This I Believe: Life Lessons (5 page)

I Have to See the World

Veena Muthuraman

Saint Augustine once said, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” Me, I want to read the entire library.

I believe in going places. I believe in getting out of my apartment and into my car or a plane and going to see a totally new place. I want to see the world in all its glory, with my own eyes and in the flesh; television and Google Earth just won't do. I believe that travel opens one's mind to new cultures and perspectives; it affords one a broader vision of life, a vision that does not come by sitting within the four walls of one's home.

I grew up in a small city in southern India. I was all of seven years old when we went to visit my grandparents for my monthlong summer vacation. Until then, my world consisted of our small apartment and our bustling city surrounded by pristine beaches, coconut groves, and misty mountains. I was aware of the existence of a different world beyond home, but surely I didn't want to spend my vacation in some backward village in a rural district of an alien state. We boarded a state transport bus, and I sat by the window, sulking.

Soon I noticed the wetlands giving away to parched land. The cities we were passing now were more crowded than the ones we left behind; people were darker, like me, and they were dressed differently. When I finally got to my grandparents' village, the landscape and the people were so vastly different from what I was used to that I was overwhelmed. A village with just one street, houses with tiled roofs, and all of the houses had barns with cows and bulls inside! I wanted to go see them, but I was scared. All of the village kids looked at me as if I was an alien from outer space, and I promptly hid behind my mother's sari and refused to talk to anyone.

Over the next couple of weeks, I slowly got to know the place and the people; I learned the other kids' games and played with their toys. They taught me how to milk a cow, how to catch fish in the nearby stream, and how to steal mangoes from my grandpa's grove. And finally, when it was time to go back home, I was sad to leave but ready for new adventures. Because by then I seemed to have realized that our little corner of the universe and the people who live here are too diverse and too wonderful to be left unseen. I had to see the world.

Years later, on a plane to this country I now call home, it was this desire to travel, this conviction that there's so much to see and to cherish on this earth than just the familiar places of my childhood, that kept me from breaking down and staying in India. My intense longing for my family, my friends, and the places I loved was countered by my anticipation for what I would find in the New World. And America has not disappointed me. The sloping Alleghenies of Pennsylvania where I spent my school years, the tall skyscrapers of Chicago where I live now, the colors of a New England fall, the deep crevices of the Grand Canyon all reinforce my essential belief that only by leaving the security of your home will you find the beauty of the world around you.

Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. . . . Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

I couldn't agree more.

Deciding to Live

Kij Johnson

I believe I am a climber.

Three years ago, a series of medical and personal crises took what was a clinical depression and made it something much darker.

I thought of it as falling—as jumping—off a bridge on a rainy, winter day: three seconds in the air before I hit the water and plunged deep into the icy cold, my heavy coat pulling me deeper. And the surface far overhead—too far away.

This is the question that kept me from making the image a real one: What if I changed my mind? After jumping into the water, the air in my lungs would fail me before I could swim back to the living world. I would know for those last seconds that I did want to live after all, but it would be too late.

I'm not sure why I started climbing. I walked through the door of the local climbing gym one day on a whim. It was an alien world: strong, beautiful men and women, towering walls under sodium vapor lights, white dust filling the air. Light instead of dark. Up instead of down. It was in every way the opposite of what was inside me.

The second time I climbed, I got to a move in which I was sure I would fall. I was twenty-five feet up on a rope, but I didn't know yet that I could trust it. I heard my voice say out loud, “I have a choice here: fear or joy.” What I meant was climb or don't climb, live or die.

In the more than two years since then, I have climbed hundreds of days—inside and out, sometimes tied to a rope, often not.

I do pay a price here. My body can be so bruised from hitting walls that people ask me about my home situation. Nine months ago, I broke my leg and ankle. I healed fast, but the risk remains. Next time I might not.

Climbing requires a cold-blooded decision to live. If I am inattentive or careless, I will fall. Every time I climb at the gym or rope up for a route outside or go bouldering—which is climbing without a rope, and it is often more dangerous—I am taking a risk. And I am committing to staying alive.

Now, I believe in climbing, in not jumping. Jumping would have been easy—just step over the bridge railing and let go. Climbing is harder but worth it. I believe that deciding to live was the right decision.

There's no way to describe the terrible darkness of depression in a way that nondepressed people can understand. Now, I'm less focused on the darkness. Instead, I think about the joy I feel in conquering it and the tool I used.

I am a climber, and I am alive.

Walking in the Light

Paul Thorn

I don't want to be a God-fearing man. I believe in religion without fear.

I grew up in a Pentecostal-type faith in northeast Mississippi called the Church of God of Prophecy, where my father was the pastor. At the age of twelve, I was sent to a summer Bible camp where fear was the motivation for belief. One night the counselors staged a Russian takeover of the camp, simulating the assassination of our camp director. Real shotgun blasts scared us all to our knees, and we begged God for salvation.

At the age of seventeen, I was disfellowshipped from my church for having premarital sex with my girlfriend. Since my father was the pastor, a meeting was arranged with me, my dad, and my Sunday school teacher. I was given two options: stand and confess my sins in front of the congregation and be forgiven or continue my evil ways and no longer be in the club. I chose to be disfellowshipped and became officially unaffiliated with the church.

I moved out of the parsonage, got a job in a furniture factory, and bought a used mobile home for $6,000. People from the church would come by my trailer from time to time to tell me they were still praying for me and that they hoped I would come back to Jesus before I wound up in hell. I just stared at the ground the way you would with a schoolyard bully and hoped they'd go away.

As the years passed by, opportunity took me all over the United States and to other countries as well. I saw churches everywhere I went, and I noticed something I'd never seen before. I met people who didn't pray to Jesus. You have to understand, where I come from the people who tried to teach me about God by using fear also kept me from learning about other paths to God. Any variation was described as a trick of the devil.

But I saw good, sincere Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews all walking in the light—as they knew it. I started to believe that no one is capable of knowing God's specific identity, so I decided to seek him down my own path, because I believe that's what he wants me to do. I talk to him daily. He never says anything back, but I know he's listening. I thank him for my family and friends, and I thank him for the good life I have. I still have problems like anyone else, but overall there's peace in my heart.

The people who were trying to get me to God used fear and intimidation like a hammer, beating into submission anyone who dared to question their brand of absolute truth.

The higher power I now pray to gives me love, joy, and comfort. And I'm not afraid of him. I had to break away from the God I was supposed to believe in to find the God I could believe in.

The Perfect Merge

Lori Vermeulen

I believe that the strength of a person's faith is inversely proportional to the distance she travels before merging when entering a construction zone.

“Merge!” the blinking yellow lights shout. “Merge! Go left! Move over immediately!” What's a body to do when faced with such clear direction as this? If I merge immediately, I will be obeying the law. Furthermore, I will be safely in the correct lane when only one lane remains. What else can I do but merge?

Well, there is, of course, a second option. The alternative is to selfishly speed ahead while leaving those early mergers in my dust. I can pass everybody and sneak into the merge lane at the last possible moment. This choice would put me in first place, and isn't first place the best place to be?

This is a simple choice if I am thinking only of myself. The decision only becomes complicated when I consider both the actions and the welfare of my fellow mergers. If all drivers merge as soon as possible, everyone will be in the right place when the two lanes become one. No one will be left behind. A perfect merge means that no one is delayed for even one second. But, let's face it: if just one individual chooses to speed ahead, a delay will occur for everyone when the entire merged lane must stop to let the speedy one in. And, in that case, he who merged first will wait the longest. Do I want to be the offender? The one who just “can't wait” and ultimately destroys the synchronous beauty of the perfect merge?

To love one's enemies is to merge early and wave to the guy who speeds on. Isn't that what all the great religions teach? I am a human being, and therefore I have a choice. I can choose to be selfish and a step ahead of everyone else, or I can choose to be generous and accept the risk of being left behind.

It is an act of faith to merge early. My faith in making this choice is not in the belief that all will merge early and no one will be delayed. Oh, no. As long as there are human beings, there will be those who will fail and fall short, and there will be times when I will be one of the fallen ones. My faith is in the belief that sacrifice for others is inherently good and making the choice to do good is the gift of being human.

I'm now a college administrator and professor, as well as a parent, so I've had numerous opportunities to look at many different perceptions of fairness and try to understand them. I tell my students and my own children that the important thing is that everybody has a choice, but the only choices you can control are your own. We find unfairness everywhere in life. I believe it's best to accept this and choose to do the right thing.

So I merge early because I can. And I hope that I smile and wave when stopping to let my fellow man in ahead of me.