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The point of my previous essay was to argue that in order for me to flourish in the work world, I needed to be treasured and protected. I needed the former in order to confirm my own opinions about myself; I needed the latter because I knew I was going to follow paths that others didn't tread and that it would try the patience of those who wanted to run tight ships. (But, at the same time, I knew I had the capability to run ships myself). By being both treasured and protected, I could contribute to an institution (I thought) as well as develop my own approach to the world. But, it didn't happen as I had anticipated. I never stayed at any one institution longer than six years, and the "rhythm" of my life with institutions was to be there three years or less and then move on or take a long break and return. The burden of this essay is to show how I could neither accept the treasuring nor feel I needed protection during my work life. Thus, the "bottom line" is that I remained ignorant of, and perhaps fought against, the things I needed most in order to fashion a successful work life. Let me explain what I mean.

Forces Operating on Me # 1--Religious/Theological Issues

We all bring to the world of work a lot of messages from sources outside of work to explain to us what to expect and how to manage what we will face. Two of the forces that shaped me were a religious sensibility and some unspoken "messages" I received from home. First, the religious sensibility. Growing up in a New England Congregational home in the 1950s and early 1960s didn't really impart warm or deep religious inclinations. Religion was, like the Boy Scouts or Student Council or sports or the paper route, one of the things you did in order to be a diligent and motivated boy. I remember going to church in jacket and tie from my earliest days. I was so bored in Sunday School that I devised mental schemes to help pass the time. My favorite was to divide the hour into four football "quarters" of 15 minutes each and then I could "relive" a favorite game of mine by running the clock through my mind. The clock would run continuously, and I so looked forward to the fourth quarter of the game/class. If it was in the Fall I was particularly devoted to this approach because I knew that after Church I would be able to go home and watch or listen to the NY Giants play their Sunday games.

But religious life changed for me in 1967 after I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the Summer of Love. No, I didn't become a "deadhead," nor did I ever hang around in Berkeley or the Haight. I became an Evangelical Christian, which meant that I committed myself to Christ, as I understood him, and decided to cultivate this relationship through study, fellowship and prayer. I think I lived not only a disciplined life but a pretty rigid and controlled life, too. In any case, after listening to Evangelical preaching for years, I began to see life ideologically rather than relationally (perhaps I was inclined to do that even before religious days), and so I thought that interactions with people/institutions were more about thoughts than about the people themselves. The thoughts that I developed had to do with my perception of myself and my perception of what I needed in life. In short, I thought that I was a "leader"-type of person, that I was chosen by God for whatever task was before me, and that I was a person who would reform/lead an institution into the next chapter of its life. With this kind of attitude, what could you expect but massive conflict wherever I went? But I was oblivious to this, and I stayed oblivious to the effect of the attitude I was bringing with me to work until I was well into my 40s.

I well recall the feeling I had, for example, when I walked into my teaching experience at Reed College in 1982. I truly felt as I received students, talked to colleagues and became oriented to the task at hand that the institution now could really begin its work because I was here. I never said this to anyone, of course, but I think I believed it. Because I had internalized some things from Evangelical preachers about chosenness and about giftedness, and because I probably hadn't ever really had any experience to speak of in a work environment, I was oblivious to my effect on people and what people may have been thinking about how I was doing. Because of this attitude, too, I think I was unwilling to receive counsel from others on how to do a good job at what I was doing, and I wouldn't have been very sympathetic to "mentoring." I did appreciate the wisdom that older and experienced people could bring, and indeed I had a way in which I could endear myself to experienced people (I still have this ability today), but I so layered it with a sense that "life can begin now that I am here," that I think I was rather useless at a number of levels. I was convinced that God was guiding my life; that I was a chosen instrument of His purposes; that I was massively gifted to bring whatever God's purposes were to wherever I was; and that people would recognize this as time went on. In fact, I expected it all to happen rather immediately. After all, once grace is visible, people ought to lap it up right away.

I put this in the most unattrative way I can because I think this was probably the way that I came across to some people at Reed and at subsequent places of employment. Because I was a sort of "chosen" person with massive amounts of talent in a variety of areas, I had no qualms about wading into issues of budget, institutional management, personnel decisions and curricular issues and expressing rather definitive views on what should happen. Again, it wasn't as if I didn't listen to people who wanted to speak their piece; it is just that I thought that whatever my piece would be was much more to the point and useful. I can scarcely write these words now without tremendous embarrassment and almost shame.

Note, however, the effects of this kind of action. I was a person who really needed to be valued and protected, as I said in the previous essay, but I removed all sense of sympathy toward myself because of my headlong plunge into ways that would magnify me or maximize my visibility. But then, added to this was an element from my deep familial past which also undermined my ability to work in an institution.

Forces Operating on Me # 2-- Family of Origin Issues

The family element that hindered my ability to work well with others and succeed in an institutional work context was my regular exposure to an angry father. I suppose it wasn't unusual at all in the 1950s to have a father who exploded with regularity. Indeed, that seemed to be the image of men who wanted to "move ahead" at the time. They would be dedicated, focused and would occasionally get mad at everyone around them, either because the people deserved a good bawling out or because that was the way that men of ambition behaved. But my father's anger was rooted in his own anger towards his father in ways I don't fully understand. In any case, the "message" I got from my father's anger is that people in charge are, in general, irrational and that, in fact, unless they get mad at you you aren't really doing things the right way. I wasn't aware that when I began to work in earnest for an institution in 1982 (at age 30) that I was carrying this "baggage" with me. I remember thinking, however, that I needed to "protect" myself as early as 1985/86 because I never could be sure that the institution wouldn't just "pull the plug" on me at any time for no reason at all. In fact, I expected that to happen because that was the way that I was led to believe that authorities acted in my life. Indeed, before I left Reed College in 1988, I had an encounter where the President had to get very angry at me (the same thing happened at Sterling College in the 1990s). It was as if I was going to court disaster by pushing the envelope on conduct, through making "brilliant" but inappropriate comments or observations, that would embarrass the institution or the President or someone in high authority at the school.

I was not inclined to talk to anyone about any of these issues because I don't think I would have been very receptive to anyone's "interpretation" of my life. After all, according to the Scriptures, I had more understanding than all of my teachers (since I meditated on the Word of God daily--Ps. 119), so what use was it to get insight from other teachers/experienced people since I already had more understanding than they? The Scriptures assured me of this.

Conclusion

It was only when I became about 50 years old (2002) that I began to realize that I had lived my life driven by explicit (and hidden) ideologies, and that I was able to identify some of the forces that had been buffeting me unawares. As with most things in life, I had to discover it by myself. These experiences have made me very earnest towards developing my own variety of knowledge in this website and have made me very cautious towards joining up with any organization that espouses a "cause."

These issues are overlaid or interlaced with a whole series of family issues with my (now ex-)wife and children, issues which I may or may not write about. But, in any case, I feel that at age 55 I am finally ready to start work. In fact I have been doing my work for several years and am satisfied with my writing. But the lingering issue that is with me, that fades every night almost like the fading sound of a symphony orchestra, is whether I will ever have a satisfactory work experience in the context of other people. I certainly have it now as I work alone, but I think there is more to life than that. But, then again, maybe not. In any case, I sometimes wistfully wonder how life would have been had I been less ideologically and arrogantly driven in my first 20 years of work...

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