On a Saturday afternoon many years ago, I attended the memorial service for a friend’s spouse. After the formal service there was a coffee time and I was sitting beside a man I didn’t know. I guessed he was about 65. His tanned visage and rugged physique suggested he had spent many years in the outdoors. Turning to me he asked, “What line of work are you in?” I sensed he wanted to know what sort of person I was. Possibly my long black hair and beard intrigued him. Funerals often prod us to dig a little deeper.
“I started as a heavy equipment operator and truck driver,” I replied. “It really wasn’t something I wanted to do my entire working life. I spent 4 years at SFU and earned a degree in sociology and political science. I got a job in community corrections and my work now takes me into prisons like the B.C. Penitentiary, Oakalla, Matsqui Institution and others. We deal with inmates and parolees who have committed serious crimes, including bank robberies, drug trafficking and murder. Our purpose is to provide the supports they need to move beyond a life of crime.”
We talked for about half an hour and when he pushed back his chair to leave he said, “you’ve had an interesting life already. I don’t regret having been a carpenter all my working years, or that my wife and I never moved from this community. I suppose though we could have ventured more.” There was a hint of chagrin in his voice.
I was reminded of this encounter recently while reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She believes we are all walking repositories of buried treasure. “The hunt to uncover this treasure,” she says, “that’s creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place, that’s what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one.”
Looking back now, I have to admit I never really had the courage to embark on that hunt. I was shy and lacked confidence in social situations. Fortunately, I did get help from several sources. Linda and I had been married about two years when I woke one morning, startled by a thought that seemed to have been placed on a shelf directly in front of my face, waiting for me. The thought was “stop living tentatively.” It unsettled me and I wondered where it had come from. Although I had little interest in religion then, I seriously wondered if an angel might have swooped down from on high and deposited it there. I pondered the meaning of this “message,” but didn’t immediately tell Linda.
A second source of help came from the oft quoted poem by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. She wrote “I bargained with life for a penny, and Life would pay no more. However I begged at eventime when I counted my scanty store. For Life is just an employer, he gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages,why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial’s hire, only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.”
After much discussion, Linda and I agreed we didn’t want to arrive at the end of our days and conclude we had lived tentatively, that we had “bargained with life for a penny.” I left my job operating heavy equipment and Linda resigned from a very secure position at the Royal Bank. We loaded our van and drove to 100 Mile House, without a plan or significant means. We bought a lot on Sheridan Lake, lived there in a tent for about 3 months, then decided I should apply to attend SFU.
Looking back over the years now, I don’t feel I ever became really adept at opening doors of opportunity. However, my curiosity has at times prodded me to lean against a door standing ajar. There have been a few I should not have entered, but I’ve come to somewhat understand Elizabeth Gilbert’s contention that “a creative life is an amplified life, a more interesting life,” even if sometimes we stumble.