117. Yearning

Harpo knows me well, both my strengths and my weaknesses. And he knows how I felt about my Dad. That's why he used my father to cause me to wonder if I had taken us down the wrong path. Was that unfair of him? No, I don't think so. It's what a brother would do. And what I should do is "man up" and admit I was wrong. If I was. I'll think about it.

My father was a real man. Confused, depressed, wrong-headed at times, but with a solid dedication to bringing up his sons in the religion of his ancestors. He believed he would stand in front of God some day and answer for how well he accomplished that goal. Any of his sons leaving the Church, as my older brother did eventually, would wreak dire consequences on Dad's eternal life, or so he thought.

My father loved us, cared about us and cried with us through our tragedies. He waited patiently for us when we lost our direction. He was strong and he was weak. To me he was what he should have been, just Dad.

On reaching mid-life I was surprised to be afflicted by that same crisis that hit my father during my teenage years. I imagined living the life of a monk would protect me from mid life crisis, but in my forties I remember sitting here in the woods and drearily plodding through my daily routine. There is indeed evidence of the malady's universal existence. I've read that someone did a cross cultural study of human mood in subjects aged five to eighty-five. The curve of contentment swept down in a “U” around age 46 for everyone, whether the person lived in a skyscraper in New York City or a mud hut in the Congo, whether their entire possessions fit in a goat skin bag or they needed temporary storage lockers in addition to all the closets in their home.

My vow of poverty has alleviated any attachment to lots of junk, I believe, and I've come to view the Rule more as a relief than a burden. But one afternoon in a flea market looking for used kitchen utensils, something caught my eye. I really wanted it and if not for my vow I would have taken it home and treasured it.

There, high on the pile of stuff was an old pendulum shelf clock with a large white face of Roman numerals mounted behind a small glass door, just like the one my father rebuilt fifty years ago and placed on the mantel in our living room. That was shortly after his doctor told him to lighten up and get a hobby. What he really needed was Prozac, but it wasn’t available yet. In time the drug would diminish more melancholy among the Irish than bales of four leaf clover. Or barrels of Jameson’s.

I don’t know where I got this concept. I probably made it up, but I always thought that deep inside each of us sits a ticking clock. Really smart people like Jung or Aquinas had other names and a different vision for what they called the psyche or soul. But I picture a clock ticking away, urging us to find goodness, identity and our real self. The ticking reminds us we have only so much time. The sound is not always loud. It is often weak, as if the clock had gone on ahead and is waiting patiently for us somewhere farther up the trail.

My father’s clock banged loudly as he reached his middle years. His friends called it mid life crisis. Jung might have said Dad’s psyche was fighting myths and individuating. I don’t know what Aquinas would have said. He was a strange guy. But I think Dad’s clock was ticking away with impatience. And it didn’t plan to let him alone until it got his attention.