Manifesting A Life Of Purpose
The 'life issue' that has been bothering me the most, for the past year, has been determining another version of my journey that would feel emotionally satisfying. In that regard, as has happened at various stages of my life journey, I've had to 're-invent and re-configure' what a Life of Purpose looked like for me. And it has not been easy (not much in the life of an incest and torture survivor is).
I had tried, in the early 2000s through 2010 or so, to manifest the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute [MMWI] as a 'going concern', as a nonprofit with a mission, funding and paid staff. For a while, in 2005, it appeared as though the Missouri Foundation for Health was going to be willing to fund my nonprofit -- they initially emphasized that "you are the only professional in Missouri who is working on these issues" -- but, after stringing me along for about a year, they informed me that their board had changed membership, and the new members were no longer interested in my project, no matter how rare or needed it was. To say that that rejection was devastating is an understatement; I had been researching foundations which could possibly fund MMWI and had not found another potential source. So, the shutting down of their initial interest left me with few, if any, options.
Further, while a cohort of my colleagues, many of whom managed other nonprofit organizations, were willing to 'brainstorm' with me on ideas and approaches to MMWI, none were able to assist in its organizing nor funding. And so I was left 'high and dry', without anyone else who was willing to invest the time and energy, along with my own devotion, to manifesting the Institute. And, frankly, doing it all alone was just too damned lonely. I simply did not have the emotional stability to manifest it all by myself. [I have, though, 'as a love of the issue', maintained the MMWI website, this blog, and a MMWI Facebook page in the years since. Hence, MMWI 'exists online'. Additionally, I am attempting to regenerate my Men's Wellness Ministry, at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, of which I have been a member for the past 21 years.]
I needed, though, to find some kind of outlet for the wealth of aptitudes and skills that I had developed over the years, primarily in political organizing and community advocacy activism. Paid employment was increasingly unlikely. After resigning under protest from what turned out to be my last full-time salaried position in 2002 (when I was 52 years of age), I spent 6 achingly painful years searching for employment. Even though by this time I had earned two graduate degrees, in public administration and social work, and a graduate certificate in nonprofit management, and believing that acquisition of a substantial educational foundation would ensure that I would find decent employment, if anything all that education began to work against rather than for me. I was perennially hit with the 'overqualified' obstacle, and with the illegal but subtly obvious age discrimination dilemma. And, further, I was seeking employment in the field of social work and nonprofit management, which was overwhelmingly dominated by female professionals, as a male social worker. Hence, no matter how much I took my feminism seriously, I was, rather depressingly, also the victim of sex discrimination. I've covered much of this territory in previous blogs and therefore there is no need to re-hash it here.
Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute has been my 'professional love' for many years and it had provided me with a 'life of purpose' since the early 1990s, when I became involved with the New Mexico men's wellness movement. And yet, for all my solitary efforts, I could not manifest it on the level that would have been emotionally, financially and mentally satisfying. Further, for all my education and acquisition of skills, by 2008 it was obvious that, with the depressing state of the national economy, many people, especially males of my age, were becoming unemployed, with little chance of ever finding decent employment again for the balance of their lives.
Time To Look Elsewhere
For a while, I served on other nonprofit boards of directors (comprising, since 1978, more than 30 community boards in Albuquerque and St. Louis) and immersed myself in the organizational life of my Unitarian Universalist congregation. For employment, except for a few minimal professional services contracts, I was left, in a most disorienting way, with only a part-time job as a staff usher at the St. Louis Symphony. I had, though, upon the death of my mother, quite luckily gained a small inheritance from my family, and with diligent care and good advice from my tax attorney brother, had learned how to construct a modest lifestyle with those funds. After 2008, when my brother had convinced me that I had enough income to not have to work if I didn't want to -- and to pursue activities that interested me, I ceased all efforts at seeking salaried employment.
At this point in life I tongue-in-cheek joke that I 'retired at 52', though the objective reality was that I 'become redundant' at that point in my life, and couldn't find other employment thereafter. The long and short of it is that I've been able, with care, over the past 17 years, to live a life that, while economically minimal, provides me with many options not available to much of the population.
Then I went through the whole period of materials hypersensitivity allergic reactions, neuropathy, multiple embolisms, and PTSD trauma/panic attacks, from 2015 to the present, though I had managed to 'start having an emotionally and mentally stable life again' by the summer of 2018. I joined Women's Voices Raised for Social Justice, and began serving on their Advocacy Committee, Racial Justice Committee, and attending the Racial Justice Book Club. I was the sole male member of their committees, but that was perfectly fine with me. I have worked with many advocacy groups in my life where I was 'the only person in the room who looked like me [racially, ethnically and/or gender]' and rather enjoy that assertive position of difference, plus the group appealed to my strong feminist sentiments. This past April, Linda and I joined the League of Women Voters, with the intent to serve on some of their advocacy committees. I am an active member of the Policing Committee [thereby bringing to bear my experience as the former Chair of the Albuquerque Police Advisory Board, 1980-81] , and Linda and I serve with the City-County Government Merger Committee.
I have, though, resigned from the Women's Voices Advocacy Committee, largely because I realized, after serving with them for a year, that though the women in the group were tolerant and even somewhat accommodating of my being on the committee, I was never going to be 'accepted' as a full partner on the otherwise total-female committee. Nonetheless, I appreciated the opportunity to serve with the group while I was there, and intend to continue with the other WV committees.
However, from my activist perspective, the work on these committees takes up too little of my excess time and energy. I have always had the dilemma of 'figuring out what to do with my single life' and all the boundless energy I have available to me [which, albeit, has somewhat subsided in recent years, due to various medical setbacks]. It's not as though I 'don't have a life' nor that I have too little to do: between the fostering and cultivation of my relationship with Linda Fiehler, my significant partner for the past 11 years, and my continuing recovery from PTSD/terror trauma, as well as having a very active mental life [reading a wide range of subjects, writing posts on Facebook primarily on political issues, continuing the development of lifelong education via Teaching Company DVDs, TED talks, and other media, periodically writing these blog posts, continuing to usher at a few concert venues, collecting and cataloging those collected items, pursuing my philatelic collection, attending educational forums at the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and St. Louis Science Center, as well as maintaining three websites and serving on four First Unitarian Church committees], I stay relatively busy. But...and here's 'the rub'...other than 'being in the world', I need to have a more stable 'sense of purpose' in my life.
Time and Energy To Spare
Ok, my readers may say, sounds like you're damned busy right now, especially for a guy who's 68 and has been 'retired' for the past 17 years. And it's not as though I am 'unusual' in my discomfort: when I read the news and hear about many countries in the world where there is 25-40% unemployment for young to middle-age adults, and their having to immigrate to other countries to find credible employment, I am well aware that I 'have a wealth of major advantages' in my present position. Yet...I feel a strong sense of "not being adequately made use of", of having acquired a wealth of aptitudes and a great education, and yet not having the opportunity to make adequate use of my energy in a world that seems, from what I read, to need assistance in a wide range of areas. Over the past year:
- I signed up at the United Way Board Bank, but have seen very few community boards that interested me [or have applied to serve on several with no reply from them].
- I've offered my assistance, as a volunteer consultant, to the Metro Trans Umbrella Group [given my study, over the past 40 years, of transgender issues, as well as gender issues generally], but as yet that offer has not been pursued by the organization.
- I offered to serve on the Board of Freeholders, that is going to work on city-county merger issues, but never heard back from the St. Louis City mayor [actually, the whole application process turned out, for many applicants, to be a fiasco].
- I offered to help with cooking meals for at a homeless shelter, but have not heard back concerning that offer. Linda has suggested that I contact the organization and seek out their volunteer coordinator, since -- apparently -- going through their director has heretofore been unsuccessful.
- Last week, I offered to assist with the Rally St. Louis effort (another approach to fostering city-county merger conversations) and may yet hear positive news, though it appears like I may not hear from them for at least a couple of months, while they solidify the organization.
It all reminds me of something my late much beloved therapist Shoshona Blankman, in New Mexico, told me 30 years ago: "while it's painful to have someone ask us for help and we don't have the time to give, it is especially painful when you offer assistance to someone [or an organization] and your offer is ignored or rejected". Since my mid-20s, I've had this notion of 'paying forward', of helping others because I received help, of 'passing on the warm fluffies' and making the world a more humane place in the effort.
There's no guarantee how long any of us will be on this planet or in this plane of existence, but while I'm around, I want to feel like I can contribute something positive "to make the world a better place in which to live". I tried doing that via political action when I was younger, but while that still has value, I feel, too often, that all my veteran years of campaigning are now sidelined by political campaigns that only want to hire younger less-experienced adults. I tried to do that via community boards of directors, but none, of recent, have expressed an interest in my serving -- and I have offered a number of times -- in spite of the fact that I have a wealth of board experience. I've offered to serve as a volunteer consultant to assist organizations with organizing, management, or fundraising, yet none, in a very long time, has taken me up on the offer. Most importantly, while it would be nice to be paid for my skills, I long ago gave up on pursuing that route, given the large number of rejections I encountered. At this point, I'm willing to offer my services for FREE and yet finding a group that is willing to take me up on that offer is...well, like pulling teeth.
It's important to note, though, that in offering volunteer assistance I do have some basic requirements:
• First, I need a minimal amount of professional respect. One thing I've learned, from a lifetime of experience with community organizing and boards, is that the person who volunteers to take on a task is far too often burdened with 90% of the work, with others refusing to take responsibility for any task fulfillment, and therefore the volunteer ends up being rapidly burned out. As I've aged and gained more wisdom about the 'volunteer process', when groups ask for volunteers I often remain silent, initially, to see whom else is willing to jump forward, and then offer to assist them -- rather than volunteering and just hoping someone will offer to assist me.
• Second, I need some basic, and clear, recognition for my efforts. I've worked with too many groups who are inward-focused, who will make use of outside assistance and then ignore the value that person has brought to the table.
• Third, the project has to be of interest to me, and has to be something I emotionally and/or ethically support. I'm no longer, as I too often was when I was trying to establish my credentials as a younger man, willing to be 'a political whore', supporting almost any liberal cause just because it needs someone to support it. If my heart is not invested in the outcome, my willingness to put in volunteer time and energy just feels poisonous.
Retirement Does Not Mean, For Me, Doing Nothing
I know that many people my age, at least people who had a modestly decent income in their working years, use their 'retired' time to travel -- which, god only knows, I'd do in a heartbeat if I could afford it and/or my medical conditions allowed it -- and have learned to 'kick back' after years of hard work. I guess, for me, since I didn't have a lot of years of professional employment, followed by far-too-early 'retirement', I still have this admittedly rather myopic notion that I'll 'someday' manifest a 'career' [though, objectively, it's a bit late in life for that] and have 'the opportunity' to make good use of my multifaceted skills.
Hence, in summation, finding and manifesting a "life of purpose" has been a lifelong struggle and remains so. Given my work on my PTSD recovery and my devotion, since the age of 32, on living a reasonably healthy life, I assume I have another 10-20 years to be alive. But simply 'being alive' is wholly insufficient. I am a doer, an activist, an intellectual and an organizer. And I want to have, for the balance of my time on this planet, a distinct 'sense' that I am contributing to my society, by striving for solutions instead of being part of the problem.
