Let's Talk About ... the passage of time and passing time

I taught myself how to read when I was very young and from that moment on I was a voracious reader. I loved reading and being absorbed in stories and meeting all kinds of people through books and having a window into their lives. It was an escape I needed from constant bullying and abuse at school and at home and it kept me going, it gave me something beyond myself and my world.

I don’t remember most of the books I read in my childhood but a few are permanently imprinted on me. One is “A Lantern in Her Hand” by Bess Streeter Aldrich. It was published in 1928 and I read it in the 1960’s so it was already dated by then. The book is about Abbie, a character that the author based on her mother, and describes her life starting after the Civil War when she settles and lives in the Nebraska plains with her new husband. She leaves behind a possible life devoted to her main passion of singing, and her voice was good enough that she could have had a singing career.

The novel has a Little House on the Prairie path in that it describes their struggles working the land and surviving through farming. It emphasizes how Abbie devoted herself to raising their children. The children grow up and they all move away as none of them want to be farmers like their father and they see a world full of opportunities. At the end of the book, Abbie looks back at her life and finally realizes how she gave up her passion and identity for her children. She tries to sing but finds she has lost her beautiful, perfect voice; it is permanently gone.

What affected me as a child was understanding that that Abbie had lost herself. She had a passion that was her identity and she chose to walk away from that. The book ends with the message that Abbie’s contribution to the world was her children and she can live vicariously through her children (after all, this was written by the daughter about her mother). I rejected that message even though I wasn’t even a teenager yet. That’s why I remember reading the book and my strong reaction to it. I became very emotional reading how Abbie stood outside, alone on the farm, and realized her voice was literally gone. I had read about all her challenges through poverty and struggles through decades. Then at the end of her life I felt her sense of emptiness and loss at who she was after enduring all of that. Even though I was a child, I felt the passage of time through Abbie’s life. It was hard for me to accept that all that time could pass, decades of life, an entire life, and it would end with only emptiness.

I realize now that reading novels like “A Lantern in Her Hand” shaped me in ways I never before understood. I decided at the end of my 20’s that I did not want to be a mother. Maybe that’s because I could see Abbie’s sacrifice in the lives of the women I knew at that time who became mothers. Every 10 years I would switch my life onto a different path, first through making different career choices and then through exploring all kinds of new things once I retired. It was really all one path that I forged to find myself and become someone who I wanted to be and to be myself without limits.

Of course, in the corporate world being defined by others is inescapable. Unfortunately too many feel threatened by someone striving to go beyond the baseline and reaching their full potential. That’s one of the reasons I retired so young. It was the only way I could find out what I could accomplish on my own terms.

And now I am 65 years old and I feel the passage of time. I think about those I knew over the course of my life and become curious what paths they chose. I wonder what time has done to them, has it been kind or cruel. There are those who are exactly what they were when I knew them back in the 1980’s or 90’s or 2000’s. One of the main lessons from looking back is that people stay the same. As the saying goes, people don’t change, they reveal themselves.

Most people are joyful having lives raising children and having domesticity and living a life that I decided was not for me. They haven’t had the need to create an independent path to find themselves like I have had. Maybe that’s because I was unable for many reasons to truly explore what I could do and be during my childhood. I was withdrawn within myself to protect myself and was never encouraged to do more than that or be more than that. It takes a shitload of time to shed that protective skin and to heal from the inside out. It takes an effort that can go on for decades, sometimes a lifetime.

And so I have spent time over the decades working towards this goal of knowing myself and being myself with full confidence. But there comes a point when it becomes unavoidably clear that this journey has an end. Mortality becomes palpable. I think I felt this in my reaction as a child to “A Lantern in Her Hand” even if I didn’t understand it. Time is limited and, to paraphrase Mary Oliver, what have you done with your one precious life?

Time passes and we have to decide for ourselves what we want our lives to be, what for each of us is experiencing life through that time. I feel right now that I am ready, for the first time, to simply pass the time. I have never done that before or chosen that before but now it feels right. Part of this is finally accepting that being in the moment without the pressure to achieve is also experiencing life.

I keep thinking that maybe it’s time to come full circle. Maybe right now I need to withdraw into myself like when I was a child. Perhaps what I need is to read books and contemplate and observe the world rather than push myself to take action and engage to try to change or save it. I have no idea how much longer my journey will be. I have good genes; my grandparents and father lived until their late 80’s and even 90, and my mother died in her early 80’s. So maybe I can give myself a break from the pressure to feel responsible to engage and achieve for now. I don’t have to feel that somehow I am breaking a rule. I won’t spend each day being focused on accomplishing as much as possible so that I can feel like I am living to my potential. I can be content with simply passing time in the company of my dogs, reading and watching movies and sipping tea and just being. Let’s see how that goes.

 

Let’s talk about … the most important thing I have ever done

May 6, 2024

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I spent the first four months of this year doing the most important thing I’ve ever done. Now, to be clear, up to this point I have felt that I have done a lot of important things. My career in evaluating medical malpractice cases meant I decided whether a case should go to trial or be settled. Those decisions affected many people’s lives in very significant ways and I always strove to make those decisions ethically and fairly. Those cases were never about how to save money, they were about doing the right thing and I was fortunate to work for people who had the same priority and values.

My political activism has also been important although the results of that work can be difficult to gage as it takes so much time and so much repeating of effort to get that final result that also affects lives.

My volunteer work has been important as well. This particular achievement, the one I am referring to, has been the most important project I have done as a volunteer.

Two years ago, I became Board Chair of Valley Community Healthcare, a community clinic that provides no and low-cost healthcare to everyone regardless of ability to pay. VCH treats 20,000 – 30,000 patients of all ages every year. It has been serving the public in North Hollywood and North Hills for 54 years and in this time of political, social and economic uncertainty, VCH is a resource that is so crucial for our entire community.

The CEO of VCH is retiring this summer and as Board Chair it was my responsibility to lead the search for her replacement. This process actually began last summer as I learned about how an executive search process works. It also meant conducting interviews with the help of a consultant of people who work at VCH, work with VCH, people who donate and volunteer and have all kinds of relationships with VCH. Because the most challenging portion of this search was going to be knowing not just who we could be searching for but exactly who we needed to be searching for. That could mean redefining the role of the VCH CEO. We needed the input of all these different people in order to do that.

We needed someone who would not only embrace the mission of VCH, and have the skill set to successful manage a healthcare center, but also be able to create a future version that would withstand change and survive. Someone who had the vision – yeah “that vision thing” – to imagine what could be and not just see what is. To anticipate challenges and not just respond.

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As I progress through my 60’s I have gained the understanding that the world I grew up in and the world that existed through the first decades of my adulthood no longer exists. It is now a world that belongs to and is shaped by and should be determined by those much younger than me. And it was so crucial for me, as a leader, and for the Search Committee that I formed and the Board who made the hiring decision, to understand that this really was about deciding the future of this organization. It was not just finding someone to fill a job; it was much more than that. The challenges that this new CEO will face have yet to appear but the right person will be able to handle them in this 21st century world.

So since January I have been working basically full time on this project. I wasn’t alone, thankfully, I had a consultant to help guide and a fantastic search firm who did an amazing job. We had almost 500 people from around the country apply for the job when the job was posted at the beginning of the year. And then we narrowed and narrowed and narrowed.

We had 3 finalists who were wonderful and qualified and it was a dilemma – each of them made the decision so very hard. Yet a decision had to be made and we made it as a group, confidently and with sensitivity, objectivity and dedication to what was possible for VCH now and going forward.

And I know that tens of thousands of people now in 2024, and then their children, and then even their grandchildren, will have access to healthcare that will save and change and improve their lives. I played a major role in making this happen. I hope my work to create the beginning of a great future for VCH benefits not just VCH but also all those in the San Fernando Valley who are in need, those who would not otherwise have access to healthcare. Because that’s all that matters.

I wrote recently here about how legacies are overrated. But I feel my work on this search and its successful outcome is my legacy. This is one that makes all the different to thousands of people who will never know anything about me and the role I played in their lives. And that suits me just fine.

5/6/24