by Dan Gediman
Our location forces me to make difficult choices. This is not some classroom debate for me. The highway makes it impossible to ignore the world and our relationship to it. When someone approaches us for help, I have to decide: Do I help them or not?
I wonder if people realize how final a step, how isolating, how evil it feels to literally shut the door on someone in need. I have done it. Sometimes I have been hostile to people, and although I can justify my actions, those are the moments I most regret.
I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me, too. I’d rather risk my physical safety than my peace of mind. I’d rather live my life acting out of mercy than save it by living in fear and hostility.
So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice.
I opened the door.
Karin Round is office manager for her family’s hardware store in Massachusetts. She has studied nonfiction writing in a postgraduate program at Goucher College. Ms. Round continues to help travelers stranded on her doorstep.
The True Value of Life
Sudie Bond Noland
I believe in the power of forgiveness and compassion. This act is so hard for many, including myself, but it is important to show an understanding heart when someone is faced with discord. It gives a chance, for some, to repent for their previous mistakes. I have come to learn the true nature of forgiveness over the years, beginning with a personal experience of mine that was life changing. It happened when I was thirteen.
I was riding with my friend’s family in their car down a two-lane highway, when we were hit head-on by a drunk driver going sixty-five miles per hour. Eddy Jo was his name, and he was so intoxicated that one more beer would have killed him. Thankfully, everyone survived, although I came away from the accident with chronic back and neck pain, migraine headaches, and part of my kidney missing. It has nearly been a decade, and I am still in pain every day. Pain forever is a lot to swallow when you’re young.
In court, the judge sentenced Eddy to twenty-five years in prison to make an example of the situation. I didn’t understand the full extent of this when I was thirteen. I was upset about how the ignorance and actions of this person had changed my life forever.
As time went by, I began to think of Eddy in jail, away from his family, and how he must feel. I received letters from him, stating his remorse for his actions, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to write back. I was so overwhelmed with so many different emotions that I didn’t know what to say.
This is something I have been thinking about for a long time—something that I haven’t looked at with a magnifying glass until this essay, actually.
I have now forgiven Eddy in my heart for his actions. I know that when he got into his car that night, he was too inebriated to even realize he was driving. He had a problem that got out of hand and out of his control.
I know Eddy didn’t hit us as a malicious act in any way. It was a mistake, an awful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. I have the courage now to write to him. He will finally know how I feel when I send him this essay.
Forgiveness and compassion can be amazing feelings when you let them into your heart. People deserve a second chance to do the right thing, especially when one may have been caught up in circumstance. I don’t think Eddy deserved twenty-five years in prison for his actions.
I am forever changed by him, but in some ways it has shown me the true value of life. Even though I struggle every day, I think it has made me a stronger person, a more loving and compassionate person.
For that, Eddy, I thank you.
Sudie Bond Noland’s experience in writing this essay has since propelled her on a personal healing journey and has awakened her own calling as a healer. Raised in Sarasota, Florida, she currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Ms. Noland is about to start her own practice as a Reiki Master and begin her schooling for a master’s degree in Chinese medicine.
An Invitation to Dialogue
Madhukar Rao
I believe in the power of simple questions.
Back in 1974, when I was sixteen, my family moved from Massachusetts to New Jersey when my father changed jobs. It was a difficult transition for me: I was a junior in high school and had to leave the friends and community I’d known well to get used to new surroundings and attend a school where I was a stranger.
I remember how lonely I felt that first day of school. I was among the first students in the cafeteria at lunchtime, and I sat at a table in one corner of the large room. As more people filtered in, I noticed that all of the students sitting near me were black, and all of the white students were sitting on the other side of the room. I found this very strange—as if an invisible dividing line stretched across the cafeteria. This voluntary segregation was new to me, but I stayed where I was.
Some of the black students gave me odd looks as I sat alone, quietly eating my lunch. Partway through the lunch period, a tall, muscular, black student, whom I’ll call Jake, walked over and stood across from me. He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. With his face close to mine, he firmly said, “Aren’t you sitting with the wrong kind of people?”
Immediately, my fight-or-flight response kicked into high gear. What should I do? Should I defend myself? Should I let him intimidate me and undermine my self-respect? The other students suddenly became quiet, waiting for my response.
Jake had laid down the gauntlet, but I decided not to take the bait. I looked at him and innocently asked, “What do you mean, the wrong kind of people?”
He was dumbfounded. He stared at me for a few seconds, shook his head, and then walked away. My simple question had disarmed him. I had neither compromised my beliefs nor validated his racism. I slowly calmed down and ate the rest of my lunch without incident.
This experience taught me that simple questions like “What do you mean?” hold tremendous power. They signal a desire to understand and a willingness to listen. My simple question met intolerance with tolerance. I could have argued my right to remain where I sat or told Jake to leave me alone. But becoming defensive probably would have led to a lot of shouting—and I would have been lucky if it had ended there. Instead, I had invited him into a dialogue.
I like to think my question challenged Jake to confront his racism, but I’ll never know for sure. I do know that when I saw him in the cafeteria the rest of that year, he looked at me and nodded as he passed. Although he never smiled at me, I took his acknowledgments as a sign that we had made a small connection.
I believe in the power of simple questions. Simple questions signal humility and an openness to listen nonjudgmentally. They also serve as powerful weapons against intolerance.
A native of India, Madhukar Rao came to the United States with his parents at the age of three. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a PhD in materials science from Pennsylvania State University. He currently serves as chairman of the board of the Volunteers of America of Pennsylvania, a nonprofit social service organization. In his spare time, Mr. Rao enjoys reading, traveling, and practicing yoga.
Homeless but Not Hopeless: A Man Finds His Soul
Les Gapay
I was homeless for six-and-a-half years. But I believe not being hopeless got me out of it.
When a recession caused my writing and public relations business to tank in 2002, I gave up my apartment in Palm Springs, California, and started living at campgrounds in the back of my 1998 Toyota pickup.
I usually stayed in the southern California desert. But every summer, when it got too hot, I drove to camp in Montana, where I once lived.
At first I was still making a little money, so I camped at developed campgrounds with flush toilets, tables, and fire rings. But after a few years I was subsisting mostly on Social Security retirement and couldn’t afford such luxuries. So I stayed at primitive campgrounds with outhouses, or once in a while at a Walmart parking lot. I ate at campground
s or fast-food joints. I got on lists for subsidized senior housing.
In winter, the desert temperatures dropped as low as thirty degrees at night, and I snuggled up inside my sleeping bag on top of an air mattress. Sometimes I had to pile blankets atop my sleeping bag and sleep in several layers of clothes. When it rained, I covered my leaky camper shell with a tarp.
In the back of my truck at night I meditated on the Lord’s Prayer. On Sundays, I went to church. I prayed for my family members, including my three brothers and two adult daughters, whom I never heard from. At first I prayed for work and a home, but eventually I accepted my situation, and it caused my stress to disappear.
Like Jacob in the Bible, I once asked God to come down and fight me like a man. But it did no good to argue with God, as Job also learned in the Bible. But even getting angry with God, I found, was a form of prayer.
I was better off than many homeless people. I had my truck and some Social Security income. I became eligible for Medicare, and that was a blessing with medical bills. My life wasn’t so difficult if I didn’t dwell on it.
My faith, once minimal, deepened as grappling with the difficulties and the evils of life turned me more to God. I knew where I was going in the long run, and it wasn’t just to a campground.
In December 2008, I finally got to the top of a waiting list for an apartment in a complex for low-income seniors. Two charities helped me with the security deposit and the first month’s rent. I retrieved my possessions from a storage unit, and opening my boxes was like an archeological dig into my past life: a TV, a stereo, suits and ties, photos of my daughters in happier days, a computer that was now obsolete.
After years of being homeless, I finally had a bed to sleep in and my own bathroom and kitchen. I could even use a heated pool to soothe my aching muscles. Every day in those first few weeks seemed like a gift.
The whole experience was a life lesson in the power of hope and faith, something that sustains me even today.
Les Gapay, a freelance writer in Rancho Mirage, California, was a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers and a public relations consultant for Fortune 500 companies. He is working on a book of spiritual-inspirational essays and another about his life.
The Power of Sleep
Anne Hoppus
I believe in the power of sleep. Pure, deep, easy sleep. Quiet, dark sleep, that removes you completely from the world. A good night’s sleep.
Most mornings I drag myself out of bed, neither rested nor refreshed, starting the day already behind. I push my cat away, snap at my husband, and drive to work in a mildly angry daze. I’m not particularly a morning person, but it’s not that. It’s that most nights I stay up too late, stalked and driven by the to-do list that forever hovers before me. My eyes start to droop; my thoughts begin to wander. My body and the better parts of my brain signal me in every way possible that it is time to go to bed. But a nagging voice speaks up, pushes me ever onward, telling me that I have dishes and paperwork to do and miles to go before I sleep. And so I seldom go to bed when I should. I stay up too late, and my mornings (and my husband) suffer.
Oh, but those mornings when I have had enough sleep! Those mornings following nights in which I have successfully turned off my brain? Those mornings are gifts. I wake before the alarm and lie in bed, at peace with the light making its way through my window. My cat nuzzles against me, and I am happy to return her affection. I look at my husband, and my heart aches for a moment with love for him. I drive to work, waving other drivers ahead of me in traffic, preferring to have a couple more seconds of time out in the beautiful world.
On these days I am happier. I feel more love, more joy, more peace. I am better at my job. I think more clearly. I am a better wife, a better mother, a better pet owner. And, I get more done! On these days, the eternal to-do list is less daunting, more of a challenge than a judgment. With my newfound energy, I can clean house or wash clothes, I can write, I can grocery shop. Even better, on these days my well-rested mind and I can tell the to-do list to go to hell. We are smart enough to know that sometimes the best move is to lie completely still and just be. These are the days I live for.
I don’t know how or when we stopped believing in sleep, when we relegated it to a status somewhere between “complete waste of time” and “something to do when dead,” but it’s time to take back our nights. We need our sleep. The world would be a better place if we were all less cranky, less irritable, less exhausted. Even if the dishes aren’t done.
I believe in the power of sleep. It’s right at the top of my to-do list.
Anne Hoppus is a working and writing mother of two girls. She lives in San Diego, California.
Where Wildflowers Grow
Maureen Crane Wartski
Rain, the pelting, driving, summer rain that falls on these Carolinas, forced us to take shelter under the overhang of a store. After the wringing and shaking out and the first relief of being out of the downpour came the question: Now what?
“Maybe they sell umbrellas in the store,” my husband said. He disappeared into the building and returned with a discovery. In the back of the store was a country-western nightclub. The band would be on in five minutes. Was I game?
It sure beat standing under the dripping eaves! We went inside and were seated, and in a few minutes the band began to play.
This was quite a band. The lead guitarist, blond and long-haired, hopped and gyrated among billows of multicolored smoke. The sounds were high decibel, but the beat was good to dance to.
There weren’t too many of us on the floor. Most of the club patrons were seated at the bar, among them a hefty couple that looked as if they had walked off the set of a Hell’s Angels movie. The young woman was dark-haired and dour; the man wore a muscle T-shirt and had multiple tattoos.
Suddenly, the lead guitarist quit his prancing to announce that he was dedicating the next number to a biker couple who’d just come from their wedding. The tattooed man led his bride to the dance floor, followed by their friends—and us. As we danced past them, my husband called out, “Congratulations!”
The bridal couple looked astonished. And then smiled so sweetly. “Why thank you, sir, ma’am,” the man said, softly.
His reaction put me in mind of a morning several years back when we’d been visiting our son in New York State. I’d taken a solitary walk, reveling in the abundance of birds and wildflowers, when I heard the roar of a motorcycle. Looking up, I saw a bushy-bearded, much-tattooed biker rumbling down the deserted, rural road.
I stepped to the side of the road to give him room, and he passed me in a whoosh of sound. Then he stopped his bike and got off.
I felt an adrenaline rush of pure panic as all of the horror stories I’d ever read rushed to my brain. Fear rooted me to the ground as that muscled, bearded figure advanced toward me and then detoured into a gully, where he commenced picking wildflowers. Seeing me stare, he shrugged sheepishly.
“My mom likes them,” he growled.
From childhood, we’re taught not to judge a book by its cover, and I believe this with all my heart. Sometimes, though, I slip up. Sometimes, when I come up against someone who doesn’t conform to my ideas of good taste or behavior or belief, I begin to pigeonhole them. No matter that I shrink from the idea of stereotyping, I do the very thing I abhor.
But when I’m wrong—and so often I am—I’m both humbled and overjoyed that my core belief is right after all. And that there is beauty to be found in as many places as wildflowers grow.
Maureen Crane Wartski, who makes her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, has taught high school English and writing, and she conducts writing workshops throughout the country. She has authored many young adult novels, including the award-winning A Boat to Nowhere. She has written short stories for Boys’ Life magazine and for anthologies such as Join In: Multiethnic Short Stories. Ms. Wartski’s book, Yuri’s Brush with Magic, was recently published by Sleepy Hollow Books.
I Could Be Wr
ong
Allan Barger
I believe in uncertainty. I believe that the four words “I could be wrong” should be etched above every schoolroom, house of worship, political assembly hall, and scientific laboratory. Uncertainty is an odd creed, but I find it deeply spiritual, combining humility and a deep respect for the mysteries of God and life. It’s not an easy creed.
My conversion to uncertainty came from my life. As an evangelical Christian and a pastor, I spent years trying to reconcile my religious certainties with the certain fact that I was gay. I tried being not gay for almost twenty-five years only to find I had simply been wrong. It didn’t help, and it didn’t stop. In the process I hurt myself, and worse, I hurt others. Sometimes, no matter how certain I am, life and God hand me a different message. This was my hardest lesson in uncertainty. I didn’t lose faith in God, but I certainly lost faith in certainty.
My commitment to uncertainty grows today because I see an appalling excess of certainty around me. It seems to me that certainty visits a great many evils upon the world. I see religions lose their humanity because they are certain they know divinity. Some commit acts of terror and others acts of political intolerance all in the name of God. I watch political certainties create inflexibility in the face of changing information and situations. I see scientific researchers sidelined by other scientists when their theories challenge the scientific orthodoxy—sidelined not because they lack sound evidence but because accepting their evidence means rethinking cherished certainties. It’s human to resist uncertainty. I resist it myself. But when my certainties are in overdrive, I act as if the truth will die if I can’t make you see it and then I can do terrible things. I need uncertainty to keep me humble.
Some ask me if it’s crippling to always question myself. I find it uncomfortable, but not crippling. I act with more confidence if I know in my heart that I’m willing to abandon my certainties if the facts, or the outcomes, turn out wrong. Today, as a teacher and a research analyst, I have certain knowledge. I’m also pretty certain what I want for my children and grandchildren. I’m politically active because I hold certainties about human equality, democracy, and spirituality. I’m certain of a great many things, but I embrace uncertainty because it makes me a better person. I do make mistakes; it’s part of being human. The real error is to be too certain to see my mistakes. Certainty becomes a prison for my mind. Humble uncertainty lets the truth emerge. That’s why I believe in uncertainty—but I could be wrong.