The Twilight of Our Idols

[this article was originally posted to my Facebook page in June 2015]

I can remember hearing, on my car radio in 1997, of the death of actor Jimmy Stewart.  Two things immediately came to my 29 year-old mind:

* "I kind of thought he would live forever"
* "I feel sad for my parents' generation"

Today, nearly 20 years later, we learn of the death of actor Christopher Lee. It has been a long time since I could forget that even famous people pass away.  And the sorrow I feel this time is for my own generation's loss.

We see them now a little more often than we saw them before, don't we?  The online posts about heaven gaining another angel.   It could be a pet.  It could be a classmate.  It is, with increasing regularity, a cherished relative of the previous generation or a parent.

And, here we are: the 40-something masters of the universe, agog and bewildered that the people we all looked up to for so long are turning over the keys to the kingdom, increasingly, to us.  I marvel at how many of us announced their children's graduations from high school this year.  We have now produced a new generation of adults that look up to us the way we looked up to our parents (whether that's been clear over the previous several years or not).  Many of them will have felt, on learning of the death of Christopher Lee, the way I felt when learning of the death of Jimmy Stewart.

So, besides evoking a sense of poignancy with these observations, what is my point?  Simply this: Life waits for no one.  We, the remnants of the Baby Boomers and the vanguard of Generation X, find ourselves, finally, in the driver's seats of our worlds.  No more hand holding; no more training wheels.  We are now "they", "them" -- "those people" who, increasingly over the next two decades or so, get to say how our families, our neighborhoods, our governments, and our society will go.  There is no longer the shadow of someone greater than us hiding us from our moment in the spotlight.

Seize the scepter - lay hold on the empty throne.  Our idols have grown frail and are abandoning us.  We 'get to say' now; it is our turn to be looked up to.

Announcing My Name Change

On this day, January 13, 2014, the day before I achieve 46 years on the earth since my birth -- I discard all names previously given to me or taken by myself and I choose and embrace a new name, Mark Donohue Valor.

tldr; Because I can; because the new name pleases me.  All the world's a stage, and I have changed my stage name.

To the more interested:  One year ago, I journaled that, on the way to embracing Transcendentalism (the affirmation that everything is eternal spirit, with the physical world as a transient illusion), I discovered that Materialism (the affirmation that everything is physical, with the spiritual world as a transient illusion) was the underlying reality of the universe.  I've had 12 months to try out this mental 'suit of clothes'.  Each passing day since has served only to strengthen this conviction.  In the English summary of the ancient words of the Roman poet Lucretius: "There are atoms, and the void, and nothing else".  Far from bringing any sense of depression or despair, this understanding has opened up a new and exciting life of wonder, joy, and personal growth for me.  I wholeheartedly embrace it and already inject it into every expression of what I say, do, and create.  I am such a different person today than I have been in the preceding two decades that it would rather be a fraud NOT to express myself by changing my name.

Honestly, I never was a "Buddy", a "Bernard" or a "Bernie" in my own mind.  Loving, wonderful people hung these monikers on me to give me a good start in life.  Each of these names has served to identify a particular epoch of my life through the years as I worked through important transitions -- from the meek child, to the scrappy young man elbowing his place at life's table, to the hopeful seeker of profound meaning.  I freely confess that each of these past phases of my life has taken longer, far longer, than it has for some of my contemporaries.  Yet, at each transition, I wrung more and more traces of magical thinking from the fabric that is my life.

And further:  When I was young, my family used to travel to Indiana in a motor home to watch auto races.  The very first 'idol' I ever had in my life was a thrilling race car driver named Mark Donohue.  He dominated every racing circuit he drove in.  He fundamentally changed the rules of racing with his knowledge of physics and his willingness to tinker and experiment with the mechanics of his racing cars.  The title of his autobiography is "Unfair Advantage".  He died as he lived while practicing for the Austrian Grand Prix in 1975, immortalized at the top of his game like Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, and Buddy Holly  To this day I am moved and inspired by his life.

If you insist on calling me by the name you knew when you first met me, I'm probably not going to knock myself out correcting you.  Those who matter most to me understand that this is just as big an event for me as someone else's christening or marriage.

Celebrating My Mother's Life, 26 Years After Her Death

26 years ago on a Friday the 13th, I was at a rehearsal for a Christmas play at Jimmy Swaggart Bible College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when the Dean of Male Students interrupted us to escort me back to his office. Nothing could have prepared me for that call from my sister, informing me that our mother, Norma Jean "Stormy" Falor, had died.

She was a fighter. She was a crier, She waited tables to put herself through secretary school after dropping out of high school to elope with her sweetheart in the Air Force and then facing the disappointment of divorce It was as a waitress that she met my father. After getting a break to join the steno pool at Toledo Edison, she worked her way up all the way to Executive Secretary to the President. (All while helping my dad produce his Masters thesis.) When John Williamson would fret and fume over corporate difficulties, she would take him by the arm and lead him to the glass walls of his 15th-story office, point to the streets of downtown Toledo below, and say, "Look at all those people walking around down there, Mr. Williamson, just as if the world weren't coming to an end!"

When I was born, the doctor had to inform her of my heart defect, warning her that I might not make it to infancy when surgery would be possible. She looked him in the eye and said, "Bet me!" She made many mistakes, some of which (drinking and smoking) drove me from her home and put her in an early grave. But none of that can ever blot out my admiration of her, my gratitude for all she was and did for me, or the sweet sorrow I feel that she did not live to see me come into my own and lead an extraordinary life.

I've lived more years, now, without her in this world than with her. Yet the memories and the love remain strong. I know she would be proud of me. The occasion of today's anniversary gives me the opportunity to express publicly, "I'm proud of you, Mom and I celebrate the brief, dazzling spark that was your life."

Meeting Princess And Her Family

I recently had a mind-expanding experience. A boy invited me into his father's gem shop in nearby Bastrop, Texas. There was a cabinet with an aquarium by the door that had a piece of notebook paper on the front with the word "Princess" written on it in magic marker.

The boy explained that princess was their pet tarantula and that she guarded the shop. While the father told me about his business, the boy took the screen off the top of the aquarium and took Princess out, holding her in his hands. I had never before been that near such a large spider. I turned to the boy and acknowledged the creature. She reared back, waving her two front legs in warning. The boy asked if I wanted to hold her. I said, "sure".

I held my hands open together near his and Princess hesitatingly approached. Then she decided to walk over onto my hands. When she did, I could feel the most unusual, marvelous adhesive sensation as the tips of each of her legs moved about on my palms. The father explained that a tarantula has its sense of smell in its feet and that if you raise one from infancy, it will bond to you through that sense like any other pet.

When my visit was over, I thanked the boy for letting me hold Princess. He thanked me for holding her. I had just made friends with a new family in a very old-fashioned way - by socializing with them about their pet.

Why I Believe In Open Relationships

Twenty years ago, while facing the end of my marriage, I happened upon the late M.Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled. In a footnote to a section about "The Myth of Romantic Love", he mentioned a book by a couple named O'Neil entitled Open Marriage, commenting,

My work with couples has led me to the stark conclusion that open marriage is the only kind of mature marriage that is healthy and not destructive to the spiritual health and growth of the individual partners.

I was certain he was wrong at the time, but not certain enough to dismiss the idea completely. I put it on a back burner of my mind.

For seven years after my marriage ended, I entered into a series of relationships with the best of hopes and intentions, collapsing my identity into each new "us" and then suffering great heartache whenever a relationship ended. I was convinced that if I were simply wonderful enough, the other person could not fail to reciprocate the contributions of devotion and attention I lavished upon her. Except that she actually could. This was a shocking revelation.

During this time, I picked up Peck's book again and much more of what he had to say about mature adult behavior began to sink in. In addition to other ineffective behaviors, collapsing my identity into each relationships created a mutually suffocating situation that was never sustainable. In becoming so interested in her, I was failing to be interesting. What she needed was a man who she could respect and admire more than a sensitive, doting devotee. As I reflected upon these facts, I knew that I deeply desired to love someone who I could respect and admire as well. My romantic relationships improved dramatically.

Around 2005, I was exposed to a worldview which taught that true happiness could never come from another person or, indeed, from any source outside of the self. For, if it came from outside, it could be diminished or taken away by something outside the self and was therefore not true happiness. I swear I heard a band of angels singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" when the full impact of that insight penetrated my mind. All of my life to that point, I had been waiting to find "the one" who would complete me and make me happy. And the joke was on me: I, myself, was that one. Not only could no one else do it for me, it was unfair and unrealistic to hope or demand that she could. The women in my former relationships hadn't left me at all. Instead, I had inadvertently pushed them away.

As I started to pull all of these insights together into a coherent framework for living, a number of unexpected implications arose. Since love is infinite and unlimited, it never makes any sense to say "I love you if ..." or "I love you as long as ..." Also, there is no because to love. If I love you, I love you because I love you. Having a rationale for your love would be like like calculating a mathematical formula for why you like your favorite color. It follows therefore that true, authentic love can never depend upon the behavior of the one who is beloved.

And, if you think about it, you have never changed for the better because someone has demanded it. You may have altered your behavior to assuage your own guilt or to avoid unpleasant confrontations. But real change only happens under the nourishing rays of openness and acceptance. When you realize that someone truly believes in you and trusts in his or her heart that you'll turn out just fine in the end, there are literally no lengths to which you will not go in order to to prove that person right.

And now for the part you were expecting me to address much earlier in this article: monogamy. Here's all you need to know about monogamy: jealousy is rooted in fear. Perfect love casts out all fear. Therefore, insisting on monogamy as a condition of love is a contradiction in terms.

That may be all you need to know, but I'll develop the idea a little further for the benefit of the uncynically curious among my readers. Consider that if you and I share true love:

• I can no more hurt you by having a romp with someone else that I could by eating broccoli or washing my car. The source of your happiness and completeness remains within you.
  
  
• Worrying about what your family, friends, neighbors, or co-workers will think of our situation may be an interesting concern, but it has nothing to do with the love that we share.
  
  
• Imagine the powerful bond of intimacy we could build if we would laugh at one another's weaknesses and trust that nothing in this world could threaten what was real between us.
  
  
• Prohibition has never been an effective behavior modification policy. It usually only serves to create a flourishing black market where people with perfectly normal human tendencies go in order to find what they are looking for and a bloated prison system with millions of lives wasted and prevented from reaching their full potential.
  
  
• Dr. Peck was right. Only adults treating other adults as adults get to escape the myth of romantic love and discover a life where interesting, whole people can share in each others' lives without suffocating one another.
  

Remebering June 4, 1989

Twenty years ago this week, hundreds of Chinese pro-democracy student demonstrators paid the ultimate price for their courage to stand up against the corruption and repression of their government. I haven't often reflected on the events of that magical summer which heralded the end of world Communism. But all it took was a photo in the news this week of that solitary Chinese student standing peacefully yet defiantly in front of a column of tanks to bring back a rush of deep emotions. My guts wrenched, my lungs heaved, my tears flowed, and I was 21 again - full of idealism and belief in the ultimate triumph of what is good. Connected, in some mysterious way, with my brothers and sisters from that time in Warsaw, and Bucharest, and East Berlin, and Beijing, and Moscow.

It is, frankly, irrelevant to ask whether the Tianenman Square massacre "accomplished" anything useful. Pundits will debate whether or not it was a wake-up call to the leadership of the Chinese communist party, or whether it helped lead to the years of economic prosperity that many more Chinese citizens now enjoy. What it means to me is that our species occasionally surprises itself in bright, shining moments when nothing matters to us more than the freedom of the human spirit. We cast off the conniving, calculating, resignation we feign (in order to "get by" in modern society) for something far greater and worthier. We put everything the world has told us is valuable at risk in order to win a prize that is impossible to justify or even quantify with mere numbers or arguments.

As Jim Reeves used to sing, "Life goes on and this old world just keeps on turning." There are jobs to do and spouses to love and kids to raise and bills to pay. These incredible events rise and fall and rise again when they are called for. But I was quite surprised by how viscerally and profoundly I could feel the emotions of my 21 year-old self. Perhaps you will experience this some day. When you do, do yourself a favor and feel it fully. Let the tears flow and the lungs heave. It is good practice for keeping the human spirit free.