Passion for Essence – An Excerpt

Visions of apples…Macs, iPones, iPads, Magic Mice, Magic Pads populate my living and work spaces. But it’s the Magic Apple genius that chassés and struts and skips along the worn dance floor of my mind.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently – they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Steve Jobs US computer engineer & industrialist (1955 – 2011)

The suicide Nez Donoff left the explanation, I could not simplify myself. Mine would be, I could not explain myself. Maybe they’re the same thing. After all, if you cannot simplify down to the essence of something, how can you make a substantive explanation of anything? Steve’s is a pretty good fit – it seems he understood the essence of those who can’t just leave it be, just settle, just bake a cake, make a casserole, put on a smile, give a pat on the back whether deserved or not and just float on the luke-warm deceptively calm surface of the bottomless, often inhospitable sea of possibility. I’ve been trying to explain this to my therapist for years, the kindest man I have ever met and going by my brief but intense foray into therapist shopping highly proficient, who tells me I would be much happier if I just didn’t have to teeter on the edge all the time. Maybe he’s right but there’s a sort of essential happiness in heeding the call to search for the essence, root out its flaws, push without relief toward perfection that will push the world forward.

Throughout my years at a large college where I administered disability services, we were required to participate in those horrid personality inventories that based on your answers to several poorly worded questions drop you off the gallows platform into a box, your “personality type”. No matter the inventory du jour, I was always solo in my box while my coworkers clustered elsewhere. One of those inventories pinpointed my fiece persistence and determination and the fact that I tend to put greater store in intellect and information than in feelings. Another listed traits similar to the first with the addition of an insistence on high standards and a need for solitude. I do not despise authentic interaction, collaboration, warmth. I’m even known in some circles as a hugger and a comedian, a weeper over the suffering of animals, children, the elderly. I despise the superficial, the false, the pseudo-anything. I despise it because it hides behind a smile, a gift, an outstretched hand that’s quickly withdrawn when anything of substance is at stake. I despise it because it’s a cloak I must wear to prove that I possess the right kind of social consciousness.

We live in societies and therefore must by nature or nurture have at least a glancing brush with social consciousness. We call villains those who fail to develop or choose to shed that consciousness. But we are equally intolerant of those whose social consciousness does not mirror our own and we don’t seem to care if social consciousness is limited to the breadth of its exhibition.

Most of the people with whom I have shared moments here and there have been the cake bakers, casserole makers, smilers, back-patters who have a dogged insistence that nice people express only joyous satisfaction with the pastel positive. I have loved the authentic ones. Marie B. comes to mind, my assistant when I was teaching deaf toddlers. She loved the children and loved me, wooed me with cream cheese cakes and stuffed artichokes. I used to say a bit of Marie’s heart was at the center of each artichoke. I don’t know whether she changed the world but she surely touched my life. Sections of the fabric of society would unravel without nice people like Marie.

But not all “nice” people have Marie’s brand of niceness. The less authentic have quite definite rules of how niceness exhibits itself and an insistence that the rest of us conform. I’m not resistant to all rules and even obey most of those I find ridiculous, like the useless traffic light in my subdivision that serves no purpose other than to force a halt at an intersection that rarely sees opposing traffic. I’m not fond of arbitrary social and workplace and status quo rules, like the “nice” rule.

One day I was complaining with some gusto that the college had developed yet more materials that were inaccessible to entire populations of students with disabilities and that no-one in my department seemed to care a whit. In the midst of the uncomfortable floor-gazing and annoyed throat-clearing, a student walked into our meeting, smiled, and said, “Just want to say thanks for getting me into my classes.” His advisor said, “This is what I live for – that students smile and say thank you.” Then she captured me under the beam of her sweet smile, a superior, pointed reminder that my negative focus was not nice, that my toxic dissatisfaction with what was after all the college’s best effort was yet another indicator of my poor fit with the well-mannered family of my coworkers. I’ve rarely felt more round peg’ish. I personally don’t give a rat’s ass whether students smile and say thank you. I live for equal access to education – the pure, definitive opening of a door, of a mind, that was previously closed. Students need not glance back at me while they gather that access under their wings and take flight with their peers. Disability services at institutions that serve mainly non-disabled students is charged with ensuring access for its minority populations. It’s a profound falsehood to hang our social consciousness on a smile and a thanks while we shun our essential responsibilities.

Another of my least favorite rules is that we don’t tell each other what to do, that we each have our own equally effective ways of executing our work, that each style and each opinion carries equal weight. I couldn’t agree less. First of all, this lofty idea is too often a boat full of holes in a shark tank where the chain of command rules with razor-sharp fangs and an astounding propensity for vengeance. Second, laziness, sloppiness, complacence, and passive-aggressive resistance are not work styles. Third, not every opinion is created equal. This is one reason why research has proven that mindless insistence on “teamwork” rarely lays a golden egg. First we must have worthy goals – goals that address essential needs for change instead of narcissistic needs for comfort. Then, thoughtful, intelligent, focused dedication to finding substantive solutions can extricate us from the goo of status quo and push us toward realization of those goals. Social consciousness dictates that we not only exercise the right but also assume the responsibility to tell one another how to set worthy goals and achieve them. Some may choose to forego that right and responsibility, which requires that others step up. We comprise a society after all and must hold dear our society’s essence and strive with all our might to move it forward. Our field of endeavor is a subset of society with an essence to hold dear and move forward.

So let there be room for the cake bakers, casserole makers, smilers, back-patters. Let there also be room for the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the rule haters… the ones who see things differently, the ones whose passion to keep pushing and never settle rubs raw the bedsores of the perennially sedentary, complacent, power-bound, while moving the world forward.