My Year at CVOEO (2)

November 6, 2018

Forward 

Joseph Campbell discusses the journey of the hero. In it the hero journeys far and wide in search of some secret or power, encountering existential dangers along the way, given courage by the imperative to acquire that secret. Only at the close of the final ordeal, in which she or he both prevails and is transformed, does s/he achieve the new power, enlightenment or maturity, which allows them to go home with a gift, a new beginning or salvation. The hero can’t be sure she or he will survive the final ordeal until they have. Until then, the existential dangers remain active and threatening.

I am facing my final ordeal. What will I do with my experiences, my hard won new knowledge, my varied and often undocumented stories? Will I discover the secrets I was sent to find? Will there be secrets to name? Will I arrive home with a reward for the travails of the journey, or will my journey prove barren? I don’t know. I can’t know. And I can’t go back. Jan promised that this would be a year of discovery. She posited that my journey would inform the project. In the word “discovery” I was given no road map, no “right” or “wrong” way to follow. I was entrusted with a mission, a distant landmark, a mountain, heard of, anticipated, described, barely seen, to reach. Between myself and it, my thickets, my glades, my rivers, my dark and fetid swamps. Between it and myself, people of the villages, other travelers, to consult with me, to tell me how to find the mountain. No one lied to me, but few enough had answers to my questions. Kindness, earnest desire to help, but this would be my journey of discovery. Jan promised this would be a year of discovery, but what we did not know is how personal that year of discovery would be.

I have tried to understand how to be effective in the world. I have alternated between that constructive, pioneering confidence which seeks to contribute and create, that anticipates a better future, and that destructive despairing at my irrelevant, ineffective, lonely, pained, meaningless existence. More than a decade ago, in pursuit of this wisdom (how to be effective), I came to understand that effectiveness is a product of relationships. Healthy relationships, in which each partner feels a benefit of something meaningful being shared. I came to understand that the pain I felt, the alienation and hostility I projected toward others, that my inability to trust, to bond, to attach, fully explained my ineffectiveness in the world. To be effective, I would need to open my senses, feel what other people feel, respond with myself, put myself in relationships. I would have to do this in spite of my fear, in spite of feeling deeply, existentially, unsafe.

I do not believe that emotions or skills, supposed and projected in a persona, are real; I cannot simply decide to be different. The choices that I have are in the realm of what I do with my body, to whom I bring myself for interactions and relationships, to whom I listen, and my willingness to learn. The places and people I bring myself to, in turn, interact with the totality of who and what I am, producing changes. I change myself by choosing the challenges I must answer.

But I do not control the changes that result. I do not decide whether my inner resources are equal to the demands being made on them. I do not decide in what directions I grow or do not grow. I am an observer, a participant, and a choice maker. I am not the master of my fate. I am its occupant.

These efforts produced, since 2014, a series of new opportunities. That year, I began work with Vermont Associates, which placed me and paid me, so I did not have to ask for a job, but I got paid, and I began to rebuild my record of employability. The first year I was at the Daystation of COTS, where the homeless of Burlington taught me interpersonal skills like calm, respect, and empathy. Then I spent two and a half years at CEDO, where I “networked” with inhabitants of the political machinery of Burlington, and I practiced kindness, empathy and responsiveness to the needs of others, and made real connections.

While at CEDO, I was invited to participate at the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. Here the process continued, but now as “a person with lived experience” of homelessness. I understood myself to have an obligation to the provide representation for the homeless community. I would try, within my limits, to listen, provide help or solace, and to convey the real needs of the homeless to the alliance, the City and the community.

In these roles, as a Vermont Associate and as an advocate in the homeless community, Jan invited me to be part of CVOEO, where I wrote a report to inform its future development.

Audacity, the willingness to challenge myself and others, has led me here. Pursuit of wisdom has led me here. And finally I learn why I am here. Each of these choices, each of these acts, which has engaged me and connected me with others, has been driven by one central feature of my life: Profound loneliness, the need to be part of a loving family. Remarkably, I discover this about myself because my strategy worked. I have engaged, learned how to love and give, how to listen, how to be generous. Feeling loved in my community has allowed me to feel the pain of not being loved, hence to heal myself, and to bring healing to those around me.