28. When all is said and done, what are you left with?

In elementary school, I won the contest for doing the most pull-ups.

As a kid, you just show up and they tell you what you're going to do. That's the thing about elementary school, and about western civilization.

For no reason at all, it was a school-wide contest. They gathered everyone together and had a big board for the top scorers. "Here's a pull-up bar." "Here's the proper way to do a pull up."

I had never formally done any pull-ups before. I remember how enthusiastic we all were for each other. When someone tried, we applauded their effort. When anyone did well, we cheered them on to do their best. It didn't matter who won. We were in it together.

I won. The teachers seemed the most surprised. No big medal, no giant-sized check.

This was during an era before computers were in every classroom. In fact, they had a bus they brought around to different schools that was filled with Apple IIes. When it came around, you climbed aboard and sat at a computer and practiced typing games. I entered my name as Ace. Aboard that magical bus, which to me felt like a spaceship, I wanted to be known as Ace. I did well at the typing games. And then I got in serious trouble for entering my name as Ace. I didn't understand it at the time, and I still don't understand why any grown-up could get so bent out of sorts for that. I suspect it has something to do with the school imperative of the "permanent record."

Ace wasn't my nickname. More than most kids, I was always pretending.

In fact, I had to work really hard to pay attention in school. I think the best illustration of how this felt for me is as an auditory phenomenon.

“Yo ae areee oouh remow har eh. Keep your eye on the ball.”

Gym class was held in a big auditorium. The acoustics were atrocious. The teacher insisted on speaking really loud all the time, and her words echoed and resonated. I could never really discern a single goddamn word she said. So when she laid out the rules of whatever game we were going to play, that posed a grave problem for me. I looked around, and no one else seemed to have a hard time. They all seemed zeroed in in a way I wasn't. I had to pick things up as I went.

I experienced the same phenomenon during most classes. The teacher would talk about something, and I would just not be able to follow their words. When it came time to do something, I clicked into place and figured out what I needed to do. More than the expected ones, I cultivated the skill of just clicking in and figuring things out in the immediate moment.

I have come to value this trust in the immediate moment greatly, and it's what I try to offer other writers as a writing coach and in books like Deep Freewriting. Just dive in. Just dive in. Just shut up, friend, and dive in. The words will flow when you get out of your ordinary mind and decide that you want to write, not necessarily what you want to write.

Valuing this trust has been hard-won. For most of my life, I have thought of this part of myself as a defect — something missing. I took AP English in high school, so in college, I tested out of English Composition, so I never had to take these classes. Then in grad school, when I had to teach them, I confronted the material for the first time.

“What in the hell is a narrative essay?” I thought. Like most material in English class, it sounded so forced, so mannered. It just sounded like a way of making something really beautiful so very un-fun.

I brought this question to my students, and together, we built the concept from a more deconstructed space.

"Well, a narrative is just a way of telling a story... and an essay is this formal structure for presenting an argument, typically in 5 paragraphs."

I worked hard to be the kind of teacher I would have paid attention to as a kid. I didn't do a lot of prep work. Sometimes that bombed. But for me, what made something worth paying attention to was whether it felt spontaneous and unscripted. I stressed to students that they always find a way to make the assignment work for them, to write about things they personally care about, whether or not it seemed to fit the assignment. I gave them the general guidelines to set the expectations for general form and structure and stressed that they not worry about them too much. The best learning comes from doing, not from getting a grade.

The standard five-paragraph essay is actually a really beautiful thing, but only as a form that you bring yourself to agree to, not as this scary thing you are supposed to conform to. There's no one right way to do an essay, because an essay is a structure. I think the same is true for life.

The doing that leads to greater being

One of the most precious things about life isn't what you earn or win but what you yourself cultivate. What you put in. What you cultivate through the alchemy of your intentions and actions.

Everything I have learned about karma points to a law of cause and effect so cosmically vast that there's no practical way I could say my concept of good and bad holds much sway in it.

Think of the butterfly effect — a butterfly flapping its wings might ultimately cause or prevent a tornado on the other side of the world. Everything, whether large or small, has unpredictable and far-reaching consequences when we realize just how vast, complex, and interrelated the system is.

I believe our talents — our creativities and things that we have worked through internally — are really all from life that we get to keep. Not our possessions, not the way people think of us. I don't think the after-death experience is one where a father figure like Santa Claus assesses how you've been good and bad. I believe a person's own judgment of themselves has more of an effect. I also believe that the powers that be are far more gracious than we are of ourselves. Yes, even Trump. Because I believe after death the personality level falls away.

Me Tarzan you karma

Pretend you grew up in the jungle where no such rule as "right and wrong" applied. What are you left with?

I think it's more about whether you can get stuff done. Power, in the most fundamental sense, is the ability to effect change.

If we look at the oldest stories, at heroes like Gilgamesh, it's easy to have a read through that and conclude, "Man, that guy was a big bully. He did whatever he felt like. And some of that stuff was pretty messed up." He’s hardly the protagonist of contemporary stories.

The Once and Future King has a lot to say about this idea of "might makes right." It took a man who lived backward in time to teach us that those who have power aren't necessarily inherently right in their actions simply by virtue of their ability to enforce their will. Merlin brought Arthur the New Imperative — "Might for Right."

Those with power have the responsibility to use it justly, and thus we have chivalry and the round table. A knight is charged not just with protecting their own interests or the king's but protecting the weak, ensuring justice, and striving for high moral standards in their actions.

I especially like that last part: Hold yourself to a high standard and allow others to be as they are.

Judgment be damned, and creativity will thrive.