It is sad to think my greatest achievement in life may have already occurred back in middle school during the early nineteen sixties when I beat Carter Dutcher three consecutive times in the fifty, seventy-five, and one hundred yard dashes during our public school’s annual Field Day competition.
One of my favorite short stories I first read back in 1987 or so was written by my editor friend and teacher Gordon Lish. The story was titled The Death of Me. It begins with one of the very best of his opening lines, “I wanted to be amazing.” That story depicts a fictional young Gordon winning all his Peninsula Athletes Day Camp “all-sports field day activities” and then expecting his parents, peers, and teachers to emphatically acknowledge his remarkable achievements. The story spoke to me as I had a similar real-life experience, and though Gordon may or may not have made-up his story, he nonetheless describes my own personal feelings of self-worth that I managed to woefully mishandle for quite some period of time.
It is sad to think my greatest achievement in life may have already occurred back in middle school during the early nineteen sixties when I beat Carter Dutcher three consecutive times in the fifty, seventy-five, and one hundred yard dashes during our public school’s annual Field Day competition. I had always been the fastest sprinter among all my friends, and even quicker than some of my older peers. But then this new student named Carter Dutcher moved to town and rumors began to circulate that he would likely beat me. Of course, I worried that he just might, but I was determined to do the best I could and let the chips fall where they may. I remember feeling anxious, along with that rotten poisonous feeling stressing my body that lasted for days or even weeks leading up to the day’s events. In the meantime, my fellow classmates were busy picking sides and making wagers of one kind or another over who would be the eventual victor in these important upcoming races. There really weren’t any other Field Day events more worthy of anyone’s attention than these three races. And I do not remember preparing for these sprints other than involving my imagination, picturing myself winning all three, though the results were not at all a sure thing given the hype surrounding the purported elite speed of this new guy Carter Dutcher. We were not friends and never would be. I also cannot remember him being a classmate in any but our fifth or sixth grades together. I want to think the Field Day I am referring to happened in the sixth grade because after attending that particular middle school our class graduated to a new junior high wing recently built off the main building that housed the high school situated about a mile away. By that time Field Days were over for us and we were pretty much only interested in basketball. I did retire a champion at sprints and turned my focus instead on being the best player of basketball in which my superior skills did last through the eighth grade before I fell far behind my peers during the maturation process. Plus I rarely practiced. From then on my life’s course would be determined by this reluctance to practice and this pattern would continue for the next several years until I became a miserable failure, and in turn, quite unhappy. Even in light of my great love for music and literature, I indulged myself in vices such as cigarettes, pot, and beer which unwittingly invaded my prior focus and I quickly went down the tubes from there.
Why I did this to myself I cannot explain. It is probably why I write. Years of therapy and self-help study have assisted me, but I am significantly no closer to actually figuring out today what in fact happened to me back then. The easy way out would be to simply accept my prior mental and emotional difficulties as being the result of my environment, but I think it goes much deeper than that. We are all born with certain inclinations and though I began reading books in earnest beginning in elementary school, nobody ever encouraged me to seriously develop my rather obsessive interest in literature. And I don’t blame them. Perhaps I could have developed the courage to overcome myself and my inadequacies had I been a different person, but I did not learn that particular skill set until after the age of thirty-two when I achieved my alcoholic adult bottom, a basement I feared I would never climb out of. But I did, eventually. And I found it is never too late to bear down and get on to the work at hand. After thirty-eight years of sobriety, what is left of my life is committed to furthering my continued quest for self-knowledge and understanding through reading, writing, and living the best version of myself that I can muster. There will certainly be additional false starts and several new beginnings, but I do intend to keep striving for excellence in the same manner that resulted in that one day of greatness in which I undeniably did beat Carter Dutcher in three separate races on our very last Field Day ever. But the most expansive and remarkable difference today is that I religiously practice every one of my special callings and would never take for granted any secondary or even noteworthy achievement that might come my way.
It is unlikely I will ever achieve another victory that equals the exhilarating feeling I had so many years ago when on Field Day I beat Carter Dutcher in all three races. And it is not as if I have given up either. Obviously, I still pursue fresh exhilarating feelings or I wouldn’t hazard these additional risks to my marriage and relationship. And why I do what I do, or sometimes don’t, has for years escaped my understanding. Of late, the neuroscientist Sam Harris has helped immensely in this quest.
…If the laws of nature do not strike most of us as incompatible with free will, that is because we have not imagined how human behavior would appear if all cause-and-effect relationships were understood…There is no question that (most, if not all) mental events are the product of physical events…you are not in control. This is obviously true in all cases where a person wishes he could feel or behave differently than he does…You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm…___Sam Harris from his book Free Will
Sixth-grader Mike Sarki rules the day. I bet you were cute but I’d never let you know it.