It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

by Robert Fulghum

  Old Job did a lot of similar thinking once upon a time there in his ash heap. And Jonah. Sitting in the steamy dark, awash in a whale’s gastric juices and half-digested squid. Those guys did some pondering, too, I bet.

  And me, too. I ponder. Annually, three or four days after the beginning of the new year. When there’s nothing much special going on, which is why it is a special time. The first day when everything finally settles back into its normal routine state. The relatives have gone home. Christmas, too, has come and gone, and however it was—good, bad, or indifferent—it’s over. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are finished, and whether you whooped it up or just went to bed, that’s all done. The holiday mess is cleaned up, the house has been tidied, and the leftovers have gone out with the garbage. It’s too early to work on taxes, too soon to work in the garden.

  It’s not a totally down time. A Sunday afternoon walk in your neighborhood will tell you that life is moving on. A close look reveals the buds of another spring on the trees, and deep in their beds the daffodils and crocuses are feeling something moving in their toes. You know that because you feel vague stirrings in your own roots as well. And the days are already longer.

  To ponder is not to brood or grieve or even meditate. It is to wonder at a deep level.

  I wondered around for an afternoon this year on Ponder Day.

  Wondering about the girls I used to love a long time ago. Where are they now? What are they like? Did I miss a good thing? What would happen if I tried to find them and called them up? (“Hey, it’s me!” “Who?”)

  I wondered about all those people who don’t know it now, but who will not be here to ponder at this time next year. If they knew it now, would it help? And how about all those children who will be here this time next year, but who are just made up of parental desire at the moment?

  I wondered about all the people in prisons—especially the ones who are unjustly punished—tortured. Do they have hope?

  Somewhere along the way of Ponder Day wondering, I begin to make secret pacts with myself. The kind of thing you don’t tell anybody because you don’t want to be caught doing something dumb like making New Year’s resolutions. You keep this stuff to yourself so you don’t get caught out on a limb and then not do whatever it is you said you were going to do. (I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling.)

  As I pondered, I recalled high school days. Going back to school the first week after the winter holidays, swearing secretly to myself that I was going to do better this year. And for a few days I really did do better. I didn’t always keep doing better—there are a lot of distractions when you are young—but for a few days at least—a few days of hopeful possibility—I had proof I really could do better. If I wanted to.

  Now, in middle life, in thought that is more careful and vague and reflective of experience, I almost unconsciously promise myself the same. I could do better. The president and the pope and all the rest of humanity. We could do better.

  I am reminded of a story I heard about a man who found the horse of the king and he didn’t know it was the king’s horse and he kept it, but the king found out and arrested him and was going to kill him for stealing the horse. The man tried to explain and said he would willingly take his punishment, but did the king know that he could teach the horse to talk and if so the king would be a pretty impressive king, what with a talking horse and all? So the king thinks what does he have to lose and says sure. He’ll give him a year. Well, the man’s friends think he is nuts. But the man says—well, who knows?—the king may die, I may die, the world may come to an end, the king may forget. But just maybe, just maybe, the horse may talk. One must believe that anything can happen.

  Which is why, when asked where I had been, I told my wife, “Oh, talking to a horse.” Gave her something to ponder.

  “WELL, SO, WHAT IS IT YOU DO?” Your basic strangers-on-a-plane question. Comes up at the PTA potluck and the corporate cocktail party and just about any other stand-around-and-make-small-talk situation you get into. It’s a politely veiled status inquiry to clarify social standing. The bureaucratic version of the question is terse: Fill in the blank marked “Occupation.” The IRS wants it that way—and the policeman giving you a ticket, and the passport agency, and the bank. Say what you are paid to do, and we will know who you are and how to deal with you.

  When I ask people what they do, I usually get a stiff little piece of 3½″ × 2” paper that summarizes their identity. Name, company name, title, address, lots of numbers—phone, telex, cable, and fax. Business card. If you don’t have a business card these days, you are not to be taken too seriously. Though I sometimes think the truth may be vice versa.

  For example, a fellow traveler’s card said he was vice-president for systems analysis of Unico. “Well, so, what is it you really DO?” And he pointed at his title as if I had overlooked it. I asked again. “I mean, if I followed you around all day long, what would I see you doing?” He talked for a long time. I still do not really know what he does. And I am not sure he knows, either.

  When it was my turn, I had no business card. Can’t seem to get me down on that little piece of paper. What I do is kind of complicated and takes such a long time to explain that I often avoid the question and just pick something simple that’s true but not the whole truth. Even this tactic has left me painted into difficult corners.

  On an early-morning flight to San Francisco I told my seatmate that I was a janitor, thinking that she might not want to pursue that and would leave me to read my book. (When I think of how I have spent my life and how much of it involves cleaning and straightening and hauling trash—I don’t get paid for it, but that’s what I do a lot.) Anyhow, she was fascinated. Turned out she wrote a housewives’ column for a small newspaper and was glad to spend the rest of the flight sharing her tips for tidy housekeeping with me. Now, I know more about getting spots and stains out of rugs than I ever hoped to know.

  Turned out, too, that she was a member of the church where I was to speak on Sunday. I didn’t know that until I stood up in the pulpit and saw her there in the third row. And it further turned out that she knew who I was all along, but was creative enough to think that if I wanted to go around on airplanes being a janitor, I probably had a reason.

  Another time I was bumped into first class on a flight to Thailand and was seated next to a very distinguished-looking Sikh gentleman. Lots of expensive jewelry, fine clothes, gold teeth. (Probably a high-caste bazaar merchant, I thought.) When he asked me the what-do-you-do question I replied off the top of my head that I was a neurosurgeon. “How wonderful,” said he with delight. “So am I!” And he was. A real one. It took a while to unscramble things, and we had a wonderful conversation all the way to Bangkok, but for ten seconds the temptation to be also deaf and dumb had been great.

  Having learned my lesson, the next time I got on a plane and sat down next to someone who looked sympathetic, I told these stories and then suggested we play a game—just for the fun of it—and each make up our occupation and pretend all the way to Chicago. The guy went for it. So he declared he was a spy, and I decided I’d be a nun. We had a hell of a time—one of the great conversations of my life. He said he couldn’t wait until his wife asked him, “Well, dear, how was your flight?” “There was this nun dressed in a tweed suit …”

  But it was the middle-aged couple from Green Bay who had occupied the seats behind us who were blown away. They had listened to the nun and the spy in stunned silence. They really had something to say when asked “How was your flight?” As the man passed me in the concourse, he said, “Have a nice day, Sister.”

  Filling in forms has led to similar situations. At my bank I wrote “prince” in the blank for “Occupation” on an IRA document. Just that morning my wife had said to me, “Fulghum, sometimes you are a real prince.” And sometimes I am. So, since I was feeling princely, I put it in the blank. Clerk coul
dn’t handle it. And we had a friendly argument right there that is at the heart of this matter of identity: Is my occupation what I get paid money for, or is it something larger and wider and richer—more a matter of what I am or how I think about myself?

  Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that’s worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn’t even come close to answering the question “What do you do?”

  Marcel Duchamp, who most people think of as a fixture in the world of fine art during the period before 1940, was equally frustrated by the implications of the standard inquiry. He would answer, “I am a respirateur” (a breather). He explained that he did more breathing than anything else, and was very, very good at it, too. After that, people were usually afraid to ask him what else he did.

  I know, I know. We can’t go around handing out two-hundred-page autobiographies every time someone asks for minimal information. But suppose that instead of answering that question with what we do to get money, we replied with what we do that gives us great pleasure or makes us feel useful to the human enterprise? (If you happen to get paid to do what you love, feel fortunate, but a lot of people don’t.)

  Shift the scale a bit and answer the what-do-you-do question in terms of how you spend a normal twenty-four-hour day. I might say that I am a sleepeur and a napeur—one who sleeps and is very good at it. If ever there is an Olympic event for napping, I will go for the gold. Eight hours in twenty-four I am asleep in my bed, and every afternoon I take a thirty-minute nap. That is more than one third of my life. If I live to be seventy-five years old, I will have spent more than twenty-five years asleep. No other activity commands so much of my time in one place. While asleep, I cause no one else any pain or trouble, and it is an ecologically sound activity. If I got paid for how well I do it, I would be a very rich man indeed. It would be a better world if more people got more sleep, or at least spent more time in bed. There are people I don’t much like when they are awake, but they don’t bother me at all while they are sleeping, drooling into their pillows.

  Had you asked me the do-be-do question today, I would have said I am a singer. Not only do I not get paid to sing, but in some cases friends might offer to pay me not to sing. Nevertheless, I love to do it. In the shower, driving to work, while I’m working, walking to lunch, and along with whatever I recognize on the radio. I sing. It is what I do. God did not put my desire together with the necessary equipment. My voice is what you might politely call “uncertain.” I can hear the music in my head, but I cannot reproduce what I have heard, though it sounds fine to me. Over a lifetime of trying out for leads in musicals, I have always been told that I would be best in the chorus. And then got eliminated from the chorus because there were too many of whatever it is I am. I liked being a parent to my children when they were young and had no musical standards and would uncritically sing with me. It didn’t matter that we didn’t always know all the words or have the tune just right—we made it up. We singers are not thrown by technicalities. Singers are those who sing. Period.

  Sometimes, when asked the what-do-you-do question, it occurs to me to say that I work for the government. I have a government job, essential to national security. I am a citizen. Like the Supreme Court judges, my job is for life, and the well-being of my country depends on me. It seems fair to think that I should be accountable for my record in office in the same way I expect accountability from those who seek elected office. I would like to be able to say that I can stand on my record and am proud of it.

  “What I do” is literally “how I spend my time.” As of this writing, in the fall of 1988, I figure in my life so far I have spent 35,000 hours eating, 30,000 hours in traffic getting from one place to another, 2,508 hours brushing my teeth, 870,000 hours just coping with odds and ends, filling out forms, mending, repairing, paying bills, getting dressed and undressed, reading papers, attending committee meetings, being sick, and all that kind of stuff. And 217,000 hours at work. There’s not a whole lot left over when you get finished adding and subtracting. The good stuff has to be fitted in somewhere, or else the good stuff has to come at the very same time we do all the rest of the stuff.

  Which is why I often say that I don’t worry about the meaning of life—I can’t handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life—day by day, hour by hour, while I’m doing whatever it is that I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I’m doing it.

  In truth, I have a business card now. Finally figured out what to put on it. One word. “Fulghum.” That’s my occupation. And when I give it away, it leads to fine conversations. What I do is to be the most Fulghum I can be. Which means being a son, father, husband, friend, singer, dancer, eater, breather, sleeper, janitor, dishwasher, bather, swimmer, runner, walker, artist, writer, painter, teacher, preacher, citizen, poet, counselor, neighbor, dreamer, wisher, laugher, traveler, pilgrim, and on and on and on.

  I and you—we are infinite, rich, large, contradictory, living, breathing miracles—free human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That’s what we do.

  IN MOST AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOLS there is someone who teaches driver training. The top sergeant of automotive boot camp. Thankless task, a low-status job, about in the same league with the typing teacher as far as the faculty pecking order is concerned. The driver trainer is something of a nonperson. The parents of students never meet the DT; the faculty do not include him in their inner circle, and the students see the DT as a necessary evil. One more adult whose bottom they must kiss in order to get something they want. It’s a job that anybody with half a brain could do—and anybody who wants the job doesn’t have much ambition or talent or skill. Maybe.

  Nevertheless, I would like to teach driver training for a while. It would be an honor, now that I see it the way Old Mr. Perry sees it. The students call him that. “Old Mr. Perry” (not his real name). They also call him “the Driving Master” and “Obi Wan Kenobi.” Since the latter name refers to the Wise One in the Star Wars trilogy, I asked some students the reason, and they said to take a ride and see. So I did.

  Jack Perry. Very average in appearance—not tall or short or fat or thin or old or young or straight or weird. Kind of generic. You wouldn’t notice him on the street or pick him out of a police lineup for ever having done anything remarkable. Former navy chief petty officer, retired, one wife, four kids all grown, Protestant, tends his garden for pleasure. Likes cars and kids, so he’s the driver trainer.

  (It seems fair and useful to say that the conversation that follows is a reconstruction in my mind of what went on between us. What I am sharing is the spirit of the interchange. A taciturn man, Jack actually said much less than I am reporting, because he would begin a thought and then wave his hand and say, “You know the rest of that.” I showed him this text and he said it was prettier than he actually talked, but he wouldn’t disagree with it any. Part of why the kids like him is that he listens a whole lot more than he talks.)

  —So you’re the man who teaches Driver Training?

  —Well, that’s my job title, yes.

  —I’d like to know what you really DO. The students say you are one of the really fine people around school—a “truly maximum dude,” to quote one.

  —You really want to know?

  —I really want to know.

  —Guess this sounds presumptuous, but I think of myself as a shaman—I help young men and women move through a rite of passage—and my job is getting them to think about this time in their lives.

  Most of them are almost sixteen. They know a lot more about life and sex and alcohol and drugs and money than their parents or teachers give them credit for. And they are physically pretty much what they are going to be.

  But we don’t have any cultural rituals to acknowledge they’re growing up. There’s no ceremony, changing of clothes, or roles or public statement that says, This is
n’t a kid anymore—this is a young adult.

  The only thing we do is give them a driver’s license. Having a car means you move out of the backseat into the driver’s seat. You aren’t a passenger anymore. You’re in charge. You can go where you want to go. You have power now. So that’s what we talk about. The power.

  —But what about actually learning to operate a vehicle?

  —Oh, that comes easily enough—some driving time with suggestions—reading the manual—and they want it all enough to work on their own. But I don’t talk much about that—they have to pass a test, and it usually takes care of itself.

  —So what do you talk about when you’re out driving?

  —About their new power—opportunity—responsibility. About dreams and hopes and fears—about “someday” and “what if.” I listen a lot, mostly. I’m not a parent or a schoolteacher or a neighbor or a shrink, and they hardly ever see me except when it’s just the two of us out in a car cruising around. I’m safe to talk to. They tell me about love and money and plans, and they ask me what it was like when I was their age.

  —Will you take me out for a ride? My driving could be improved.

  And so we went. And so it was. My driving was improved—along with my sense of place and purpose.