I am...
...a fist in the air at the '68 Olympics.
Civil disobedience?
How do we define who we are? Are we the greater than the sum of our parts? Are you what you wear? Are you judged by the company we keep? Do the clothes make the man? Or are we what we believe?
Me? I believe we are the culmination of a sequence of random events. Product of our environment. Seldom do any of us reach out beyond what we are taught. Question the ritualistic traditions taught to us since birth. Not a disobedience to our accepted beliefs, but a testing of our boundaries and ideas.
What good is any idea if it does not pass the test of it's intended existence? Theories are generated every day. What gains acceptance? Ideas that withstand interrogation. Ideas that withstand a test. I'm all in favor of questioning ones own personal beliefs. If I have an idea,... and want to know if it hold water,... I test it. In science this is commonplace,... in society, however, it is not. Question authority and accepted tradition and risk being branded a heretic. Succeed in your disproving an accepted belief, and be labeled a revolutionary. Moral dilemma? Who am I to say. Go with the flow, and try to be "cool", or think for yourself and be thought of as weird,... different,...
I digress.
I am Mike. 31, 6'3", 227lbs, brown hair, brown eyes, Massachusetts native. Product of a broken home. Maladjusted youth, delinquent adolescence, apathetic adult. Fathered by alcoholism, mothered by depression, and raised by TV. I'm a simple man,... I say what i mean, and do as I say. I don't believe in miracles, angels, religion, or Santa Claus,... I believe in people. My friends. Strangers waiting become friends,.. and timing is everything.
I am a mechanical engineer. I went to Worcester Polytechnic Institute and graduated in '95. I did drugs. I had promiscuous relationships. I was an evil frat boy. I drank too much, studied to little, and don't regret a second of it. I never regretted anything I did, only the things I didn't do. I'm a disgruntled employee of a small start up engineering company. I work too much, and live too little.
I am an uncle. My sister, Michele, is two years older than me. She has a son, Joseph, 10 months old. We don't talk as much as we should. Are family is as loose fitting as a bath robe. Encounters are brief and infrequent, and always the same routine and set of questions. We make the art of not talking look like a silent war. We inherited it from our parents.
I am my fathers son. I try not to be my father, Wally, but it is inevitable. I am half him. The similarities are unnerving. The more I try to be my own man, the more I am him. The more I fight it, the tighter it's grasp becomes. I stopped struggling year ago.
I am my mother's son. She left me almost two years ago to cancer. She never missed a day of work, even when sick,... even at the end. She was a school teacher. She believed that the kids kept her going. She awoke with a purpose every day. She fought breast cancer and won. Then they found a 5" long tumor in her throat. She awoke one morning, and started puking blood. The radiation had torn a hole in her aorta. There was nothing that could be done. The doctors gave her drugs, and told my family it was time to let her go. I was in New York. Cell phone turned off. Oblivious as to that Saturday. I came home Sunday, and turned on my phone. 12 unread messages. An entire day's worth of pain summarized in a half hours worth of messages. I deleted the last message and my phone rang. My stepmother. My Mom had died. Her last words to me? "Tell Mike, it's O.K., I know he would've been here. Tell him to slow down and enjoy life."
I am Mike. I am my father, my mother, my sister, and my nephew. I am the man standing next to you at the bus stop. I am the man behind you in line at the coffee shop. I am the man you don't talk to at work. I am the man you only knew as a year book picture. I am the man you never knew. I am any man. I am any man that you never got to know. I could be any man,... even you.
