Category: Lessons

The word of the day is bioluminescence.

You might already know what it means. Somehow I have lived fift . . . um, a long time, but did not know the word until I Googled it Thursday, although I guess I’d have puzzled it out in the usual way we break down words for their meanings. Loosely “bio” — natural. “Luminescence” (luminous) — related to light. Natural light.

This word came across my new desk at my new job writing for Old Dominion’s public-affairs staff. My small, break-him-in assignment was to cobble together a news release on a lecture to be given next week by an expert in marine organisms that “glow” in the ocean deep.

Hmm. I read up for a bit on the guy and his research, took the dense title of the planned lecture — “dense” speaking for my non-academic self, of course — and turned out a functional addition to the slate of happenings at ODU.

It all made me smile, even still after my kid shot down my bragging about learning this new word by informing she’s long known it. My satisfaction, though, was for the very small victory, the modest validation, it provided me. When I was considering the job, an enticement to me was the chance to work in the vibrant environment of a college campus with really smart, diverse people discussing really smart, diverse things. Impactful things. So many things I didn’t know or think about. Things that explore and describe natural mysteries and social solutions where I was unaware there were mysteries and solutions to be found.

I could have come across bioluminescence in prior random reading. Heck, I probably have and forgot it or skipped over it. But in this  context, working now among an academic setting for the first time since my undergrad days, learning and incorporating this new scientific word, I’ll be honest, it made me feel good. One day older and just a tiny bit wiser — or at least less unaware — to the world around me.

Clearly, a Ph.D pursuit will not be far behind . . .

(Stay safe out there on the still-frozen tundra, friends. )

I’m blowing the freelance-writer monthly budget for this brief trip to the Bay Area to see this kid of mine who suddenly lives and works here. Some piggy bank protecting rainy-day reserves is in for a pummelling, I’m afraid. Sorry, piggy. But if there’s something I’ve learned as gray (silver?) layers thicken atop my head, it’s paying for experiences is the far more delicious pain than paying for, you know, the superfluous stuff of our desires. Like, I’ve wanted some stupid brand of stupid car for a while. Doesn’t matter which one. I started noticing it all over the place once I started to want it. Want … not need . . . but feel, in my more self-centered, insecure moments, that I’ve “earned” it or whatever, because I’ve been told life is short, etc. etc.

I’ve resisted pulverising the piggy, though, and for that I pat myself on the back. Good boy. Good parsimonious boy. Except flying on relatively short notice to San Francisco and paying for a few days out-and-about is one of the more extravagant American urban pleasures, I have to admit. So my responsible financial profile is skewed. Skew it. Um, screw it.

Because we will appreciate and remember these few days forever, the things we see and do in the short, spare time she has as she learns a new job among new people in a new land, and before I return to wander into a new employment adventure myself.

We will sit and talk and laugh and eat and drive and cry — me, I mean, always freaking crying — (as an aside interesting to perhaps only me and a few of my closest friends, I also will pay a decent penny to witness professional golf on the world’s most beautiful stage, yards off the Pacific blue and its sweeping fogs) before the time comes again for another goodbye.

And I can’t wait for every sweet second of it, for every ch-ching moment that will mean so much more to me, by untold multiples, than wheels in the driveway, a designer suit in the closet or the screened-in deck that’s been demoted down the to-do list for 20 years in favor of more urgent to-dos of younger days. Those days when “experience” is often  by necessity just the commute to work or a trip to the doctor for ear drops to soothe a screaming baby.

But as years gain and days diminish, we find dollars take on a different purpose. They sustain, naturally. But they are never as worthy as when they are able to enhance the sensual thrill of being alive, for ourselves, for friends and loved ones, or for anyone who benefits from the power of their philanthropy in any form.

I am beyond grateful for the ability to blow the budget, here and perhaps there, to buy a permanent imprint on my heart.

We stepped into the stables and rounded the corner. Inside the first stall stood Jack, a magnificent brown Percheron that had spent most of his 16 years pulling Amish carts in Pennsylvania.

Chris, the Air Force veteran who would groom and ride Jack this day, leaned into the space, whispering to Jack. The horse stepped forward, lowered his massive head and, as Chris stroked the side of Jack’s face, nuzzled into his friend.

In that instant, my eyes stung.  I had to blink, remember to take a breath. What the . . ? It shocked me.

I had only met Chris about five minutes earlier. He had agreed to be the subject of a story an insurance company hired me to do on Equi-Vets, an equine-therapy program in Pungo.

I didn’t know Chris’ own story yet, why he was drawn to Equi-Vets last year or what communing with horses did for him.

But in that first moment, when my throat reflexively tightened to dam in my professional composure, the truth was clear.

Like the members of a military unit, this beautiful, powerful beast had Chris’ back. And Chris very much had his.

Chris spent the next hour walking, talking, trotting and running with Jack inside a riding arena and across some of the 92 acres off Heritage Park Drive on which Equi-Vets, and the more populated Equi-Kids program, operates.

In a compulsive minute toward the end, Jack even dashed off toward the stables, evidently spooked by a noise or some potential danger. However, Chris rode so steadily during Jack’s flight, it appeared he had asked his mount to let it out, or however Horse Whisperers say “step on it!”

Only after Jack eased to a halt near the barn and we caught up in a golf cart did we learn that Jack had acted alone in his hair-raising jaunt. But Chris, who’d grown up riding horses, steered with the calm assurance of a man who knew far greater peril, transferring that confidence through his hands and legs and voice to his best friend for the day.

I haven’t ridden a horse. An elephant, yes. Not a horse. Still, it takes zero horse sense to see how and why equine therapy is a wondrous tool for physical and emotional rehabilitation. Horse people have long known this. They could cluck with condescension at my wide-eyed, “Wow, horses are awesome,” announcement, as if I’d uncovered a huge discovery. But to the credit of instructors Susan and Liz, they nodded and said, “Yep. Aren’t they great?”

Equi-Vets, yeah that’s great, too. Wounded veterans ride free of charge, although if they can’t or don’t want to ride, they can groom, walk with and talk with the horses, whatever works.

There is incredible power in any and all of it. The veterans are broken, in ways inside and out that many of us cannot fathom. Chris’ personal story of his year in Afghanistan leading engineers trying to build infrastructure is beyond haunting.

He told me he has found conversation with counselors has its place and its purpose.

But one gentle eyeful, let alone one hour, of him loving a noble horse, sharing with it in soft word and silent thought secrets he shares with no human, speaks a much different language of healing.

For some, it catches the breath. For others, it completes a fractured soul.

(Equi-Vets can be reached at 757-721-7350)

(Photo courtesy jasonhirschfeld.com)

If I were ever asked to give a commencement speech – and to paraphrase an old joke, I wouldn’t want to attend any college that would have me as a commencement speaker – I know what I’d say. I’d tell all those perfect fresh faces that if they are perfectionists, snap out of it. Today. Right now.

As with so many life lessons, I learned, or am learning, this kind of late. The added knife-twist is I chose pursuits – writing, and briefly before that, playing baseball, among our most failure-soaked sports – that especially mock perfectionists, then knocks them down, beats them about the head and neck with a pillowcase full of oranges and sneers, “Sure, kid, come on back and let’s go for perfection again tomorrow.”

But that was always my devilish deal with perfectionism, that it was in fact the perfect motivator for whatever task was at hand. I figured if I tried to write the perfect story, or play the perfect game every single time, I’d of course have high standards (so admirable!) and would at least get close to perfect when I inevitably fell short of perfect (so determined!).

The problem with such high-mightiness, though, comes when you struggle to accept that inevitable imperfection part. It unbalances the equation. I couldn’t complete the formula. It was as if I should possess some magical infallibility that would make me the only infielder to catch every ball and make every throw. As if I should have some extra proprietary gear, known to the most special achievers, that would propel me toward the glorious sports-writing sun every time my fingers touched a keyboard.

What a bunch of insufferable crap. God. Shut up.

Perfectionism weighed down so much of my life, my 31-year journalism career, my marriage, my parenting, my piano- and guitar-playing (I noodle), pretty much anything I touched. It abused me, tormented me, frustrated me, made me feel unworthy, pretty much made me just a total damn joy at parties.

That isn’t correct, though, because perfectionism only did all that because I allowed it to. Allowed it to explode my head if it took me multiple stabs at some stupid household chore for which I had no aptitude;  think Ralphie’s dad in “A Christmas Story,” clanking and cursing the furnace. I was who allowed the satisfaction of conquering an oppressive p.m. deadline — getting the column or story done and in — to die amid almost immediate post-filing angst that Sports Illustrated certainly wouldn’t be sending a limo after reading more of that meatball surgery.

The sports psychologist Bob Rotella writes in his great book “Golf is Not a Game of Perfect” that while “striving for perfection is essential, demanding perfection . . . is deadly.” I read that once upon a time. Must have skipped over that nugget. Pursued golf anyway. Still stink at it. Still tomahawk clubs into the turf now and again after a shank, as if I’m supposed to hit it like Rory Freaking McIlroy.

Ah, but all that internal self-tomahawking happens nowhere near as often, or with such flair, here as I come out as a recovering — I hope — perfectionist. And that hints at perhaps a happy ending, because for pretty much forever, I was as bad as they came at forgiving myself. At being kind to myself, being my “best friend,” whatever you want to call it. I didn’t even understand the concept. Thought it was yoga-babble. It’s embarrassing to be that developmentally challenged, that inwardly inept, so far into the game.

The good news, though, is the game isn’t over. And that while wisdom was later arriving than it should have been – but blessedly so over a past few years of personal tumult and regular shortfalls — it arrived nonetheless, informing me that gratitude is not a platitude, but something real and precious and human and humbling, no matter your transitional stage on the spectrum.

I think that’s kind of what I would yak at the commencement kids, what I’ve tried to reinforce of late to my own kids, who fortunately get it. To take care of others, first take care of yourself. Forgive your flaws. Work to improve them, but forgive them. Breathe. Apologize. Pat your back. Congratulate the full and honest effort. Stir the essential pot of ambition, sure. But don’t muddle it with that demand for perfection, that expectation of it. That’s a disease, the counterintuitive curse that guarantees a complete picture of yourself will never emerge.

Yeah. That’s what I would tell the kids.