This I believe...

This week ended the 4 year run of the modern series "This I believe" which aired on Sunday mornings on National Public Radio. Like many of you, I was fascinated by the reflective quality of the writings selected for the program. They were penned by ordinary people from all walks of life, writing clearly about the things in life the held on to as beliefs. It got me thinking about an essay I wrote a few months ago of a similar theme. I originally wrote my piece as a personal journal exercise as I tried to discover my foundations, make sense of my current midlife transition and the lessons 40 years have gathered. Here is a portion of what I wrote that day as my contribution to the "This I believe" series:

The opportunity to travel, has been a base from which I have formed many of my current beliefs. Roaming the world, its variety of cultures, the customs and habits of people with diverse values, has brought me to an awareness of the variation in our beliefs. I have gained an appreciation for what it takes from the personal spirit to solve basic yet complex questions of what we believe, in order to survive as unbroken.

I was fortunate to be born into a strongly middle class Ghanaian family that valued discovery, education and exploration. I was encouraged in my youth to wonder about and discover what was around the bend. At the age of 5, my mother placed me on an airplane to go from Accra to London for a school shopping trip. Upon arriving, I recall my wonderment at the different sounds of foreign voices I had never heard. The strongest impression I had on that first significant excursion was that my fears where separated from the uncertainty around me. I had a core sense that if I stayed determined, I would find my way through what I did not understand in that large airport to make my way towards my purpose. I recall the sense of certainty I got within myself as I focused on my mothers parting words to me, spoken in Twe and translated as “you are my greatest expectation”. Those words, drove me on. Her voice lent to me courage to focus on my path and to seek out my purpose for being so far away from home.

At the age of 11 y.o., I left home for good as the family struggled to fight against the military coups and political strife of that era in Ghana. I found my foundations jolted and tested. Overnight, my reality had been turned upside down. I ended up in America by my fathers efforts, living with strangers, akin to foster care. I became a servant boy, taking care of chores and the needs of the families I was placed with. All the while I searched inside for who I was and how I ended up so far away the life I new. I spent many years looking for a way to go back home. To go back to the life I had left behind, to the family that loved me, to the family I loved and laughed with.

As I settled into a reluctant life here in the United States late into my teenage years, I began to gain an awareness that it was truly too late to go back to my family. They had adjusted without me and moved on. This country would be my home. I somehow understood that I need to find a way to embrace the culture and manner of this great and diverse nation. I came to a realization then, that I would for the most part encounter Americans on their terms. In a manner of speaking, I will always be meeting others on their home turf. As that reality became part of my sense of the world, I became aware of the parts of me that I needed to maintain to survive in a fast moving complex world of interactions. Growing up alone, I took for granted those principles which had guided me out of Accra and into America.

I have traveled a great deal since then. I have made four major relocation's as well, each has brought a significant shift into a different phase of my life. Accepting these shifts have not been easy, yet they have shared consistent threads of my awareness of my core beliefs. The value of honesty and integrity in who I am, openness about my deeper purpose towards others, and a willingness to offer others a basic level of trust as a way of connecting our shared humanity.


In my travels and experiences encountering those who have not been so fortunate to have found a way to solve life's challenges, I realized the importance of knowing who you are at your core. Knowing what you believe in as a foundation of strength. Those core values have served me well. They have allowed me to discover within myself that I am not alone and that my journey, although without a family along the way to lean on, is not much different from what we all share.

It has been my experience that others, regardless of background respond to an honest expression of who you are. It becomes a base of finding out who they are. The people I have met in life thus far, tend for the most part to appreciate the open expression of ones purpose towards them. I have found that this has a way of drawing to you those that share a similar path and sending off those that don't share a path. I believe people, even the worst amongst us, respond well to being offered a clear level of basic trust when encountered. This core value of offering trust has protected me from harm in many dangerous places and in situations where focusing on my fears may have ended my life.

My sense of what I believe in is rooted simply in what feels comfortable to my being, what feels right when I spend time with a person, whether they are familiar to me or not. My beliefs are always guided by honesty, purpose and trust. My childhood instinct of determination grounds these beliefs in a base. Encountering others of varied cultures and customs through my travels have affirmed these ways to me. They may occasionally, require some variation in how they are expressed, yet these are my core foundations. I will venture to say they were in me at birth. Perhaps, someday soon, I will travel to a place where I will encounter my mother. I will ask her for myself if she saw these core beliefs in me in the years before I left home that fateful time.

Jobless and counting the days...

This week, I have decided to make myself the subject of my own blog. My concern is joblessness. I am an example of the people I go out and meet and like to give voice to. I am one of the functioning poor. In my case, I have had time to accumulate a few assets, which I have sold or exhausted in the last few months to keep the mortgage paid and food on the table. I have discovered in these times what it is to slide slowly into poverty and be close to losing your modest home.

Mine is an immigrants story. I started with nothing worked hard to find something and as quickly I am losing it all. I have sold almost all I have including my car and my truck in order to pay a few months mortgage. My personal humility and awareness of the suffering around me keeps me grounded regardless of my situation. I still smile to everyone I see and I still never miss my Wednesday's volunteering to cook at the Rescue mission in town. I watch those in the kitchen with me and realize that they are worse of than I. At least I still have my home.

I have been amazed to see and hear from the mainstream media for months very little comparative voice given to the real issue of losing your home because you can't find a job to pay the mortgage. Not all defaulting home owners as an example bought too much house. Some, as myself, who worked for 22 years in the construction industry as a construction manager, have been out of work since Aug. 2008 with no real prospects of going back into building condos or anything else for a while.

As I look for any work (cooking, book stores, etc.), It is painful to hear those who just don't get it, or those who are settled in safe jobs, speculate on what is going on in America. Please don't get me wrong, this is not an angry rant. It is a thoughtful heart felt open question to are better selves across the board.

What happens when an otherwise responsible, capable and gifted person finds themselves in a failed industry with few good prospects of returning to that industry any time soon? If you are me, you look at your other interests and take what you can get to survive. Day laborer work, cleaning after storms, anything that pays. Pride does not enter into the picture. What I am able to make from odd jobs goes towards keeping the heat on in the house, the electricity on so I can stay looking for work on the computer, and keeping the internet access going one month to the next for the same reason.

Joblessness is painful indeed. The lose of dignity and the seemingly odd assessment of the national conversation on every issue but the real cause, confidence, destroys one's moral further. Perhaps I have been under a rock, but convincing an employer to give you a shot at working seems to be the new rage in my mid sized City.

The number of interviews I have gone on are too many to count here. Leaning back on my woodworking skills to build furniture and make a few dollars has met up against a lake of spending in the stores. Of the 14 pieces I built for the holidays, only 2 sold. Being a life long cook, I have applied at every restaurant in town that will look at me. i am not that bad looking either.

I hear encouragement from people who say to me...let them spend 15 minutes with you and they will want your kind of quality and dedication on there team...well, it has not happened yet. This week I experienced another such disappointment after 4 interviews and a neglectful "you are over qualified in past salary, and we want someone with more cooking experience on the line." Okay, I can take rejection of this type. But how do you make the case to a prospective employer about the hunger in your heart, the desire and shear effort you bring to even cleaning the toilets for a shot at moving up the ladder. Perhaps I could wash dishes for the next three months and see what you think. Can i volunteer with you and prove myself worthy of a paid job when one opens up?

I walk across a bridge that was built in Jan. 1942 when I leave my house each day to go look for work. In Feb. of that year President Roosevelt signed the order to intern Japanese Americans across the country. It occurred to me this morning as I was walking across that bridge, that the Japanese Americans who lived in the neighborhood back then had to come across that bridge. It also occurred to me that February is here and if i don't find a job, the Sheriffs Department will be sending me across that same bridge never to return to the first home I so proudly purchased some five years ago.

Maybe I will learn about what life was like in the Hooverville's of the depression era. Maybe I will find work enough to stay ahead of my mortgage company's demands. How ever it turns out, I came to this country with nothing but the cloths on my back in 1981. I will find a way as so many others are to make it until work comes available again. I know I am done with construction, but at 40 years of age, I have so much life experience and promise. Surely, I can find something to do, this is what I tell myself as I plan for the worst.

The Poor At Christmas... A Series Of Short Essays - Part 1

During the depth of the Holidays, a little over two weeks ago on the winter solstice (December 21, 2008), I decided to expand my monthly walking excursions around town and spend some time in some of the areas I don't often get to. Namely I was thinking, the back alleys and hidden areas of our City. This walk was also unusual from the walks I normally take around town in that it was during the height of our recent snow storms. A week before this day on December 14th, Jill and I had rescued our now named new addition to the family, Lucy the Cat out of the beginnings of the snow event when the temperature dropped from the high 20's into the low teens in about an hour. The weather that week got me thinking about the poor and the homeless.

Its nice thought to think that most of the homeless use shelters during these extreme weather events, but as i discovered, not everyone follows conventional wisdom. It also depends on how you see that trade for a bed for the night. Needless to say, I got my boots on, put on some extra layers and got out in the weather to slog it for part of the day. I wanted to see what those of us that were down on our luck (i.e. the poor and homeless) were doing as they waited for the holidays to arrive. It was an interesting walk, which I documented in digital photographs.

I started from my home on McKinley Hill, walked past McKinley Park, past the Tacoma Dome and down to the Freighthouse Square Light Rail Station. I took the light rail down past the UW Tacoma campus, got off at the convention center stop and walked up to Commerce and 7th at the bottom of the stairs of the old lodge building.

Along the way, I met a few interesting people. The fellow in the sleeping bag pictured above is Sonny. Sonny is a member of the first nations peoples. He decided that his sleeping bag would do just fine in this weather. Up in the north country, he had camped in worse. He told me about his 'old lady' who had gone to jail last night in a neighboring City for trying to get a date so they could have some money to get a motel. He offered to hook me up when she got out, but I politely turned him down. He was a funny fellow. He laughed a lot for a guy who had been woken up suddenly by the sounds of boots compacting the airy cold snow feet from his sleeping place under a balcony. I asked if if he planned to get something to each later, he looked looked away for a second and then looked at me and said "I'll find me something, but first i got to go see about my old lady". That man sonny had his priorities straight as he say it. Who cares about food when your other half is in the tank.