I Turn 40 Today

This is from one of my favourite books ever, The Treehouse: Eccentric Wisdom from My Father on how to Live, Love and See by Naomi Wolf, whom you probably know from her book, The Beauty Myth. When I first read it, it was as if every word spoke to me, affirmed what I believed was true.

I am choosing to feature this piece today because it's my 40th birthday. I was wondering why I was inspired to do this blog this year, and I guess, this is the answer. I turn 40.

I really thought I'd be further along at 40 and I would have "achieved", "gained", "earned" so much more than I did.

I can't fault my 30s. Some of my favourite years of all time were in my 30s, especially those three years when I was in Australia, studying creative writing, that course that had all sensible raise their eyebrows and snort in derision. It didn't matter. The sheer joy of reading poetry and writing about Shakespeare (for assignments!) made it all seem like I was walking through a dream.

And I wrote.

And people loved what I wrote.

And sometimes, it didn't even matter whether they did or not. I remember one story I wrote, Molly-Auntie, for my monologue, for one of the first classes I took, Language and Writing. And I remember as I finished writing it and I was flying...there was this rush. I walked home after in this rush, my head sort of swimming. It was winter, the air was icy, and I had to push my bike all the way to that cold, cold house in which I was renting a room in Menora.

And I was warm. And I was happy. And I was high.

And I didn't come down from that high for three whole days.

(No opiate has ever lasted that long...not that I've tried all or even some of them)

So, anyway, here is my excerpt for the day. The philosophy that I choose to follow, however imperfectly:

My dad is still a very handsome man: six feet two and distinguished-looking. He has an aquiline nose, fierce white eyebrows that seem to have lives of their own, gray-white hair that, depending on how it is brushed, makes him look either like an elderly Lord Byron seated at a formal dinner or like a homeless man having an alarming vision, and smiling hazel-brown eyes.

He is a teacher, and has taught in every kind of setting, for almost sixty years. He changes people's lives because he believes that everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave behind a unique creative signature. He believes that your passion for this, your feelings about this, must take priority over every other reasoned demand: status, benefits, sensible practices.

Leonard feels that your medium may be words or music or paint; it could also be the guiding of an organization, the banking of a certain kind of cake, the edging of a garden, the envisioning of a new kind of computer network, or the gesture that brushes the hair away from the forehead of a hurt child. What matters to my father is not whether the creative work is valued in the marketplace; what mattes to him is whether or not it is yours.

He wants to know you have have put your emotion into it, driven your artist's discipline into it, seen it through to completion and signed your name to it, if only in your own mind. If you do, he believes, your work comes alive and gives life to those around you. And it gives life, he is sure, to you.

My dad makes Xerox copies at Kinko's of the phrase Verba volant/Scripta manent - 'Spoken words fly away, but writing remains' - meaning, get it down, do your creative work, whatever it is. He passes out the Xeroxes to everyone he thinks needs reminding: his grandchildren, his acquaintances, the guy at the cleaners.

He believes that each of us arrived here with this unique creative DNA inside us. If we are not doing that thing which is our innate mission, then, he feels, no matter how much money or status we might have, our lives will feel drained of their true color. He believes that no amount of money or recognition can compensate you if you are not doing your life's passionate creative work; and if you are not doing it, you had better draw everything to a complete stop until you can listen deeply to your soul, identify your true heart's desire, and change direction. It's that urgent.

Leonard believes if that particular story of yours is not told - if storytelling is your medium - or if that certain song is not sung - if you are meant to sing - and even if there is almost no one to hear it at the end, then it is not just the artist who has sustained a quiet tragedy; the world has, too.

Leonard believes that you can learn how to live from literature, from art, and that they key to leading a happy, meaningful life is to be found not primarily from the self-help section of a bookstore or from a therapist's couch, but from paying careful attention to poetry, to whatever constitutes poetry for you.

All my life, I have seen how his faith in this possibility - that an artist inheres in everyone - actually does change people's lives: the students he has taught over the course of four decades are changed, but so are the lives of people who are simply passing through. His faith in ordinary people's innate artistry gives him a kind of magic touch. I have seen how his belief has led people with whom he has come into casual contact - friends of mine, friends of his, strangers he meets on trains, the staff in his building - to suddenly drop whatever is holding them from their real creative destiny and shift course; to become happier.

When people spend time around my dad, they are always quitting their sensible jobs with good benefits to become schoolteachers, or agitators, or lutenists. I have seen students of his leave high-paying jobs that were making them miserable, or high-status social positions that had been scripted by their families, and follow their hearts in the face of every kind of opposition to become, say, dirt-poor teachers of children in the mountain villages of the Andes. I've seen snapshots they send back to him, of themselves with their tattered, clowning kids, their faces suffused with joy. They have found their poetry.

My father believes in passionate love, in placing passionate love at the very top of your list of priorities and in making room for passion at the center of your romantic life, no matter how domestic it is. He believes no one should settle for less. His students are always leaving safe but not essential relationships and finding something truer - whether it is a fierce attachment to someone they would have overlooked before as being 'unsuitable', or whether it is taking a risk of solitude in a renewed search for their soul's real mate.

My dad routinely addresses the artist in them, and his students respond accordingly: as artists. This is not calculated on his part; it is truly what he sees. Other teachers have used similar unself-conscious tricks; I think often of Martin Luther King, Jr, who always addressed the innate peacemaker in everyone to whom he spoke - even those people who were trying to wipe him from the face of the earth. I think the great teachers always speak to the potential they see in their students as if through an X ray and, not to the actual student as he or she appears at that moment to the less intuitive eye.

My dad is never surprised at the treasures that come back his way. The superintendent of my father's building, John Maudsley - a man who is very good at his job - talked to my father one day and disclosed secret passion: in his off hours, he painted: he was 'a sign painter and frustrated artist,' as he put it. Leonard did whatever magical thing he does - which is as simple as saying a matter-of-fact 'Yes, of course, this is your calling' - that ignites the power of imagination in otherwise 'ordinary' people.

Now, in buildings throughout the neighborhood, you can see the masterpieces that emerged from Mr Maudsley's basement: a rocking horse painted a gleaming sky blue, with velvet-black reins festooned with crimson roses, as if it has escaped from a merry-go-round; a persimmon desk-and-bench set scaled to the size of a toddler, with gold and violet edging - all are influenced by the brilliant palette of the mind's eye.

He is still a super, and still a good one. But over time, the super's office seems to me to have changed, showing the artist, too: there is a mock-Tiffany lamp illuminating the steel-gray file cabinets with parti-colored light, and a line of toy antique trucks, orange, black, and yellow, is parked across from the Formica desk and the standard-issue office chair. The sensibility changes the room, the job, the life, though it is the same room and job and life. In addition, something unique to him that derives from his upbringing, as well as from his own individual eye, is blooming in the living rooms of Manhattan. Mr Maudsley seems to me a happy man.