More Than Promise in Our Purpose

I have been running for my effing life all around Boston for the past six months trying to find the perfect job. I used to be an actor during interviews, convincing everyone with my off-broadway performance that I fit perfectly and that I would be heaven sent for them! But where would I find a decent place to work that involved the practice of psychology, neuroscience, community service, families and the youth? It was the perfect culmination of my hearts desire, and I couldn't find it anywhere. Once, I opted to be a research coordinator for a Harvard neuromodulation lab, but I just couldn't see myself going Broadway for a show with no intermission.

And on a sunny, fruitless winter morning at the Aphasia Center, where I am currently working on a book with two other researchers, I sit in bewilderment at how alone I sometimes feel. There are tons of students and post-grads who would be thrilled to have my seat. And while I am eternally grateful for this chance to be published, I find myself wanting to jump out the window and join the pigeons near the heat at the entrance door. The project manager tells me that this collaboration will reserve a seat for me in any prestigious school of my choosing. Dr. Albert knows everyone, afterall, she says. And all I can think about is the old woman who follows me on the bus every morning, using a bent walker for a cane, and eating peanuts from her pocket...as happy as can be. As happy as she makes me.

Instead I think about the sheer joy I had earlier that morning, holding the door open for a pigeon looking to find warmth in the Davis Square T station. The joy of seeing everyone's faces as I expressed kindness to what they call "sky rats."

I love the old woman and the pigeon, and I know now that I was at a crossroads, reliving the two roads that good ol' Mr. Robert Frost described. But I was not sorry that I could not travel both.

But what road would I travel, then?

Twelve years ago today, my father died from his addiction to alcohol. He was a guitar player and singer, with wild curly hair and thick eye brows, the kind of oddity my mother said she fell in love with. Sometimes when she brushes the curves in my eyebrows, perfect like his own, she tells me how much my father loved his music. How much he adored teaching my sister her colors; how he would sing to me while in my mother's belly. And even though living with him was no way to live at all, my mother told me that he never, not once did something he didn't love to do. Find a job you like, he told her. He taught himself how to play guitar at a young age, and never looked to anything else for joy.

And although his image only marks a few moments in my memory, finding a job I like is all the advice I have from him. He whispers that he is sorry in my ear, late at night, and I know to forgive him, as I already have, twelve years to date.

As I clobbered through the snow earlier this week, barely making the bus to an interview with an outreach program for psychiatric young adults, I knew my father was with me. I knew that this job would be mine and that I would perform all my duties with pure joy. As I walked into the S.T.E.P.S program in the beautiful little town of Arlington, I told my interviewer that I do not define any one of them by their disorder, and that I am here to gently remind them that they have a divine purpose on this earth. I looked at their art on the walls, and spoke with a few of the younger girls, whom I later found out had been hospitalized earlier that week for cutting themselves. I shook the hand of a young guy who had a split lip from one too many seizures at the library. They flocked into the tv room, where I sat, waiting to be interviewed. One girl ate cereal out of a sauce pan, and told me she would love to teach me how to drive. The other, held the door for me when I left. I told her thank you and that she was very kind to me.

I thought to myself, how much I already loved them, for the seemingly simple acts of kindness they showed me. Alcohol, addiction, and self-hatred only hold us back and blurr the connection to our higher selves--the source of all our creativity. They will be my greatest teachers, just as my father.


And on the way out, I was splattered with snow and salt from a bus I had just missed. But I had to laugh, because this time there was no preparation for this interview. It had fallen into my hands and I was definitely ready to begin a task extremely familiar to my roots. There was no acting. The words exchanged were ones I cannot even recall, it was my spirit speaking this time, and everything I said couldn't have been more beautiful.

I gently reminded myself that now is the time to be love, to trust in the comfort of discomfort, and to graciously accept the job that had been offered to me on the spot.

Now I see in my simple choices, the same complexity of my father; the kind of challenges that colored his life with beauty.

And he will remind me when I lose my focus, that everything can be fixed.