This I Believe: Life Lessons (11 page)

Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

Dani Weathers

When my dad died, we weren't there to say good-bye. He was alone on a Colorado road riding that stupid motorcycle he just had to have. When he died, I felt like I died, too.

I was diagnosed with manic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder shortly after my dad died on August 6, 2006, hit by a woman in a car. His death left me numb and empty. Desperate to feel something—to feel anything—I resorted to cutting myself. I thought if I could feel the pain of sharp objects digging into my skin, then I was still alive. Soon I was addicted to self-injury.

My depression and my cutting became too much for what was left of my family. My mother and brother seemed too distant to save me from my misery. We became strangers in the house we'd lived in since I was eight. I came to hate them, and in hating them, I felt more alone than before. My cutting grew more frequent.

Eventually, I felt scared of the person I had become; I didn't want to cut anymore, but I was terrified of what would happen if I didn't. The people closest to me were weary of my ongoing battles, too. At one point, a former boyfriend shouted at me, “It happened four years ago! Get over it already! Just move on!”

His words stunned me like a slap in the face, stopping me from grabbing anything sharp. Although I disagreed that I should “get over” my father's death, I realized I couldn't continue to let cutting and depression control my life. After all, Dad wouldn't want me to hurt myself this way. I also saw how unfair it was to depend on my incredibly patient friends to clean up my messes. After years of trying to mend my grief by cutting, I was finally ready for the real process of healing to begin.

It hasn't been easy to share my tale. When people hear about my depression, they pity me or, worse, think I'm crazy. But what would remaining quiet achieve? My silence won't heal my wounds—in fact, it nearly cost me the last bit of life I kept buried under my pain and loss.

So I say to the world, I have depression, and I am a recovering cutter. I believe I am worth something, and I don't want to fear what other people think of me. I want to live another day, because I believe that this scary, horrible, and yet awesome world is worth fighting for. My visible and invisible wounds are signs of my strength and the trials I've struggled to survive. And I hope that by telling my story I can help other people who share this addiction.

Today, my smiles are sincere, my laughs genuine. Today I am a new girl, a phoenix reborn from the ashes of all of the tragedy and struggle that had been my life. Today I believe I am alive.

And Dad, wherever you are now, know that I love you.

The Triumph of Kindness

Josh Stein

I believe that when people come together, it's a beautiful thing. And when someone who can't do something tries to do it and everyone else helps, that is a great moment.

One beautiful sunny day, I had a Little League baseball game. At the time it was very important to me, and I was really focused on doing well, as were the other seven-year-olds. It was our last game of the season, and we were all trying to have fun and to end it with a bang the best we could.

As the game progressed the score got close. When we had our final chance to win at the end of the last inning, it was my turn to bat. I looked over at my coach, who was talking to my dad about something—probably the stock market or something like that. As I stepped into the batter's box, my coach called me back to the dugout. He asked me a strange yet interesting question. He asked if it would be all right if my brother hit for me.

My brother wasn't on the team. He had never even played baseball due to his disability. He couldn't stand, and he certainly couldn't hit. But I responded very maturely for a kid my age. “Of course he can hit for me,” I said. I was still puzzled as to how, though. Thoughts ran through my mind, such as: Would the kids make fun of him? Would he hit the ball?

As my dad carried him to the plate, I realized that without his wheelchair he would have to be held up. The joy on his face couldn't be traded for anything in the world. Just being on the field gave him all the happiness he needed. What will the other kids think? I wondered.

I heard someone call out, “C'mon, hit it outta here.” Then came another, “You can do it!” These words of acceptance showed me how great the moment really was. On the first swing, which was pretty much my dad holding Sam's hands around the bat and my dad swinging, he—or they—hit the ball. The kids on the other team did something amazing then, something seven-year-olds should never know how or why to do. But in the spur of the moment, these seven-year-olds did. They purposely overthrew the ball. Three times.

Sam had hit his first and only home run. And as my dad carried him around the bases, I knew this memory would stick with me and everyone else there forever.

I've seen it with my own eyes. When people come together, it's a beautiful thing.

Time to Walk the Dog

Betsy Buchalter Adler

I believe in walking the dog.

I also believe in flossing my teeth, practicing the piano, and eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but those things can be ignored. The dog cannot be ignored.

The dog stands in the doorway, polite but implacable, waiting for me to clip on his leash. He couldn't care less about my deadlines and duties. He knows, and I know, that the walk is the thing.

Walking the dog is not aerobic exercise. It's a meander. We stop periodically so the dog can read the latest smells with his long, elegant collie nose. We walk to the park or the bakery or just around the neighborhood. The dog is amenable to all of these destinations. He's outside. I'm on the other end of the leash. Life is good.

I could say I got the dog for exercise or to get myself out of the house or to have an excuse for my husband and me to make up silly songs, the way we did when our kids—all grown up now—were too young to roll their eyes at us.

But in fact I got the dog to have an anchor in the ordinary world of sights and smells, outside the words and laws that are the tools of my legal practice. Lawyers are surrounded by rules, agreements, promises made and broken. We parse words to determine who is legally bound to do what. Then we try to connect those obligations to the facts in front of us in order to solve somebody's problem. It's all too easy to focus on work to the exclusion of, well, meandering.

The dog forces me to meander. I have to stop trying to make facts and rules behave themselves and focus on what's going on right here, right now, like the ruby-throated hummingbird zooming around my neighbor's Mexican sage. I would have missed it completely if the dog hadn't stopped and stared. I would have gone right past that tiny red sock in the middle of the sidewalk, kicked off by some passing baby in a stroller, if the dog hadn't pounced on it and carried it away in dogly triumph.

Walking the dog makes me lighten up and pay attention, not to what's in my own head but to the unexpected small delights of the actual world. The dog gets me out of the four walls—work, clock, computer, phone—and into the land of smells and colors and serendipities. He reminds me of everything I can't control and don't need to.

Some religions elevate walking to the level of meditation, but I don't reach that high. I believe in modest miracles: the hummingbird, the red sock, the fact that my middle-aged body still works. I believe in paying attention. I believe in meandering. I believe it's time to take the dog for a walk.

Yankee Go Home

Rita Barrett

It wasn't shaping up to be my ideal Christmas Eve. I had spent much of the day fighting the urge to cry, and my spirits were low as I boarded the train with my two best friends.

The train's destination was León, Spain, but I wished it could transport me to Portland, Oregon, USA. I was studying at a Spanish college and had planned to spend Christmas with a friend who was studying in Austria and another who had come over from the United States for the holiday. Our tour of Spain over the break sounded exciting as we planned the itinerary in our letters, but on the twenty-fourth of December our adventure dulled in comparison to being home with our families.

On the train, we talked about all that had happened since we last saw one another in September. Our English marked us as foreigners on a train carrying excited Spaniards home for la Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, with their families. A few seats away, a Spanish university student stared at us. Reaching into his scanty English vocabulary, he wrote a greeting in the steam on his window: “Yankee Go Home.”

Oh, if only we could go home! After contemplating his sentiment for a moment, I called out to the young man in Spanish, “You want us to leave?”

Surprised to hear me speak his language, he responded with the expected political opinions. I'd already discovered the resentment some Spaniards felt toward the American military bases in their country, and I wasn't surprised when he raised that issue. My Spanish wasn't perfect, but I translated for my friends as we shared our opinions. As we talked, the Spaniard seemed surprised that our convictions didn't match the stereotype he had of Americans. The young man finally conceded that perhaps not all Americans were out to dominate the world, and we began laughing and enjoying our conversation.

Our new companion's stop came before León, and he said good-bye as he gathered his things and walked toward the exit. Suddenly he stopped and turned back to his seat. Wiping off the phrase on the window with his jacket sleeve, he replaced it with a single English word: “Welcome.”

When I think about that homesick Christmas Eve, the encounter on the train seems so appropriate for the season of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” How amazing that just a few minutes of talking with ordinary Americans shattered the stereotypes the young Spaniard held.

The following summer the friend who had studied in Austria and I traveled through Europe, making new friends in several countries. We stayed with a goat herder's family in Sicily, ate at the home of a medical school student in Florence, chatted with people in France, and helped build a church in Germany. What was our secret to meeting these people? Well, between the two of us, my friend and I could speak or at least stumble around in five languages. Not only did getting to know us change their views of Americans, but our own stereotypes crumbled as we got to know people.

I believe that learning another language gives one the amazing power to break down cultural walls and bring people together. I have found that nothing warms the soul of a native more than hearing a visitor attempt to communicate in his language. Speaking another's language shows interest and respect for that person and his country. It says, “I value your culture, and I don't expect you to do all the work in this relationship.” If we want world peace, I believe a good place to start is to learn to speak the world's languages.