Survival Stories

You wait, you watch, you listen.

You know that in the eyes of the world, you're impossibly compromised in your opinion. You are hopelessly biased.

Everyone knows you hear what you want to hear, and see what you want to see in this kind of situation. The flip side of that is it must be assumed that you do not hear and do not see what would be unwelcome information, such as the type that might break your heart.

This is personal, after all.

But, if you are trained and experienced as a journalist, you do not have the freedom to close your ears and eyes. So you are acutely sensitive to any information that might undermine your hypothesis. Like scientists, we always are testing our theories. Unlike scientists, we are expected to come to conclusions -- a naive and unfortunate social assumption.

But at some point in this process, you have to trust what you see and hear, after vetting it all by being your own worst devil's advocate.

You have to form an opinion. And you must come to a judgement. So what may be 'naive and unfortunate' collectively turns out to be absolutely necessary personally.

After all, you have to tell the story.

When I leave this world, my hope is that I will be remembered in several ways -- as a good friend, partner, father and grandfather, brother, mentor and colleague. I also hope I am remembered as a storyteller and I hope at least a few of my stories survive and thrive out there in the future beyond my time.

It's a modest goal, I believe, for one who has written millions and millions of words, but who may never achieve any real success in conventional terms.

I don't write for money, I write for love.

***

This essay was mostly written on Father's Day, late at night in a hotel room in Turlock, where it was hot outside, and my soccer-playing son was sleeping inside after playing in a National Cup game.

His team has been improving all year and is now ranked #14 in the enormous state of California.

In one way, I was writing the above about being his father, but I could have written the same words about my relationship with any other of my kids.

I feel the same pride in all of them, and if prompted, would write reams of praises for their accomplishments, and even more, their natures.

It's just easier to write about soccer, that's all. It's quantifiable, immediate, and palpable.

In the end, everything for me is just a story. There are happy stories and sad ones. Fantasies and true stories.

I'm the Paternal family member and also the storyteller. But I have at least a dozen or more other story tellers who will survive me. Children, grandchildren, former partners, and so on...

I hope they all find their ways to some form of story telling -- text, audio, visual, whatever -- and share it with the world, or whatever portion of the world they reach.

If we all share enough of our truths, maybe we will survive as a species, even as climate change and other dire threats engulf this planet.

I hope so!

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