way has closed behind me, and that's had the same guiding
effect."
I laughed with her, laughed loud and long, the kind of
laughter that comes when a simple truth exposes your heart
for the needlessly neurotic mess it has become. Ruth's
honesty gave me a new way to look at my vocational
journey, and my experience has long since confirmed the
lesson she taught me that day: there is as much guidance in
what does not and cannot happen in my life as there is in
what can and doesmaybe more.
Like many middle-class Americans, especially those who
are white and male, I was raised in a subculture that insisted
I could do anything I wanted to do, be anything I wanted to
be, if I were willing to make the effort. The message was
that both the universe and I were without limits, given
enough energy and commitment on my part. God made
things that way, and all I had to do was to get with the
program.
My troubles began, of course, when I started to slain into
my limitations, especially in the form of failure. I can still
touch the shame I felt when, in the summer before I started
graduate school at Berkeley, I experienced my first serious
comeuppance: I was fired from my research assistantship in
sociology.
Having been a golden boy through grade school, high
school, and college, I was devastated by this sudden turn of
fate. Not only was my source of summer income gone, but