A Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis

When I was 20 years old an article appeared in my dad's New Yorker magazine called "The Fifty-Nine-Story Crisis.” The article comes crashing into my head this morning, unbidden and too relevant, with startling detail; I’m able to locate it with a quick online search and devour it as quickly as I did as a younger man. It is the harrowing account of a prominent structural engineer who has a minor detail brought to his attention a year after the completion of a 915-foot skyscraper, NYC’s Citigroup Center: the entire building could collapse. Not just that it could collapse in a major windstorm. As the engineer investigated and ran his own calculations, corroborated by the best wind-testing center in the world, he learned that the chances were 1 in 16 in any given year. The fault lay in his design. And his mistake surfaced at the onset of hurricane season.

The story captivated me; even now, re-reading it, I can feel my pulse quicken as I follow along as emergency meetings are held, plans outlined, and the building reinforced—becoming "one of the strongest structures in the world" with the fix—all at the behest of a man who blows the whistle on himself at enormous risk to his reputation, career, and life. (At a pivotal moment when he had confirmed the statistical risk of collapse but hadn’t yet shared this with anyone, the engineer briefly considered sucicide, before dismissing it as "as a coward’s way out and…unconvincingly melodramatic.")

As I mentioned relevance to my own life at the outset, it must be stated that I’m not suicidal. I am, however, given to melodrama, which is probably why the situation I’m about to describe, and my quandary over what to do about it, is a 59-story edifice in my head alone. Yet there it is nonetheless: a building at risk of collapse, heading into hurricane season.

In May of this year I entered the race for our local school board. A few intense weeks later I withdrew. The breaking point came when Google suspended my newly-minted election account for sending out more than 1000 emails in a day, more accurately in 31 minutes. The roots of that dismantling, however, had been present in the blueprint of my campaign. I had considered a run  a full year before out of a passionate belief in greater accountability, transparency and communication between the board and the community, after a paraeducator strike shuttered schools (putting my kids home) for a week. Yet all that had been pushed to the back burner with situations requiring attention within my own family. And it was my own family, as ludicrous as it sounds even to me as I write these words now, that I failed to consult with before entering.

For a few weeks I enjoyed both respite and clarity. I had stepped down. Life had other plans, though: County rules forbid removal of one’s name from the election process. This is true at every step of the way. Including when one finishes a strong second out of four in an August primary, as I did, and advances to November.

The time since has been one of turmoil and indecision. On the one hand, I told myself what others were telling me: in essence, that a goodly number of folks hoped I would win and step up, the “if not me/who, if not now/when” argument. With everything happening in our country and world that has potentially devastating effects on our kids and schools, who am I, to not be the tower standing strong in the winds of change?

And on the other hand: more family stuff. Some of it entirely outside of my control, yet still impacting emotions, time, sleep, even work. In addition to being a father and a husband I’m also a son and a brother, and if I’m not attending to those roles…who am I? And how much do I let situations that will likely improve in the near-term (months) weigh on the decision of whether to serve a more longitudinal role (4 years)--or, wait right there, is not that service (4 years) the short-term role, which may be postponed a year or several if needed, compared to the lifelong role of family commitments?

What is the right thing to do? Can I serve, now, and still be a dad, sibling, human that I’m proud of?  And if I don’t win, can I set out to do the things I tell myself that I’d like to? Because is not part of being a good family member also participating in the larger “family” of community engagement? And herein, an opportunity (the school system) with immediate repercussions for my own family?

These questions continued to weigh on me. I went so far as to draft several versions of a Letter to the Editor asking people to not vote for me, before ultimately posting a letter on social media to the opposite effect...before realizing, no matter what I did, I couldn’t control the outcome. Nor, perhaps, should I be able to. 

I am neither a fifty-nine story building about to collapse, nor am I the grand edifice that will bring about universal enlightenment...or even, guarantee-ably, a better education for our district’s kids. I’m a human, I’ve made mistakes, and I’ll make more.

Which is not a reason that I should give up the questions, or stop trying to do the best I can.

At one point over the summer I discussed all of this with my life coach (yes, for the time being I have a life coach; no, it’s not covered by my insurance; and yes, I’d still recommend it, highly). I told him “A part of me is fed up with this culture of ‘me,’ where the ultimate arbiter of the right thing to do comes to its impact on the individual, rather than asking what is good for society, even if it’s not convenient for me right now.” In that sense, perhaps I am getting what I asked for. This really isn’t up to me. It’s up to you all.

And to address the larger question, can I be a human that I’m proud of, can I be the best I can be–that will not hinge on a single moment that is at once hugely outside of my control (whether I’m elected) and still, after that event, in my control (whether I serve). To go back to the fifty-nine-story crisis: the engineer’s decision to go public was not the end of the story. It was the beginning. He still had to call up and navigate innumerable meetings. To endure additional rounds (with every new group of persons who of necessity were looped in) of “why wasn’t this accounted for in the first place?” To identify and collaborate on solutions, cost, liability, actually strengthening the joints that would hold the building up in a storm. Similarly, whether or not I’m elected and serve, I will have a series of decision points and actions to take in the months and years ahead: To what will I devote my time and energy?

I’ll bring in a final metaphor, perhaps simply to soothe myself, which is the idea that I need be neither building nor builder. To quote my wife's beloved Paulo Cuelo, “A builder, no matter how long he might work at a building, finally completes it and it is done. A gardener, on the other hand, never completes his work, for always the plants are growing and changing, always there are seeds to be planted.” Perhaps, instead of a builder or building, I can be a gardener. Or a seed.

The Pause

The Pause

I am on the river and it is not raining. This is noteworthy not so much for the lack of rain–very normal for July on the lower Salmon River, which gathers courage and volume from the Sawtooth, Bitterroot and Lemhi Mountains before wending its way through a high desert canyon to join its former tributary, the now-larger Snake–as for the fact that it was several hours of rain, solid rain, that delayed the start of our trip yesterday. Today it is not raining and I am teaching my brother-in-law to row. In so doing I discover the pause.

I am on the river, and it is not raining. There is just enough itinerant cloud cover (are we rowing through it? or is it reaching out to us as it flies overhead to parts unknown?) to make the day not blazingly hot, and yet, as we are in Western Idaho instead of home on the Northern Olympic Peninsula in Washington, neither is it chilly, despite the morning hour. It is perfect.

Back, flip, dip, pause, pull, lift, roll, back, flip, dip, pause, pull, lift, roll, back, flip, dip, pause. 

Never before had I broken it down so completely. After the pull on the oars, with the blades perpendicular to the water, lift them out of the water. Before bringing them back for the next stroke, roll the wrists. Now the blades are parallel to the plane of the river’s surface, and will slice through a wave, if needed, to get back to the starting point for the next stroke. This “back” motion, achieved by pushing forward on the oar handles, can even be done entirely underwater. Now, flip back to perpendicular and dip for the next stroke.

And…breathe. Pause. Before that next stroke. Is the oarblade perpendicular to the water? Is there current there? Or eddy, or slackwater? Is your other oarblade perpendicular? Do you want to in fact push instead of pull on one or both oars? Where is the current taking you, and is your boat oriented how you’d like it? Where is the next biggest wave, rock, or hole to avoid?

Or are there no dangers present, and you can just...pause?

I am on the river, it is not raining, and after yesterday’s morning rain (punctuated by a horizontal squall precisely at dinner time, for which we employed the tarp we’d driven from the put-in site back to Grangeville to purchase) the air is delightful and I can imagine that the brown-and-sagebrush-grey canyon walls are just a little greener and I am not at work and I am with people I love and trust and I can pause.

Later, I will need to row. Through Half-N-Half and Snowhole and China and Skeleton Creek, and down 20 miles of the Snake after the confluence. To catch eddies for campsites and lunchsites, to avoid eddies and follow Ariadne’s thread of current through a labyrinth of slackwater, holes and rocks. So, too, my companions: my brother and his wife, my mom, and my brother-in-law, who is picking up the feel of rowing with alacrity and vim. For now, though, we are allowed a pause.

In pausing I can calibrate my oars. Where is the larger current of my life taking me? Am I oriented in such a way as to be able to pull back from giant waves, or square up to them when necessary? Do I need to eddy out and secure the frame, or scout the next rapid?

Am I even in the right river canyon?

Everything about our lives–let me pause right there. Everything about my life has been forward momentum; in looking around me, I think this is true for a great many of us. 

Certainly, the current power structure, the status quo, gains nothing from having me pause, think, question, be goofy. As long as I produce widgets and algorithms and patient encounters (I've never been good at treating patient encounters like widgets; my apologies to my patients for always running behind)...and then soothe my frazzled nerves by consuming property and widgets and algorithm-generated entertainment...the great machine rolls on, and I am but flotsam. I am not rowing, and if I am, it is but to accelerate my blind journey down an unquestioned torrent.

And so here I am. Pausing. In writing I have always found a pause; often, I end up at a place entirely different than what I expected when beginning the exposition. To return to my earlier and unexpected metaphor, I am, like Theseus, lucky, in love and in life. In my friends and family, and most of all, in my wife (who is planning to come with our boys on the trip next summer, and who was so wise to let us work out all the kinks without her this summer), I have my Ariadne’s thread. 

In pausing, I can pick up that thread, again and again, and row, and pause, not blindly. With intention.