The following Life Report was submitted in response to my column of Oct. 28, in which I asked readers over 70 to write autobiographical essays evaluating their own lives.
Final Grade: F
Family
Neil was born in 1940 into a Bostonian Jewish family (1st generation American), replete with all the Jewish baggage. He spent his youth in a small anti-Semitic Catholic blue-collar community in rural Massachusetts, and bears both the physical and emotional scars from that experience. As a consequence, he disavowed Judaism the moment he reluctantly finished reciting his haftarah and became an atheist, agnostic and, in contradiction, a student of Zen Buddhism. After spending his lifetime witnessing Israeli arrogance and provocation, he has also become an ardent anti-Zionist.
Neil vowed to escape his hometown and never return. That has come to pass. Happily, he was taken for a Gentile for the rest of his life, so never suffered another arrow.
Neil’s father was an attorney; his mother, although college-educated was, by edict, sentenced to life as a stereotypical housewife. As a consequence, Neil became an outspoken proponent of women’s self-determination and the pursuit of higher education.
Neil’s mother was a loving, protective parent. Neil’s father was authoritarian and dictatorial. He resorted to corporal punishment, especially on every occasion when Neil asked “Why?” As a consequence Neil was, and remains, anti-authoritarian and benevolent. Unable to tame him, Neil’s father turned him over to the Gestapo at the Valley Forge Military Academy (a distinction he shares with J.D. Salinger and, ironically “Stormin’ Norman”). Not surprisingly, VFMA failed in its mission (as it failed with J.D, who fled in a hurry) and produced, instead, a quasi Holden Caulfield.
Despite the inner turmoil, and utter lack of self-confidence that plagues him to this day, Neil found his calling at age 10 – architecture – and somehow went on to earn degrees and scholastic honors from both the University of Pennsylvania and the Architectural Association in London.
Wishing nothing more to do with his father, who was not a positive role model and prophesied, “Neil will never amount to anything,” Neil unconfidently spent the rest of his life running away and fulfilling that prophecy.
After completing an undistinguished (owing to his innate disregard of authority) 2-year military service as an Army officer, Neil first went on to practice architecture, but only in other people’s firms working on prodigious projects, most of which never materialized. Lacking sufficient design talent and self-confidence, he authored no work of his own.
He willingly spent his entire architectural career outside the U.S. (further distancing himself from his father), but never in one country long enough to put down roots. However, he achieved fluency in several languages, enabling him to easily form strong bonds with his foreign colleagues and their communities and assimilate their cultures, with one glaring exception discussed below.
Neil’s last posting was in Tokyo, where he fell victim to Japan’s economic collapse of the late ’80 –early 90’s. It was during his tenure that he met his future wife, a much, much younger Chinese physician and the daughter of non-Communist Chinese surgeon father and chemist mother who were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. They married—he very, very late in his life—in Tokyo.
Given his age and long absence from the U.S., prospects for finding employment were few. So Neil and his wife changed horses and headed west. Thanks to opportunities created by Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door Policy, they created trade, manufacturing and winery businesses in China. There, for the only time in his life, Neil encountered an inscrutable people (a trait heretofore and naively not evidenced in his wife) and the great east-west moral and ethical divide, one he was unwilling to cross at any cost. Neil wished to leave the Middle Kingdom. His wife declined. She had the best of both worlds: U.S. citizenship, businesses in her motherland capitalized entirely by her husband and their 2 children. Everyone reaches a defining moment in his life. This was Neil’s. He abandoned everything and everyone and returned alone, at long last, to the U.S.
Neil has been estranged from his wife, now a naturalized American, for 6 years. He fathered 2 daughters, American citizens, to the education of whom he (unlike his own father) devotes his entire energy. Both are being raised non-sectarian, but aware of their Jewish roots. The first, raised and educated both in the U.S and China, is now, from all outward appearances, a confident, well-adjusted and studious U.S. university sophomore with a strong foundation anchored in her two cultures who is finding her voice and searching for her place in the world. The second lives in China, being raised solely in the Chinese culture by her mother and relatives, and educated in a Chinese elementary school. She appears to be growing up well, despite the absence of her father and lack of exposure to American culture, except for mandatory ESL classes. Only time will tell. Although he does not visit China, Neil is in frequent communication with her.
Neil found architectural employment upon his return to the U.S., but fell victim to the Great Recession in 2009. An aged dinosaur, the prospects of being rehired were nil. He changed horses once again and was retained by The First Tee organization to instill sustainable core values through the game of golf in at-risk inner-city children. He lives alone, in good physical health. Less must be said of his state of mind. Family, for him was everything; without it, he merely exists.
Neil has a sister 3 years older than he with who he was rivals, and a brother 8 years younger, too much separated by age to bond with. His lifelong physical separation from his siblings led to an emotional one as well. Neil’s later return to the U.S. has done nothing to alter the estranged relationships.
In summation, the sad condition of Neil’s family lives appears to be the consequence of Nurture defeating Nature. He never took ownership of them, deferring instead to the dictates of his father’s script and prophecy. He abandoned both of them. Although he is a father, given his conduct, there is some question as to whether he warrants the distinction of parent. If there is anything redeeming in his latter family life, it may be the lives of his daughters. Until they come to be judged, Neil’s entire family life must be considered a failure.
Grade: F
Faith
Neil is a man of little faith: He believes in the Golden Rule. He believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. He believes in the tenets of the U.S. Constitution. He used to believe that Love conquers all.
As for Faith, Neil has none. Throughout history, more death and destruction has been perpetrated in its name than any other. So much, but not exclusively, for Judaism. In the 21st century, both secular and sectarian institutions are perpetuating the destruction. In whom or what, then, does Neil place his faith?
In summation, Neil has failed to find and follow his spiritual lodestar. Surely, there is one in the vast firmament. Perhaps, his parents failed to teach him how to search. Perhaps he hasn’t searched hard enough. Whatever the case, he failed.
Grade: F
Community
As noted above, Neil’s first exposure to local community was painful. His hometown was steeped in anti-Semitism. And hypocrisy. Its Gentile members were not above calling him a Dirty Jew and keeping its children away from him, and disassociating themselves socially from his parents at one moment, then running to his father to defend their felonious parent or relative the next. So Neil grew up intolerant of prejudice and bigotry. So he did take an eye for an eye. Neither did he feel any sense of obligation to serve the community that persecuted him.
Owing to the peripatetic nature of his life, Neil never became attached to the communities in which he sojourned; yet willingly agreed to be the ESL tutor to his office colleagues and their communities. It was his way of repaying the numerous cultures that embraced him without prejudice, and the world community at large. Neil was most often mistaken for a citizen of a country other than the U.S., as he did not fit the stereotype of an arrogant, supercilious and unworldly American. Upon discovery, most foreigners favorably altered their misperceptions.
After a 50-year absence, Neil is slowly adapting to life in the U.S. He lives in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious housing complex in one of the most dangerous metropolitan areas of the country. He and his immediate neighbors live in harmony. In addition to his work with at-risk youth, he volunteers his services to an organization that collects and distributes medical supplies to medical clinics and hospitals in third world nations.
In summation, Neil has made a modest effort to serve the communities in which he has lived. Perhaps, it has been too little, too late.
Grade: C-
Self-Knowledge
“If only Neil knew then what he knows now…” But exactly what, in fact, does Neil really know about anything?
He knows, for sure, that life passes in the blink of an eye;
He knows that he has been blessed with a healthy life and, although a member of the (gainfully unemployed) lower class, has been relatively free from want;
He knows he was blessed to be born in the U.S., and raised in its democratic yet unequal, unjust and prejudiced society;
He knows he was blessed to be educated in the U.S.;
He knows he was blessed with full faculties, a myriad of opportunities and great potential that, for lack of self-confidence and determination, he didn’t access, seize and realize;
He knows he failed to achieve mediocrity, let alone greatness;
He knows that every choice he made, from marching to a different drummer to taking the road less traveled had consequences that brought him to where he is, for good or ill;
He knows what it feels like to be persecuted, to hate and to fall in love;
He knows how to smile, laugh, cry, howl at the moon, sing and dance;
He knows how to cut the umbilical joining a mother to his daughter;
He knows the scent of a woman and a rose;
He knows the taste of a grand cru and of tears;
He knows the joy of cooking;
He knows the rapture that comes from making and listening to beautiful music;
He knows the pleasure of comprehending fine literature, poetry, painting and architecture;
He knows travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness;
He knows the indescribable feeling of his child’s hand in his;
He knows the value of friends and enemies;
He knows happiness and sadness;
He knows what it feels like to be young and grow old;
He knows what it feels like to fear dying;
He knows the feeling of loss of a loved one;
He knows the ecstasy and agony of marriage;
He knows, to paraphrase Michael Josephson, “Though he may judge himself by his best traits and most noble acts, he will be judged by his last worst act.” For Neil, that last worst act being his abandonment of his family;
He knows he can’t re-live his life and “do it right;”
He knows what it is to fail;
He knows how much he doesn’t know, which is almost everything;
In essence, Neil knows he was and is
an Eeyore not a Tigger;
a pessimist, not an optimist;
an aimless grasshopper, not a purposeful ant;
a dreamer, not a doer;
a nomad not a settler;
a voyager, not an adventurer;
a spectator, not an actor, player or participant;
an ascetic, not a Sybarite;
a grasshopper, not an ant;
an architect, not a designer;
a follower, not a leader;
a slave, not a master;
a recipient, not a contributor;
a student, not a teacher;
educated, not learned;
intelligent, not knowledgeable;
ignorant, not erudite;
a loser, not a winner;
a coward, not a hero;
an American, not a Chinese;
a loving husband, not a beloved husband;
a father, not a parent;
a failure, not a success;
a sad human being, not a happy one.
In summation, Neil never amounted to anything…
Grade: F