I enjoyed dropping out but also enjoyed dropping back in, but I'm about to reach that place where dropping out may be in the works again. I'm older than dirt and pretty warn down by recent events. Seems like the economy is always throwing up roadblocks or the political situation changes or something unpleasant happens at work that just knocks me sideways. I work in education in a state that's going bankrupt and racial tensions are high due to recent changes in the law. Yep, I'm in Arizona, which is on a fast track to becoming a police state.
I just gave up loving Idaho because the winters are hard on my old bones, but I think I may have to divorce my love of the desert, or move over a state or two to be able to relax.
When I was young, no one ever questioned authority. The world was made of vanilla pudding and Howdy Doody. (Most of you won't get the reference to a cowboy puppet who hosted a cartoon show on early television). All a kid had to do was get up, go to school, pay attention in class, and wait for the final bell so you could go to a home where Mom in the kitchen and cokkies were waiting for you and your friends after an afternoon of play. Well, at least that's how they advertised life back then. And I believed it all the way through to high school, where I had to decide which college to go to (it was expected) and how I would spend the rest of my life (you pretty much stuck with whatever, back then). They gave us all some kind of test which was suppossed to help us choose the proper career. Mine came back "forrest ranger" which did not go over well at home. My parents decided "teacher" so that's what I went for. Art teacher, because I liked art but didn't seem to be very good at it. Not professional quality, anyway. So I went off to college thinking I was going to fit into some mediocre career track, and that was ok with me.
Then I actually got to college, across the bay from San Francisco. I arrived in the summer of 1968 (which, perhaps some will recognize as the Summer of Love) and suddenly the world fell apart like sand escaping under my feet at the ocean's edge.
Sex. Drugs. Rock and Roll...and not necessarily in that order. There was no order. It was suddenly EVERYTHING all at once. Suddenly, this stodgy middle class middle of the roader was spinning in the center of a new universe, located in Golden Gate Park.
There was a bumper sticker that explained everything: "Question Authority". Me? I never questioned anything. I never went out drinking in high school. I never stayed out all night or made my parents mad. I never consciously did anything I wasn't suppossed to do. Suddenly I was in the middle of choices I had no previous experience in even considering, much less making.
Oh, yeah. I dropped out. But only in my mind. I stuck it out and got my degree and my first real job. I was miserable at teaching. School had always been easy for me, so I had no idea how to get knowledge into students who were struggling. I had all kinds of institutionalize prejudices I had to work through, like being sarcastic about people in poverty (why didn't they just get a job?) or being cold about folks in trouble (tv sets in jail? we should treat prisoners like, well, prisoners!) Exposure to the hippies showed my I needed to question everything, but that didn't mean it was easy!
And, then, as time went by, I could see the Flower Power generation wilting around me. Pot was being badmouthed as a "doorway to the harder stuff", and although it never did that for me, I certainly watched way too many of my friends go down on heroin. It was like the dark side came in and took the flower children by surprize. It was all happy, and then it was miserable. I think the mob walked in, saw a bunch of stoners with no focus, and merchandized the lot of them into heroin addicts overnight. You like that stuff? You'll LOVE this stuff!
A rather perceptive and cool dude named Steven saw this comming, bought a bunch of old school busses and dragged a large portion of the street scene with him to the Appalachas to live in a commune. It was so successful they eventually operated their own "peace corp" sending folks to developing countries all over the world, training midwifes and carpenters, etc. There was a write up in National Geographic like ten years later. But that was only one of thousands that tried and failed.
I tried it with a group of friends still connected to the university...some grad students, some like me already employed. What I saw was families developing and as soon as the kids got to be school age, folks saw the need to drop back in, to support their families, and also...the kids got to the age when they could inadvertantly turn their parents in. So, the differences in morals and politics tore the communal relationships apart. Turn on, tune in, drop out became Get Real, get motivated, Get a Job.
I got a job.
But I couldn't stand it. So I moved out of the city and into the wilderness, bent on living off the land. I nearly starved to death. I got another job. I had more time to myself. I could continue to study meditation, to develop metaphysical skills with and without drugs. I went nuts for awhile, in the classical "wounded healer" trip. I made spiritual connections with the Otherside. I got stronger. I discovered I could heal in a variety of ways. It didn't feel right to charge for it, though. So I was torn. Stay in the wilderness, move to town, or go back, all the way back, to civilization. I tried all three, eventually going back to the Real World due to an eminent need for medical insurance (I needed surgery and I didn't want to owe anybody anything)
By this time, I had to go back to school to learn about computers in the classroom if I wanted to continue teaching (the only thing I had ever been trained to do). I enrolled in grad school, found a program called "Art Therapy" and, BOOM. Suddenly I recognized this made so much sense. I spent the next six years training to become a Real World therapist while also keeping up with my Alternative Medicine roots. Therapists are the new shamen. I fit right in. But then, I started actually working as one. The mental illness industry sucks. There's always this uppity psychiatrist with all sorts of his own issues dictating what I can or can't do. There's people trained in old school ways who disrespect new ideas. There's paperwork and policies and...me, who just wanted to help some people.
So I went back to teaching, only now in Special Ed. This allows me to be there, helping kids with emotional problems, very discretely doing whatever I can slip in to help them deal with their vibes. I cannot advocate drugs, but I can help them deal with their addictions in terms they understand, helping them understand, showing them spiritually uplifting takes on puzzline situations. But, of course, this is a difficult dance.
Looking back, I am challenging some of what the Baby Boomers did when we broke free from authority and I'm critical about a lot of long-term effects we didn't see (and should have). For instance, "free love" is cool if you're a male (translates to "free sex") but it's spiritually demeaning for most women (who are preprogrammed to love and be loved or be miserable). Being stoned was a necessary transition from knothead to enlightened seeker, but we smoked way too much and neglected our kids a lot. Those kids! Free love produced a lot of kids...birth control was just beginning to be available but felt wrong, like another form of control...so a lot of kids were born to folks who were going through a second childhood themselves. Not the best parent material. (I later counseled many of these kids, and I know it was rough on them)
We questioned authority and we broke it down. There was a time when violence and bad language was banned from movies and tv. What have we gained by allowing it? What government control program has allowed our unsupervised children (parents have to work and aren't able to watch what their kids do...and end up not paying attention) to nurse themselves into adulthood with violent video games as the underlying foundation for "what to do when something happens". Yes, we know the games aren't real, but we build our emotional reactions and our internal belief system based on things we do over and over again. Playing violent games may not push you into violent behavior, but it will curdle your through processes, making you restless for peace, but no longer believing peace is possible. It sours you on life, in a strange way.
So...a product of your times, you get into spice and WOW, there is more to life! You suddenly get the urge to go hug a tree, to move back to the land, to eat fresh homemade bread and grow your own vegetables. Yes! Those are all great things! But don't forget: you can buy a breadmaker at Walmart, you can shop at the local farmer's market, you can visit trees on your vacation, or move near a park. You don't have to quit your job and go build a new life in unfamiliar territories, where you have no skils and face perils you have no idea are out there.
Start, instead, by building a new life right where you are. Practice all the urges you are feeling, drawing in your friends and family. Go vegetarian. Be an example. See what it's like to nourish yourself with complete proteins, figure out what works and what doesn't while you have your present support system in place. Work with a community garden and find out how difficult it is to grow vegetables, enough, anyway, to feed yourself and your family for a whole year. Study on these things...Remember, 50 or 100 years ago, people lived off the land all over the world. And what did they do? They invented ways to get as far away from it as they could! It was back-breaking work, long hours, no pay. The only truly successful hippies were the trust-fund babies or the ones who wrote books or had some kind of home business who didn't have to work in the real world. And a lot of them ended up back in the cities as urban warriors, fighting the system from the inside.
Ok, so I said I'm about to drop out again. I hate to end of a dour note, but I began on one, so here it goes. I am about to qualify for social security. This is not something I have been looking forward to. I have led an on-again/off-again semi-alternative life style for years and haven't paid into it much. So, if I decide to take it, I will have to cut way back in my already meager lifestyle, which means I won't be able to pay the taxes on my land in the wilderness (my original hippie homestead has been invaded by upscale vacation homes so the taxes are horrible). Nobody's buying anything, so if I drop out before it sells, I may lose it to back taxes. If I wait to drop out until the property sells, I may go crazy trying to hang on in a world that makes less and less sense. Until I sell it, I have no way to start up anywhere else. In a life that has been full of interesting choices and continual movement, I am suddenly becalmed. I don't like it much.
So I am hamstrung by the realestate market, by "down turns" in the economy, at the other end of that long and winding road, ready for that cave to retreat to, but there is no cave.
My mind is clear but my heart is tired. I feel like Forest Gump...I have seen it all...but my shrimp boat never came in, and now there's this huge oil slick headed my way....(sheesh. good analogy) But oh well. A couple of deep sighs. A set jaw relaxing, a calm tone to concentrate on, some deep body yawns...a little drumming rhythm gets started...my feet begin to move, a smile starts to break through...Oh, what the heck. Life is beautiful. Something will turn up!
Light and love,
Chal
Nice story though.
