Well we have had similiar experiences, but probably addressed them differently-lol. I grew up in a tough town, Richmond, California with an alcoholic father. Had three jobs one time when in high school to earn money.
I joined the guard to avoid the Viet Nam war, which I was not going to fight in!
I worked all my life and worked my way all the way through graduate school. No one gave me a dime. But unlike you it sounds, I went for knowledge. Only for knowledge. I never thought about a career.
I was overcome by how ignorant I was once I started reading the great minds. I had an epiphany and remember exactly where I was and the day, like when Kenndy was shot. I was walking past the dorms on a sunny, Winnie The Pooh type days (I remember the white coulds-lol, as a junior in college and realized I not only did not know the answers to life's questions, I didn't even know the questions.
Once again I was overwhelmed by my ignorance. What was existentialsm? What is phenomonology. What do the Buddhist know?
I managed an apartment building for rent, worked in fast food joints and played poker for an income. At 24 I began my intellectual journey. I started reading everyone I could think of that people thought knew a lot. I had an old white comfortable couch and read with the front door open.
Two years straight I read.
Half the time I had no idea what they were talking about. But I read those guys day in and day out. I started out with Steinbeck and Hemingway (I had read Ayn Rand earlier and she got me thinking), graduated to F. Scott fitzgerald, Catcher in the rye and continued on to Sartre and Camus, Baudelair, Siddhartha, Herman Hesse, Joyce, Bertrand Russel and Aldous Huxley.
I took jobs as they came after college. I was the state Director of Emergency Medical Services, and the State director of the office of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (wrote both state plans) and coordinated a major state disaster for the dept of health and social services.
But I hated all of it.
My only love in life has been for the minds of Einstein, Whitehead, Neils Bohr, Mark Twain, H.L Mencken, Hunter s Thompson, Carl Sagan and all the great dreamers, Tolstoy, Deostevsky, Nitche;
and above all the great Greeks who almost figured out everything in 400 BC!!!!!
Adb before HOmer 700 BC the past is a dark hole as no writing exists earlier. The great Homer, Plato, socrates, aristotle.
I cannot imagine life without them!
I have this brief moment on earth and I want to understand my existance to the greatest degree possible. |
