Discovering Who You Are Begins With Discovering Where To Begin

I have arrived on a portico fifty-seven years into my journey. I came to learn do the job intended with my life: to be a journalist, a story-teller of truths. After much procrastination I realize I am here because I first must be an apprentice. "My job is to tell people what they don’t want to hear. That is not what I set out to do. I wanted only to cover the subjects I thought were interesting and important. But wherever I turned, I met a brick wall of denial."

Those last words are not my words, but those of writer-journalist George Monbiot. They are the most accurate words to describe the past few years of my life, whether working the Gulf after the BP oil disaster or globally on great ape extinction.

 Like all apprentices I ultimately must find a teacher, at least a guide. My realization, and then pursuit of a mentor is at times known, but more often unknown. Equally important, mentors must change over time, the mystery is knowing when. When is often later than it should be. Monbiot's words come at an important time.

Becoming an apprentice means giving up on thinking you know something, almost anything of where you intend to travel. After experiencing degrees of previous success, the idea of starting anew has tarnished appeal. In my case success is supported by people's accolades and acknowledgements, fans.  To bastardize a quote: Nothing destroys the hunger to discover who you are more effectively than being treated as the hero you were.

The fear of apprenticeship is time. The time it takes to start over. And during the time of starting over you are not successful. There's a fear in that. Ironically, fear fosters procrastination—the squanderer of time. There are few apprenticeships anymore, there is no grace of time.

So, I have been sitting on the steps of the portico, staring out into the world of before, fearing to go inside and begin the journey into the world of after. I need to give myself permission to pass inside, to fail, to not care what others might think, to lay myself open to learning anew; no one else can grant that permission.

Monbiot wrote, "I still see my life as a slightly unhinged adventure whose perpetuation is something of a mystery. I have no idea where it will take me, and no ambitions other than to keep doing what I do. So far it’s been gripping." What I do know is I need to be a story-teller of truths, a journalist, I must find a way to tell people what they don't want to hear, in doing so, I know with conviction, I have heard it.

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