I am undecided about the whole business of life after death. However, it is interesting how the voices of our dead loved ones speak to us beyond the grave. I distinctly heard my father’s voice this morning as I was reviewing recent posts on my blog.

“This is weird shit kid.”

“This is the garbage can of my mind,” I told him and not for the first time.

“I always had dreams of you becoming a writer.”

“I am in my own little way.”

“Yeah…but, what the hell is this?”

Have you ever wondered how many times you have to say something to a reasonably intelligent person before the light comes on?

“If I don’t take out the trash on daily basis it tends to pile up cluttering my mind,” I told him. “Untended it leaves no room for me to do any real work.”

“Well then,” said dad, “Where is this real work you keep talking about?”

Apparently he has been listening. I guess being dead doesn’t cure a father from busting his son in the balls from time to time, especially if he sees his life veering off course. On the other hand my life has been veering off course for years now. You would think I would have finally bumped into something and reset course.

“I am working on it.”

“You’re always working on it.”

*sigh*

“Son, I love you…”

Here it comes.

I am pretty sure he was about to start the litany of unfinished projects followed by the ones I had been planning for years but hadn’t bothered to start.

“Do you remember when you graduated high school and I told you that I wasn’t sure you had the temperament to work in a corporate environment?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” I replied. I remember that conversation rather well. I had never been what you might call a math genius, but I discovered an aptitude for accounting and by the time I had graduated high school I had taken all of the accounting courses, business math and basic business classes that were offered. Unlike many of the other classes I took I got mostly A’s and B’s. My father, who always had a kind word about my accomplishments and was quick to encourage me to do whatever I wanted to try, cautioned me against going to business school. This was the mid 1980’s personal computers were just coming on the scene and no one had even heard of the internet yet. An undergraduate degree in liberal arts was still considered a valuable tool for future career planning. In college your undergraduate years were for getting a well rounded education. Then, after you spent some years in the work force you went back to graduate school to specialize in something more apropos to what you were doing.

I chose philosophy with a minor in American literature. I frequently was asked what my major was and pretty much always getting the same response.

“Philosophy? What the hell you going to do with a degree in philosophy.”

My response was always the same.

“A philosophy degree teaches you how to think subjectively and analytically. It encompasses imagination, creativity and logic. It also includes ethics which is a valuable subject for anyone going into business.”

My mother was among my chief detractors. When I had finally stopped messing around at the community college level (Earning two, two year degrees in the process) and applied to the Evergreen State College in Lacey Washington my mother nearly flew off the handle referring to the school as a place for burn outs and unwashed hippie types.

I had chosen the school because I had been exposed at North Seattle Community College to a coordinated studies program that had been modeled after the teaching style at Evergreen. At the time it was also rated among the top teaching colleges in the state. Several of my favorite instructors in high school had attended and it was understood that given my temperament and aptitudes I was to become a teacher. The teaching was to support me while I struggled to become a writer.

I also went to high school journalism conference in the summer before my senior year and had fallen in love with the bucolic campus. Unfortunately, at 23 I was emotionally something of a late bloomer and still living with my parents and two youngest siblings. My mother’s unhealthy influence on my life undermined any opportunity and so that become a road not taken. Finishing my college education would be an enterprise left for later years.

The real reason for the philosophy major was existential angst. Life seemed absurd and often pointless at times. My Roman Catholic faith was no longer cutting it or providing any kind of solace. I was looking for answers, although I was careful to keep my questions to myself as well as my various opinions. Those who have met me in recent years would hardly recognize that in me as I tend to not hold back on either these days.

So I quietly maintained the ruse that my father had provided me regarding the value of a liberal arts education. Fortunately around that time AT&T had published the findings of an internal study they had been conducting. They had followed the careers of several of their top executives for several years and had learned that the executives with liberal arts degrees went farther up the ladder and made larger incomes than those with other types of degrees or who had no college at all. My philosophy professor at the time even handed out a list of 100 careers for people with liberal arts degrees. I had made copies of it and handed it out rather than defending my choice in majors. It was a way of quietly telling others, “In your face.”

Back then you could still attend college in pursuit of the truth or for the pure delight of learning and still garner a certain amount of reluctant respect even though you were still likely to be labeled a professional student. I hate that term – professional student. It completely devalues academic skills and inquiry. But, our commerce driven culture rarely values anything it can’t market and sell for a profit. Even God is bought and sold as a commodity and some people make a decent living at it.

“Well, son I take back what I said,” Dad replied, “You have planning to plan down to an art form. You should be capable of being successful at a corporate level, although your lack of profit accountability would make you more suitable for a state or federal job.”

My dad was a man of practicality in some ways. A job was how you paid the bills. It was what you did to build a life so that you could pursue other interests, such as writing. He also had vision. When it came to matters of business and economics his advice rarely stirred me wrong. In 1980 he came home with a Texas Instruments home computer. A tiny little affair that we hooked up to an old black and white television for a monitor and in order to program with it a cartridge with the basic language had to be plugged in. An old cassette recorder served as a tape drive and we covered over hours of music with the beeps, screeches and blips that was computer data.

“You both need to learn all you can about computers,” He told my brother and I, “This is the way of the future. Learn it or step aside.”
My brother Cory learned it and learned it well.

I stepped aside.

Partly due to my lack of math prowess and to the fact that my brother, who early on showed real brilliance and genius for the cyber arts, spent so much time at the tiny keyboard that that I gave up waiting for my turn. But, even then my interests in the areas of philosophy, religion and the occult were taking me down a different road.

“So is there a point to this dad?” I asked, “Or did you show up just to bust me in the balls today?”

“There is point. You are 42. You need to start living your life.”
I rolled my eyes.

“Seriously son,” he said, “Didn’t you tell me the last time I stopped by that I was too busy trying not to be my own father that I forget to live my life?”

“Yes. But, I am not busy not trying to be you.”

“We are more alike than you sometimes realize.”

That was true.

“You have a lot of unrealized dreams. Don’t die before you attempt at least a couple of them.”

My therapist recently told me that I was like a car with a powerful engine and drive train except that I was stuck in the mud and no matter how hard I stepped on the gas I was just spinning my wheels splattering mud everywhere. Reading between the lines: You are making a mess out of your life.

“You have a lot of ambition, energy and drive,” Dad said, “But you don’t have a direction for it. That’s why you always feel so tired. You waste all your energy and it tends to diminish into depression and anxiety.”

That was exactly what I was thinking. The dead have an astounding ability to read our minds. But, then human minds are simpler then we care to admit, at least the part of our minds that we identify with.

“You keep saying you can’t write because you have nothing to say, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well how you are you ever going to have something to say if you don’t start living your life. Now why don’t you grab your laptop, your notebooks and hop in that land yacht you got parked outside and go get yourself a life.”

“That belongs to the devil. I am supposed to be working for him this summer.”

“That’s kind of weird,” Dad said.

I nodded.

Dad seemed lost in thought for a moment. Than his eyes blinked and he shuddered violently arms flailing as if he had been woken from a dead sleep by a sudden loud noise.

“Still, it’s an opportunity. Does he pay well?”

“I may actually get to keep my own soul if I don’t fail.”

“That’s good. Does he offer dental?”

I nodded.

“Well shit, you can’t turn your nose up at that. Do you know how hard it is to get a good dental plan these days?

“I am aware,” I said.

“Well there you are. Dental and your Soul that is way better then most corporate employees can hope for. It’s usually one or the other, often neither.”

How do you argue with that?

“I am hungry,” dad announced, “Lets get some lunch. I am really craving Chinese.”