I would imagine the best part about working for the Gap would be that you never have to spend any time wondering if your life would be more fulfilling at some other Gap. The almost frightening uniformity must also have the power of a mild sedative. I just can’t imagine someone working at the Gap in, say, White Plains fantasizing about the shirt folding boards and the long sleeved tees at the Gap in Shaker Heights.
Most people, though, do fall prey to the lure of the “grass is greener” siren song at one point or another. I worked in a field that was particularly susceptible to this mindset, at least on the lower rungs of the career ladder. This was partly because television news is not built to encourage lifers. It’s commonly accepted that if you want a raise, you don’t ask for one. You go to another station at a higher market level. If you’re a reporter and you want to be an anchor, you usually move downmarket to get the experience and upmarket once you have it. The worst way to succeed is to stay in one place, This creates an environment that encourages the belief that success… and happiness as well… are predicated on being anywhere but wherever you are.
Most reporters I’ve known have passed through three stages of disillusionment before accepting the realities of the industry. Those stages, like phases of the moon, are fairly predictable.
- The “I can be better in a bigger market” phase.
- The “I should work in another country!” phase.
- The “I’ll work for PBS” phase.
It takes a while, but sooner or later, everyone gets it – that there is no mystical, El Dorado like market where the streets are paved with Big J journalism, that the BBC is not going to take on an American local news expat, and that while you do have a month to create a story at PBS… it takes a month for you to create a story at PBS. That what you wanted was in Kansas all along.
Working in television news spoils you for life. Results simply have to happen fast, whether you think you want them to or not. After a while, most reporters settle in and accept the reality that the grass isn’t greener on the other side because they’ve seen the grass. It’s actually, I think, one of the great strengths of the industry. It’s difficult to want for another life when you can see for yourself that it isn’t as good as the one you have. Many of my friends who are still in the business joke about how they can’t get out because they’re not qualified to do anything else. This, I think, is far from true. They don’t get out because they have no idea how they would be happy doing anything else. Whether they admit it or not. I’ve gone through the phases myself. When I left the industry it was hardly by choice, but if I took anything with me, it was, at least, the knowledge that the myth of greener pastures is exactly that – a myth
Which is why I’m having a bit of difficulty with the idea I’ve been having lately – that maybe being blind wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.
It’s a strange, midworld I live in right now. Not quite blind, but not quite sighted either. The official, medical term for it is “low vision,” and as much as I’ve railed against giving undeserved power to words themselves when the real enemies are the perceptions and expectations behind them, I have to admit… low vision? That one leaves a mark. There’s just something about it that implies dimness, dullness, a certain… being kneecapped way of life.
Nobody knows quite what to do with someone who can see… a little. Lately, I’ve been getting the feeling that the fully blind people I meet resent on some level that I want to fall in with them and their goals because “you just don’t know what it’s like,” and they’re right. Every time I successfully pick out the salt shaker from the pepper, I know they’re right. At the same time, , fully sighted people can’t wait to bend over backwards to open doors offer their seats point out when the light turns green and offer any other manner of assistance I don’t want and don’t request, they’re right too. Every time I run my forearm across a door so I can find the handle without grasping at air, when I look for or feel for the big triangle the verifies that yes, this is the men’s restroom, rather than the circle on the entrance to the women’s restroom, or when I let my finger hang over the lip of a cup so I can tell when I’ve poured almost to the top, they’re right too. It’s a strange feeling of not quite fitting in no matter which way you turn. As the weeks stacked up since the last surgery, I’ve been coming to terms with the idea the world of clear sight is my past. If, to steal from Dylan Thomas and take his words almost completely out of context, the dying of the light is in my future, is it so wrong that some small part of me wants it to hurry up and get here? They say the politician who won’t choose between the left and the right, but who chooses a middle of the road path, only ends up being run over from both directions. That’s a little how this feels, a foot in both worlds, but planted firmly in neither.
So here’s where I landed on this.
To date, I’ve hiked eighteen of the fifty four mountains in Colorado that rise higher than fourteen thousand feet – the fourteeners, they’re called, appropriately enough. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. Eighteen long slogs in tough terrain, and each summit was a hard fought victory. Still, whenever I recount that number, there’s a small voice in the back of my mind that whispers, “it should be nineteen.” He gives no quarter, that little voice, and I’ve never asked for one. There’s one peak in the San Juan range that should have been number nineteen, but it was late August, very late in the season for high country hiking, and a late afternoon lightning storm forced me and the hiker I had fallen in with at the trailhead to turn back and return to a lower altitude below treeline. By the time the skies cleared, there was no hope of summiting and returning until well after dark. Since neither of us had more than emergency overnight gear, the risks seemed foolish at best, dangerous at worst.
I’ve beaten myself up over that descent for years. Over the following winter, I left Colorado for a job in Tennessee, and of the thirty-six fourteeners left to summit, that one hurts the most. I’ve never met another hiker who questioned the wisdom of the decision not to summit, but I’ve felt badly about this uncompleted task ever since.
Until now.
Like I said, bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. Lingering between two worlds, not knowing which one you’ll end up in and not really belonging to either, is like not being at either the summit or the trailhead. To me, the feeling has always been that you either climb to the top of a mountain or you don’t, and that the trail is just the means of getting from one point to the other. However, what I’m starting to realize is that on that very long ago (or so it seems now) August afternoon, I reached my personal summit. I reached the limits of what could be done at that time, on that day, and by that me.
I think that perspective has merit today. I’ve had some strange personal victories since this past May. Finding what I need at the supermarket without asking for help. Convincing a client to hang with me while I figure out how to log and edit video for her film. Making it to a friend’s house for dinner without asking for a ride even though I’d never been in their winding Cole Valley neighborhood. In one world, the sighted world, these are tasks so simple they’re not worth mentioning. In another world, the world of total blindness, they’re tasks that are even harder and are achieved in darkness. I don’t live in either of those worlds… not quite. Still, these are my summits today, and today, I scaled them. Just because I didn’t challenge the lightning doesn’t make the trail up to that point less challenging. I reached my summit, is what I’m saying.
That realization is why I’m putting together this little trip. Because I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know what the next summit is, or how hard it will be to reach. What will define success is almost certainly fluid, but I can only hike the trail I’m on. This may become the story of how I saw part of the world, and then saw none of it, or saw it differently, but I think the trail itself has value. I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating – if you’ll stick around for the ride, I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.
I may be in the middle of the road, but at least I’m not on the sidewalk.
