? Some choose to relinquish it and to rely on their religion and place everything in the hands of that power. Not the priest, not the rabbi, not the preacher in the pulpit, but in the image or the concept of God or Muhammad or Buddha. And that gives them peace. For some it is simply a matter of going to church, and they come away full of the spirit. Things are wonderful, they feel good, and life is great.

But I think many people wrestle with the stress, unclear of a solution. They are troubled; they don’t manage their difficulties well. They’re not easygoing people; they’re uptight, short of patience, easily agitated. In the worst cases, they turn to drugs—prescription or otherwise—or they resort to violence. They have never found that area within themselves where they can be peaceful with who they are, what they are, and where they are.

In my own case, as I began to think about it—as I do about everything—the appearance was that the turmoil inside me is so all-encompassing that its presence implies that I have no counterweight, no compensating balance. And without those, there can be no controlling of the intensity, longevity, or impact of the chaos making me uneasy.

It came to me that I need to be able to create counterweight, counterbalance. How do I do that? By drinking? Should I ingest other kinds of drugs, medicines, or whatever else might calm me internally?

No. As I’ve stated, I know people who have tried that, with disastrous results.
Instead,
I said,
maybe I can create a counterweight inside myself,
and the thought of that was intriguing—just the thought of it. Now, what would that be? How do I go about that?

And, son of a gun,
bingo!
I was struck by the thought of a place I gave a name to before I even began to try to structure it: a neutral zone, a place inside myself where my consciousness, my instincts, and my imagination can be at ease, shut themselves down: where they can rest.

My neutral zone would be a place where I can simply enter at will and be free of all other considerations for as long as I need to be in order to create, or have a sense of self-control and engage my capacity to think, examine, and explore. All of those things could be possible if my internal self were not constantly dealing with the turmoil as if I were unable to control the inflow of all the world’s problems coming at me.

What I would like is to create a neutral zone in which I am totally aware of everything that’s going on around me, yet am able to control my inner flow. I would be able to sit, figuratively, in this neutral zone and just breathe, and be aware that I am breathing, and not think of anything other than what I choose to think about; think as deeply as I wish about whatever I choose, examine it from every conceivable point of view, even examine the opposite of whatever it is. And when I so choose and I feel I have had a requisite amount of time with myself in my neutral zone, I can come out of it, knowing I can go into it and come out of it at will.

Now, what would that do to me? I think that would be just plain wonderful: to have a neutral zone in which—when the trials of life begin to wear you down, when the concerns or obligations or just the pressure of the outside world imposes itself on you through
newspapers, television, BlackBerrys, iPods, and cell phones—you would be able to control your head and your sensitive innards to a point where you could order yourself to take it easy, settle down, and just relax.

We do this somewhat naturally in life. At the end of the day, we get weary, and somehow we know, from habit, that we have to go to bed.

So, for myself, and for all of us whose consciousness is constantly in play on all kinds of levels, I propose a zone into which it is possible to just simply float into neutral, and breathe, and not think of anything; to listen to our breathing, see if we can hear, as I’ve tried, our own heartbeat without putting a finger on a wrist or carotid artery. If I concentrate, I can feel my heart beating; I can hear my breath being sucked down into my lungs; I can almost feel my blood moving through my veins.

The health-giving properties have been so promising that I am working now to establish a neutral zone in my insides, using my consciousness as a gateway to create a place to go into. First of all, my consciousness will help in the creation, as will my instincts and imagination. This would be a place for them to cool it as well, away from the storms of life for a little while.

If I can create this neutral zone at this stage, I think it would strengthen the other side of me. It would strengthen the usage of my mind, strengthen my mental acuity, make sharper my perception, and hone my conceptual grasp on reality. That’s what I would like to do.

Will I be successful at the age of eighty-one? I don’t know, but it’s something I’m going to try. The awareness that you’re alive, and that your mind is free, that your brain is in good shape—that in itself is reward enough; to sit and let your imagination be free to wander, if
it so wishes, to sit and empty your mind if you’d like, bringing it to a resting place, with your consciousness wide open—not working, but rather at rest. You’re conscious of other things—everything you see, everything you hear, everything you feel, everything you touch. But you’re not making judgments about what you see, hear, feel, or touch. You are free not to make judgments, and if you are free not to make judgments, I tell myself, it places me in a mode where I am automatically replenishing the strength and vigor of all parts of myself. My heart benefits, my brain benefits, my mind benefits, my consciousness benefits, my imagination benefits, my instincts benefit. And I am free to watch them, one by one, trigger themselves into action because they need to.

I tell you all this, darling Ayele, to perhaps spare you some of what I have endured for far too long. My advice to you is to start to look for your own neutral zone early, for you will in time surely need a place to withdraw to, a place in which you find a period of peace and a replenishing of your vital resources.

You are never too young to start that quest, either, as I have found myself in my neutral zone becoming once again a boy of six, seven, eight, younger or older, sitting on the edge of the rocky bank above the beach on Cat Island, looking off into the distance at the point where the ocean meets the sky—the horizon. As an adult I can say that I have been out that far, and farther, but haven’t gotten there yet, so I am still traveling on, to one day reach that final destination.