The Path -for OWG#397

Charles pronounced his name something along the lines of “Chaalss.” He’d attended prep school in Groton or some other snobby town. He laughed and said, “I’m easy money.” He was referring to the young chippies who saw the preppy clothes and attitude and saw dollar signs. There was no money. A drunken father had wasted away the last of the wealth, and only a slender trust fund left by ” Grand Ma-Ma” had seen him through prep school and into Harvard. 

After a few dates, most of his young ladies melted away into the night. The one who remained saw through the facade to the unsure young man who tried to be courteous and a good friend to all. She was as far removed from wealth as possible—all she had from her family were her father’s brown eyes.

His night job as an orderly in the emergency ward paid the rent on the tiny room he rented next door to me. I worked days as a surgical technician in the operating room and moonlighted in the Emergency Room for extra cash. I was attempting to study for a degree nights. She was in a diploma nursing program, struggling to get her RN.

That Friday evening, I was their benefactor at the Harvard Gardens on Cambridge Street. They were celebrating their engagement.

Superficially, the three of us were as different as could be. He was, as he put it, ” a refugee from privilege.” She was from a low-income family, and nursing was a path out of family poverty. Me? I was escaping years of bumming around, playing in third-tier clubs, and narrowly escaping tough binds. The three of us were working towards a future where the sun shone naked in the sky, and we’d be free of the dark shadows of our pasts.

I like to say that we’d all achieved wealth and position twenty-five years on. But in fact, we hadn’t. We had arrived at stability, a certain degree of satisfaction, and relationships of love and respect. 

I ran into Charles one day while I was a guest lecturer for a friend teaching anthropology at a community college. I was there to talk to students about careers in applied and practicing anthropology. At lunch, my friend sought to introduce me to his friend, who turned out to be Charles.

Charles and I were off to the races in seconds, talking about the rodent-infested boarding house and some of the weirder things we saw in the Emergency Room. He taught history, and his wife, June, taught in the Licensed Practical Nursing program.

That evening, we discussed points of origin, departures, and paths through life over dinner. Charles’s special interest in history was Winston Churchhill. He suggested that Churchill had summed up our lives very well when he said:

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go. Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.“

I thought then, and I believe now, that Churchill had it right. We gain our lives through our actions, letting go of some things, struggling with others, and creating our own paths. We became uniquely ourselves. Not necessarily mighty successes, but satisfied with what we had built, not been handed or inherited.

Importantly, we were giving back to our society and helping others find their own paths.