Radical amplification and acceleration of the hear and now
The Monster Called 'Can't': Battling Self-Doubt and Fear
Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t quite ready…for life, that is? That you need more time to prepare before you take on the great thing that you feel would make all the difference, if only, I don’t know, you could do something different or better. It’s sort of like rolling all your fears of success, all your fears of failure and bundling them up with your, “I’m not good enough”, I”’m not strong enough”, in fact all you “I’m not enoughs” and giving them over to the monster called, “Can’t”, and accepting in return a pile of excuses that you can pick over and savour as your wish box gets fuller and fuller. Oh, wait on, sorry, that was me! But may you have it too, the tension between deep longing and belief in your personal ineffectiveness. I guess that today’s word would be “looser”. Yikes.
A Prank and a Professor: Lessons in Perseverance
For along time I struggled not to feel like a looser, it was my greatest fear and even thinking about it brought a rush of adrenaline, a dead feeling in my gut and a frantic search for a distraction, any distraction. In my first year of uni in Sydney, actually it was the first year of my second go at tertiary education, no,my third go, I had a number of false starts, I was the butt of a practical joke by my fellow students. They told me that the dean of the school wanted to see me. It’s like that gag where you give someone the phone number of the zoo and tell you that a Mr Lyon rang and left a message for you asking to call him back urgently. It a scam like the myriads of scam like we see on the internet today, the phishing (with a ‘ph’), trojan horses, malware, viruses etc, etc.
Anyway I discovered, gullibility and hapless naivety were a powerful combination that made me an easy target and created a good deal of frivolity. There’s a fine line between playing the fool and being a fool and I was prone to getting them mixed up. Anyway, these guys told me that the dean wanted to see me, which made sense given my abysmal academic record that year. So I go up to the professor’s office and make an appointment with his secretary. “What’s it about?” “I don’t know, he wants to see me.” I swear at the time nobody would have been able to convince me it was anything than above board. I had failed organic chemistry and something else that I can’t remember and in a spot of bother to put it mildly. That’s to say nothing of my chaotic personal life at the time. It didn’t occur to me that they might be connected. So I went in to see the professor, ironically by the name of Passmore and said, “I’m David Salomon” and braced myself. He looked at me blankly. I had already decided to not leave without some sort of solution to this mess that I was in. No matter what, I’d take it on the chin.
A Moment of Transformation: Finding Hope in Academic Struggles
Silence, then, “Why are you here?” “I don’t know.” More silence. “How can I help?” Now I was really confused. He got my file and had a look through my exam records. He was an astute man, his field was the philosophy of science and he could tell that something was amiss. Then it happened. He looked at me, I could feel his gaze as I stared down at my sweaty hands and he said, ”Just because you’ve failed a few subjects, doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata,” “What?” I parroted back, with all my skill in idiomatic Latin translation vacating me. He repeated himself, “Just because you’ve failed a couple of subjects doesn’t mean you’re persona non grata.” And as I looked up at him the black cloud I had carried around for the past seven years broke open. And I kid you not, the clouds parted and the sun shone through, you know that special sunlight that comes as rays through the clouds, poets refer to it as the grace of God. I felt buoyant as my heart kept into life. You see I knew that I was smart enough, I had won a university scholarship on merit. There was something else wrong with me that had nothing to do with my studies but I had no way of articulating and now it had lifted and I felt that the moment deserved a full orchestral score with a long camera shot of me receiving a full quotient of grace, permeating, saturating, drinking it in long thirsty draughts. I felt like dancing, and singing and telling everyone the good news, the fantastic news that there was a chance that I might be OK after all, because somebody saw me.
By the time I left the room the euphoria had passed. I just felt my load had been lightened. Though I continued to stumble my way through life for a long time the absolute blessing of that moment has never left me. Nothing had changed in my outer world but everything in my inner world was different.
Seeking a Blessed Childhood: Rediscovering Inner Potential
Years later, one of my teachers talked about how she had had a blessed childhood. It was curious to me because from the stories she told, yes, she had been fortunate in meeting many talented and gifted people growing up. Yes, she clearly had a close relationship with her father, but it was clear problematic. His humour was ruthless. Then a sense of disappointment came over me as I realised that I wanted to have had a blessed childhood too. That the antagonism I felt toward my father for not understanding me, that the love I felt from my mother didn’t come free with anticipation and expectation that I didn’t feel able to fulfil, that the alienation from my extended family that I had brought about to shield me from being judged and ridiculed, even though there was scant evidence that was true.
Then just like that black cloud lifting I realised that I too was a candidate for a blessed childhood, a blessed life in fact, yes, there was some cleaning up to do, but at its core I could have the kind of blessed childhood that would set me to fulfil my life purpose. And that would happen, not by reliving the past, but by a radical appreciation of the now.
Storytelling for Change Makers: Embracing Life's Energizing Moments
Storytelling for Change Makers is about amplifying the moments that carry life energy for us. It’s about accelerating our inner growth by rediscovering and reflecting on those primary moments and transforming our outlook by paying our unique gifts and talents forward centred in who we really are.
