Knowing Me

Most people don't know each other.  Unless people spend most of their time in constant contact with one another, constantly filling each other in on all the events in their lives, how those events affected them emotionally, and their responses to those events, then they...



Oh, wait.  That's what Facebook is for.  And texting.

Well, okay, most people (aside from young adults and certain people that most of us will eventually unfriend due to the ongoing drama in their lives) simply don't maintain that kind of communication.  So we don't know one another.  And even those that do publish their lives on Facebook moment by moment are still giving a very subjective narrative about themselves.  If we even bother to read their posts, we can only hope we are reading between the lines correctly.

I have friends on Facebook  I haven't seen in twenty years.  They picture me as they knew me then.  Even those who have known me more recently may not know where I am now and what I am like.  I would like to think that I am constantly changing, constantly trying to be a better person than I was yesterday.  But just because I would like to think that is true, it may not be.  I may be worse.  But I can state with some confidence that I am not the person I was five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago...more.

Significant events in our lives change us.

A short list of events in my life which have profoundly changed me, and what I think about them:

At age 23, I quit drinking alcohol.

I had a problem.  I quit.  I have had people tell me they admire me for that, or respect that.  In all truth, it was a matter of necessity.  Drinking is bad for some people; drinking the way I did was very, very bad for me.  If I hadn't quit, I probably would have died.  I'm surprised I didn't.


I appreciate that people admire me for quitting, but the truth is, I took the easy way out.  I read an excellent quote on abstinence which sums up completely my feelings on that.  St. Augustine said, "Abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."  Abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, any addictive substance, is hard to implement, but easy to maintain.  Moderation, on the other hand, is easy to implement, but difficult to maintain.  Over the long haul, I took the easy way out.  I can maintain abstinence from alcohol.  I admire people who can maintain moderation.

At age 30, I was married.

Marriage required me to adjust the way I communicate.  I'm still prone to say what is on my mind, but marriage taught me to wait for the correct time, and to carefully consider my phrasing.  Many of you that knew me as a younger man probably recognized that at the time I was going to have my say no matter what anyone else thought.

  Now I am more careful, because I do care what at least one other person thinks.  When I am having a serious conversation, I am prone to very long pauses so I can say what I mean in a way that will mean something to the person to whom I am speaking.  My wife has told me that some people might not be sure if they like me because I don't talk much, and people tend to distrust that.  Can you imagine me being that way?

At age 33, I had my first child.


My time alone decreased yet again.  This was the first experience in my life where it was mandatory that someone else's needs came before my own.  In most relationships, the other person's needs can often wait, or they can attend to themselves to a certain degree.  It doesn't work that way with kids.  There is only right now.

At age 35, I was fired from my first job.

I had a very good job on a monetary scale.  I hated the job, and it wasn't good for me, but it allowed me to provide very well for my family.  Getting fired from that job was the worst and best thing that ever happened to me.  It caused me to experience financial distress due to the number of bills we had built up in our pursuit of the insanely acquisitive American dream, but it also allowed me to conceive of a world where I didn't dread going to work every day, a world in which I could be happier on a daily basis.  My subsequent jobs weren't much better, but I realized they were only jobs.

At age 40, I elected to go into teaching.


I made the decision, but I had my doubts.  Turns out I loved most aspects of teaching.  The students, the interaction, the inner growth that I experienced as a teacher.  I looked forward to most days at school.  I made a true discovery that most people, even the unruliest of students, can be talked to in a one on one situation and reasoned with.  I learned so much about language, and people, and myself.  I found a calling that would allow me to be happy.  Aristotle said, "All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."  I found one that didn't, or at least one that didn't degrade my mind as quickly as my previous jobs.  But...

At age 43, I was fired again.

Why was I fired?  It wasn't lack of enthusiasm for the job.  It wasn't due to a lack of ability.  It certainly wasn't anything tawdry or scandalous.  The truth of the matter is, I don't know why.  The administration gave only hints.  I think the closest thing to the truth was that my philosophies and those of the administration were not compatible.  Funny how sometimes the vaguer things are, the closer to true they become.  But the effect of this termination on my personality is still yet to be determined.  I'm still not at ease in my mind with where I am on this.  One way it has definitely affected me is to make me more compassionate towards others who have experienced or are experiencing failure.  And it has made me more accepting of and grateful for my own failures.  We fail today so that we learn how to fail better tomorrow.  I think when we say someone is an unqualified success, we do them a disservice.  To be truly admirable, success must overcome failure.


Me at 45.

We are all the product of our pasts.  Here's a little of mine.  Of course, this is a subjective look at myself and my experiences.  Is there any other way?  There is no doubt that you know me better now if you have read this far.  Later today I may post on Facebook about my experience at Wal-mart, or something I cooked for dinner.  That won't tell you much about me. But the drama?  I'll leave that to the younger people, I think.

The Answer to the Question, How Long Will I Feel Like This?

Many of my friends on Facebook are former students.  Young people.  And I witness daily at least one case or another of a freshly broken heart.   But it isn't always the young people.  I see people my age who go through the same thing, just not as often.  That's probably a good thing, but still...

So many.

Broken hearts happen all the time.  To everybody.  But there is nothing quite so personal or so painful as having one.

I think I suffered from quite a few broken hearts.  Enough that I actually became pretty good at understanding what I was going through, why I was going through it, and what I had to do to make the pain stop.  So here's some advice for anyone dealing with a broken heart:

1)  Let yourself be sad.  You can try anger, you can try righteous indignation, or you can try denying sadness and pretend to be manically happy.  But the truth is, sad is the appropriate response.  You are losing something.  It's okay to be sad.  Sad is part of acceptance.

2)  Once you have gained acceptance, then it is time to realize that while it may not feel that way, you will get over your broken heart.  You have to.  You know that feeling where you wonder if it's even worth it to get out of bed, to go to work, to go to school?  It goes away.  It will.  It takes time, but it will go away.  And you do have some power to make it go away.  The most important phrase I learned concerning how to deal with a broken heart is this one:  "I'm going to have to start getting over this eventually.  Why not start now?"  And then I would get up and go to work or go to school or go for a bike ride or mow the yard.

3)  One of the easiest things you can do to help yourself get rid of a broken heart is:  nothing.  Even if you do absolutely nothing to get over your broken heart, it will heal.  At first, every waking moment will be consumed with the knowledge that you have a broken heart.  Then after a while, you will have to start reminding yourself occasionally that you have a broken heart.  Eventually, you may even go whole days without thinking about your broken heart. Of course, this is the slow method.  This method may take a long, long time.  I don't really recommend it.  There are two other quicker methods, and both work, but the side effects are completely different.

4) Quickest way to get over a broken heart:  Fall in love with someone else.  Yes, you can really do that.  It will be a brittle kind of love, most likely.  Rebound love.  This love will be driven by self-interest.  You don't want to let self-interest do the driving because self-interest has extremely short-term goals.  Self-interest will lead you to pick the wrong partner.  If the wrong partner discovers first that he/she is the wrong partner, he/she will leave you and you're back to square one on the heartbreak thing.  Or eventually that broken heart heals (as it would have done anyway) and you realize that you selected someone to be with for all the wrong reasons and you need to bail, probably breaking that person's heart in the process.  Side effects: broken heart #2 or spending a lot of time with someone you eventually realize you don't love.

5) Not so quick way, but quicker than doing nothing:  Devote your time to growing.  If the heart is a muscle (and I'm talking figurative heart, we all know the literal heart is a muscle), then when it is broken and healing, you need to devote yourself to working out the other strengths you have in order to compensate for the one that is healing.  Work on your friendships.  Spend time with people who you like to be with.  Work on your inner life.  Go places, do things, see things.  Do interesting things, even if you don't feel like it.   Go on a wild cave tour.  Ride in a hot air balloon.  Eat a sea urchin.  Read a book that you have always thought you should read but never have.  Strengthen relationships within your family.  Build something.  As you do this, your heart will heal.  And when it has healed, you will be a stronger, more interesting person overall.

I don't claim to know everything about how to get over a broken heart.  I only know what has worked for me.   To answer the question, "When will I stop feeling like this?" is not a simple answer, and the answer isn't really satisfactory.

You will stop feeling that way when you do.  And when you decide that you want to stop feeling that way badly enough to do something about it.