Doc Ott’s Apologia Blog

In early May 2005 a series of incidents at work made me stop and wonder a few things. I did some things that, at the time I though were noble and right. I found myself re-evaluating my actions with an eye towards self-improvement. I looked at my actions from afar. I looked at why I interact with people the way I do. Not just in this incident, but people in general. I looked at what makes me get up everyday. I looked at what motivates my every action. I have always strived to be the best at what I did. I carried myself as if I was the best at everything. Some confuse this with arrogance, but I truly believe it was not. It was a confidence that I thought was genuine. I took on leadership roles whenever presented and I like to think I did a good job. It was who I was.
I realized that I was living a lie. I did a hard hard evaluation of my life and realized that in my life, I was never the ‘best’ at anything. Not one damn thing. I looked everywhere. High school, Boy Scouts, college, graduate school, jobs I have had, at Dairy Queen, at Jackson Community College and everywhere in between. I have never been the best. That’s ok, few people are the best at anything, but you have to understand, that I thought I was. It was my motivation. It is what made me who I was.
I have always subscribed that there are two kinds of people on this Earth, those who like Mark Ott and enjoy chatting and hanging out. There are also the other people who loathe me, hate my guts. I know that the vast majority of people fall into the first category. There is no one out there who say ‘Mark Ott? Oh, he’s an OK guy, kindof quiet, nothing fancy’. Nope, with me it is all or nothing. Everyone knows where I stand, everyone knows my opinion. If you don’t know my opinion, it is because you are not paying attention. I tell everyone my opinion. Like I said, most people are OK with that and like me. Who would think anything was wrong?
All of this came crashing down. For nearly 32 years of my life, the motivation (understand this was not ‘conscious’ as a motivation, but in looking back, it was what drove me) was a lie. I have always tried new things, painting, wood working, boat building, geocaching, running… And in all cases, I strived to be the best person at it. Not just the best I could be, I wanted to be the best. I never was, but it gave me the drive.
Now I know that the drive not only was a lie, but it was not worthy. People accept me, yes and many of them like me, but because I was an arrogant person. All of the sudden I did not know who I was, where I was headed, and most of all, I had hurt people and had been not nice to people who did not deserve such lack of respect.
So I sat in a serious ‘funk’ for a very long time. Given the opportunity for a week alone with nothing to do (no kayaking or boatbuilding, my wife and child off on vacation) I had a tremendous amount of time to ponder where I was on life’s journey.
I looked up. I looked up and saw the world through a completely new set of eyes. I still do not know what caused me to look up, a calling, an epiphany, I do not know. I just know that I had stopped walking on my road of life. I had to look up because I didn’t know what else to do.
For 32 years I had been walking the road life looking about 5 feet in front of me. I always knew in advance what I wanted to do with my life. Every time I came to a fork in the road, I knew enough about the choices (looking 5 feet past) I took the ‘right’ (what I believed at the time) choice. I went to college right out of High school. I did well in college and went on to graduate school. I did well there, and got a Ph.D. I meet a wonderful woman, we marry and have a wonderful daughter. I am living the American dream. I grew up in a healthy family that loved and supported me 110%. I think I have everything I am supposed to. Society tells me I should strive to have this and that, and I have it. Never in my life have I ever envied another human being. Sure, I might want that cool toy, car, house that someone else has, but their core things, I never wanted. I never wanted someone elses job, family, lifestyle. I had it so good. I had it so good, I had survivors guilt. I was surrounded by people who did not have what I have, so I should just shut up and be happy that I have it so darn good. People envy me, so I must have it pretty good.
I looked up and saw the world and I was crushed. I looked back behind me and saw my nice safe, American dream choices that I made for 32 years. I looked up and saw a whole new world. I saw people walking around in various states. I saw people walking looking 1 foot in front of them, I saw people with their eyes shut, and I saw a few people looking out with the same eyes I had. I saw all the beauty in the world. Gone was my head-down look. I was looking at the world full face, taking it all in. I pulled out a set of binoculars and looked all around. I saw so much more. I was baffled at the beauty of what I saw. I cursed my 5-foot view, because it left out so much.
I saw people who, for lack of a better term, are sheep. They strive for some goal that they think is normal. They go through life by some sort of procedure written down by society. They feel they must conform to some obscure form of group migration, thinking maybe that there job is to follow society. They don’t make any exciting choices. They have their little societal compass which drives their every decision. They will grow up, get a job, spouse, kids and die. If you asked me, most of these people never really lived. Given only one shot at it, I know that you must make the most of everyday.
My world took such a radical shift I could barely control myself. In short order, I realized that I have been living a lie, but yet the world is bigger and better than I previously thought. The biggest psychological horror of life and the most eye-opening revelation happened to me in the space of 6 weeks. The word scary does not begin to describe what was going through me.
I felt like I had been reborn. I felt like the first 32 years of my life were all wasted, because now was the first time I felt truly alive. Alive to everything around me. I had broken out of some cocoon. I was a new man, with the world at my fingertips.
My emotions took a serious change. I still felt everything I did before, love, happiness, compassion, pain, grief, anger. These same feelings were all there, but now they have all been magnified by a factor of 10. When I am happy and joyous, I am almost ethereal in my bliss, floating and basking in the warmth that surrounds me. When I am angry, the force and passion of it is deep rooted. I don’t quite know why, but I believe that my emotions are bounded by my natural relationship with the world around me. Now that my known world has expanded, my emotions and feelings seem to have filled the space. Controlling it is a little difficult, but on might say that I did not show real emotions before.
I know I can never go back. I cannot go back to dropping my head, working at my day job, moving through the world, only to die in the same condition that I sit in here, at age 32, with everything the American dream says I should have. I want to begin life anew, walking through with my head high and taking it all in. My emotions now are so intense, that they scare me, but they are mine, and I can hide them no more. My relationships are now all different. Some things that used to make me angry no longer do. Things I was ‘ok’ with before, now infuriate me. My patience with people has changed for the better. I am no longer the arrogant ass I was before. I am no longer the guy who needs to be the best at everything. I now need to move on with my life. I sit at a very strange junction. I used to need to surround myself with friends to feel alive. Now, when I am alone with my thoughts and the natural world around me, I feel very alive.
I am well along a road of life that has been very good to me. I made good decisions back when I looked down. A 5 feet vision was enough to dodge oncoming trains, low flying aircraft, etc. I have been very lucky in what I have and what got me where I am today. But now the ballgame is so different, I seem to be stuck for a moment. I look around am so excited to take the next step, I am almost paralyzed by the number of choices I have. With my new found vision and immense introspection abilities and self-knowledge I don’t know where to start.
Darn scary I say….

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2005 at 5:23 am and is filed under My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.