"Lamentations of a Fifty-Something White Guy"

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Lamentations of a Fifty- Something White Guy”

            My once fabulous gay friends are now paunchy but adorable as they excuse themselves early to relieve the babysitter. The President of the United States is a black man. My daughter is a high- powered business woman. Computer geeks are the richest people on the planet.

But I was born into a world run by fifty-something white guys. And while we no longer live in that world, my expectations of myself are premised upon the notion that I should exert authority, wield influence, and be financially stable and secure, an unerring source of protection and comfort for others.

            Growing up, I was told one should bear up manfully against all manner of crises and dutifully shoulder the load so as to be a “good provider” for my wife and family.

            Anything less was utter, abject failure.

            You first learn that boys don’t cry. Tears were the acceptance of failure. If you cry, you’re a sissy and acting like a girl. Which would mean you couldn’t be in charge because women can’t be the boss. It could also mean you’re gay. And if you’re gay, you can’t be big and strong and have muscles and exert authority and power. And if you’re gay, you can’t have a family because only straight married men can have families.

            In fact, boys of my era were not allowed the luxury of any emotions except hubris and anger. If you won, you got to gloat but it was better if you didn’t. If you lost, you were pissed off. And you used that anger as fuel to win the next time.  

            All other human emotion in boys was superfluous and the subject of intense scrutiny- not to mention anxiety. Sensitivity and creativity was suspect as unmanly and irrelevant. Even intellectual curiosity was regarded with some suspicion, a way station for selfish and unproductive behavior.

And in the midst of all this, I was told I had the advantages as a white male.

But for me, this advantage was the privilege of suppressing any independent and creative urge I had, rigidly adhering to strictures of race, sex and money I found repugnant, and otherwise living a life of mindless conformity- all so I could cling to some fraudulent posture of prosperity inexplicably reserved for white American males.

And for far too many years, white males were the beneficiary of some sort of unexplained cosmic largesse. 

Bu there was this:

            “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

I think that’s from the gospel of Luke.

I think.

 

And this:

“‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.’"

Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

I know that one for sure.

For me, these advantages came with unwanted responsibility and unintended consequences.

No matter how hard I worked or how far out of my way I went to disavow these advantages, it was always assumed that I had attained what I had through privilege and station, not hard work, discipline or even creative sunburst.

Yet the truth is I matriculated into a world without a Good Old Boy Network.

Even more galling is the notion that I could actually be part of the problem, the attempt to associate me with an “establishment” that no longer exists in any identifiable form.

The true irony in this is that I have tried to help-in word and deed and spirit –to dismantle these archaic notions throughout my life.

My bona fides in this regard are beyond reproach- so don’t even try:

The worst -kept secret in Tyler, Texas in the late seventies was that I had a black girl friend in high school- a place and time you could still get lynched behind that shit.

I survived the “Political Correctness” rhetorical movement in graduate school in the early eighties, where I took more than one punch for opening a door and lighting a cigarette for female classmates.

I was part of the first law school class in SMU history with more women than men.

My church would not be happy with my views on gay marriage.

My general attitudes and outlooks about the world in general were shaped more by literature than business, more by Fitzgerald and James Baldwin than Lee Iacocca (for my younger readers, think Donald Trump).

I did all this in times and places where it was neither easy nor popular to do: locker rooms, country clubs, fraternity houses, and deb parties.

Before you even say, Oh poor Tom, he had it so rough, my father was a poor boy Golden Gloves boxing champ from North Tyler who fought and charmed his way from Homer Hester’s corner filling station to the country club in one generation.

The charter given to my brothers and myself was production. “Putting something back in the pot,” a mandate my Depression-era born father was more than fond of pronouncing.

My parents saw to it that we performed. My brothers and I navigated the shark-filled waters from junior high school football to frat –boy politics to debutante balls to law school because we felt the obligation to carry the torch onward and indeed tried to do so without the awkwardness or crassness of first generation wealth.

We didn’t just have to do it- we had to make it look easy.

The mere introduction of a discordant note in those circles could have moved things back decades if not generations.

Sensitive boys who want to go to Paris and be writers had best button their lips.

You might not have to hide your Playboys but you damn well better not get caught reading something that was not on the Honors English reading list, much less something written  by a gay black revolutionary.

Hiding behind my Economics textbook was not a centerfold but James Baldwin, Jerzy Kosinski, Amiri Baraka or Erica Jong- the kind of seditious literature that could get your ass whipped quickly if not permanently in East Texas.

Accordingly, I am a servant of two masters with equal presumptive rights to my soul, the one to which I feel a certain obligation and the one to which my allegiance naturally gravitates.

The yoga practice I have differs from the yoga practice I want because one part of me requires performance while the other part is willing to accept the consequences of failure.

My practice remains a microcosm of the pitched battle being waged for my soul.  I have never been fully rid of the expectations I have of myself, which intrude daily into my attempts to accept failure as a means of growth and which explains the rage I cannot entirely control.

Yoga is a means to sort out the inherent contradictions in my life. I would have feared much less in my life –and, ironically, succeeded more- had I accepted failure early on.

Had I known early on that falling out of a balance pose builds the muscles and the muscle memory to ultimately achieve the posture, I would have known that most things in life are not heaven-sent and didn’t always have to look easy.

My inability to stand on one foot is a mirror into my soul: Do I stand here cursing myself for my failure or do I concentrate on why I failed? Was it my failure to maintain my gaze at a fixed point? Did I forget to stand on one foot as if I were standing on two? Did I draw up chest higher to lighten the load? Did I simply forget to breathe? Too much coffee for breakfast? Or was I just plain trying too damn hard?

Or am I simply unworthy and helplessly broken?

Yoga has given me insight that my self-loathing and anger has become not just irrelevant but dead weight slowing my journey.

I’ve spend a lot of my life trying – in one way or another- to stand on one foot. When I failed, I cursed myself for failing despite the advantages that I have had. Failures have sent me into downward spirals which take weeks and months to correct.

I have never been able to simply trust in these dark times that my failures cleared the path for peace, self –containment, understanding and enlightenment: a path forged by me alone, where my feet were sure and light and the road ahead less frightening as the challenges had already been faced directly rather simply providing an excuse to descend into meaningless self-pity.

Yoga has taught me my failures are not the result of my fundamental unworthiness and that dwelling upon such things will not forward this pilgrim’s progress one step as I continue my wretched stagger toward redemption.

Next time: “Get this fat girl off me.”