Chapter Five–Who Am I
I look to my right, and a man is sitting beside me. I flinch, frightened.
You weren’t there a second ago, I think.
“How’d you do that?” I ask.
He laughs, a genuine laugh. His smile tells me I might never know. He is silent.
“Who are you?” I wonder aloud.
He looks at me again, this time with an amused look, like I should know better.
“Who do you think?”
“An angel?”
I cannot retain any knowledge of the man’s appearance. An instant later I can’t recall his expression, or complexion, but I realize his appearance only in the now.
“No,” he laughs, “Not an angel, but I am a messenger. What my name is does not matter now. No, the true question is who are you.”
I don’t hear him, I’m too busy wondering what he looks like. I see kindness in his smile, and I hear laughter in his voice. I see love in his eyes, and his expression warns me of his incredible caring. Yet I cannot determine anything, from nationality to age, from height to weight. The man is either ever-shifting from appearance to appearance, or all-in-one.
“Who are you?” he reiterates.
“I, uh, I’m, uh… you want to know who I am?”
“Yes, what do you call yourself?”
I pause, searching for the correct answer.
“John Chamberlain, I am an insurance marketer, with a one hundred percent success rate.”
I didn’t quite know why I went so far, as the man I was talking to didn’t seem like one to enjoy bragging matches.
“That’s it?”
His words sting like bees, but more intentional, and thus more personal.
“Yes, ‘that’s all,’. I just happen to work for Robinson Home Insurance! One of the most prestigious Insurance companies in the world! Not only that, but just last month I was named Head Marketer for the entire company, and I will soon be getting pay raise that is just over a four hundred percent increase. How about that?”
I am slightly disappointed in myself for the bragging, but the flurry of accomplishments flowed easily after the months of attempting to answer my question. I was talking more to myself, than to him. Proving myself, if to no one else, to myself.
“Interesting. And of your personal life?”
I blink, but refusing to talk seems like walking away from something that I don’t like, but will help me. (Green beans come to mind.)
“I’ve got my wife, and we have our kids.”
“What do you do for fun?”
“Well, honestly, I work on cars. It seems funny, I know, but creative marketers can still love the sound of a machine, or the feeling of success after conquering a difficult alternator, or,” I laugh. “Changing a lightbulb on an HHR.”
The man laughs with me, apparently familiar with the nigh on impossibility an HHR presents in the way of lightbulb-changing.
“So do you get to work on cars often?”
“Not anymore,” I say, and realize the words’ truth. “I have very little time. I try to spend time with my family, but some times work comes home, and I end up ruining an evening by not participating.”
I surprised myself again with sudden openness. I realize that I feel peace exuding from the man, but I have no clue why I’m telling him anything.
The man hums in understanding, and nods his head. He turns to me after looking at the sea.
“Why are you a marketer?” he asks. “Why don’t you fix cars?”
“Uh, well, because of the money,” I reply. “I knew I wanted to have a family some day, but the money wasn’t good enough in the auto repair business, unless you owned the shop, but that’s something that I didn’t want to do.”
“Why not?” he asked, the acuteness of the question slicing through the damp, pre-storm air.
“Why would I? There’s too much risk! So many supplies, plus rent, and employees, to get something like that off the ground, it’d be way, way too much money.”
“Why don’t you take the risk? The pros are much greater than the cons. What do you lose? A little money. Believe me, there’s always more money.”
I look at him, contemplating his words.
“Yeah…” I finally say.
“So why don’t you try to believe in something. I know you don’t want to be a marketer. It’s just what you do. I see it in your eyes, that you want to be helping people. That’s the reason you chose insurance, you thought it was a worthy cause. But you found it wasn’t what you wanted. You brainwashed yourself into thinking that you loved your job, because you loved your money.”
I felt my hair bristling as I got defensive.
“I do like my job!” I burst. “I love the creativity, the scheming, and the business end. I do like it!”
“I know that,” replies the man, in a calming way. “You don’t hate your job, you just weren’t made for it. When you don’t do what you’re made to do you fight it. Deep down in your soul there’s an unreachable itch. You can’t sit still until you scratch it. Your itch is to do something else. You–”
“It’s too late anyway,” I interrupt, drowning in self-pity as I realize everything he said was true. “I already went to college, and I can’t do it again, I don’t have the money.”
The man suddenly rises, he motions for me to join him. I stand and wipe of my pants.
“Do you hear the thunder?” he says, and gesturing to the clouds on the horizon.
I nod.
“Do you hear the sea?”
I nod again.
“Do you see the magnificence in it all?”
“Yes.”
“Then, not to get all bibley on you, but if God takes care of the flowers and the birds, and the ocean, and the fish, and everything else, why wouldn’t he help you?”
“I dunno,” I say grumpily.
“Have you thought about this?” asks the man, more sternly.
“Yes, but I don’t know, it just seems ridiculous. Why would he care?”
“Because–again, I’m just saying the truth, nothing weird and religious–God loves you. He made you!”
I snort, somewhat derisively, and mostly just to make myself feel confident. It doesn’t work.
“Don’t be skeptical. You have a wife and kids, right?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, unable to see where he’s going with this.
“And when you work you earn the money so you can help them live comfortably, right?”
“Uh-huh…”
“You buy food, clothes, shoes, countless daily necessities, and you pay for gas, and electric, and water, and you pay the bank for your lovely house. In other words you look after your family, and you help them.”
I nod.
“Now think about it another way. Say you just made a… a… an animal of your choice. You want to show it to the world and say ‘Look what I made,’. Imagine it. Do it.”
“Okay,” I say. I imagine it, reluctantly.
“Now imagine the animal,” he pauses. “What’d you imagine?”
I look at my imagination, and see a platypus.
“A platypus,” I state, without thinking.
“A marvelous choice, one of my favorites,” the man replied. “Okay, so imagine that the platypus gets cold? What would you do?”
“I would get him a blanket?” I say hesitantly.
“Yes, exactly! You would fix it, you’d stop the problem. You’d help you’re little creation so it would be comfortable.”
I nod, understanding now.
“Picture this!” he continued excitedly. “The platypus jumps–you know what,” he said interrupting himself. “This is the part of the analogy where a child would be more apt to play the part.”
He strokes his chin, which may or may not have a beard. I can’t tell, even as I strain to see.
“Do you have a son?” he asks.
“Yeah, Tommy,” I reply.
“Okay, forgot the platypus, put Tommy and yourself at the community pool. Tommy’s on the water slide and he won’t come down unless you promise to catch him. As soon as you say, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll catch you, Tommy!’ he puts his fears aside and jumps. He trusts you.”
I see where he’s taking this.
“So when Tommy trusts his father, he gets the excitement and thrill of the slide–the experience of it–and then if he doesn’t like it, he tries the diving board, again using the trust principal. But, if he does like it, then he can take more risks, sliding down backwards, for example. Again, this is a metaphor, but I’m sure you can apply it to real life.”
I see his point but I still feel a cautious skepticism that is making me uncomfortable. I wince as I plan to ask a question.
This isn’t something you can forget, I think. You’ll know forever, and it will eat away at you if you don’t do what you learn.
I take a deep breath and let it out. Lightning strikes in the distance, and I wait until the thunder rolls by.
“What am I made to do?”
