A professional colleague was explaining to me why she had quit the highly paid, leadership position she had lived in for the previous 15 years.
“I couldn’t put the profession ahead of the people it was supposed to serve,” Shirley said. “It would be like teachers who care more about educational philosophies than their students.”
“Or like a therapist who cares more about his personal needs like reputation, self-image, and his business, than about the needs of his client-patients.”
This is a dilemma many professionals face.
I certainly have over the past 50 years, with the resulting difficult conversations, with others, and with myself.
Media employees are told what to report, and how to report it. Police officers are directed to keep the peace when encountering people with mental health challenges, and potentially dangerous behaviours. Both do the best they can until the pain becomes too much to bear.
“Because it’s right doesn’t make it easy.”
“Sometimes what you believe you have to do requires betraying your authentic self,” Shirley had continued. “But when our physical and emotional discomforts signal us that our role no longer fits, we need to listen to those signals.” And so it has been for me.
Most of us muddled along during our early years, some more than others. But once i discovered and acknowledged my evolving authentic selves, and my also evolving peccadilloes, i also began finding the clues suggesting what i needed to do, and why.
So how did i learn what my authentic self really looked and sounded like, at any given point in time?
I’ve had to drastically morph 3 times in my life.
The first major transition was caused by a car accident and resulted in severe physical trauma, and several near death experiences at the relatively tender age of 21. So that’s where my adult journey began. After surfacing from a 10 day coma, i began the next stage of my journey minus many memories and a personality.
Fortunately, instead of leaving me with permanently disabled faculties, my traumatized brain offered me new abilities which enabled me to overcome my losses. Practically overnight, i became mindful and almost paranormally empathic. But i didn’t recognize the latter until a few years later. The changes involved, unconsciously at first, exploring and analysing every environment, as well as all those with whom i interacted. Watching people and imagining what they were had always been a hobby, but that fun had also evolved into a dedicated passion; and that passion was also directed at my inner-selves.
From the time we’re born, and maybe even before, we try to make sense of our environment by watching our parents, siblings, playmates, teachers, and whomever else we encounter on our journeys. So after working to rebuild my body, i started searching for who i was. But without the models lost with my memories, who would offer me the lessons i needed? How was i going to rebuild what i had lost?
Always a voracious reader, and having few other options, i chose fictional characters who appealed to me because of what they felt, thought, and accomplished.
My first hero was Horatio Hornblower, a young Midshipman who evolved into an Admiral over the scope of C.S. Foresters’ novels. I ingested how he treated people, how he made decisions, how he succeeded, and how he handled failures.
My second role model became Hawkeye, as played by Allan Alda’s in the M*A*S*H* series. I’ve 
enjoyed and analyzed the characters over the past 30 years, finding more lessons as i watched them time and time again on DVD.
Both heroes were flawed, yet perfect, brave, yet scared, and confident, while also feeling inadequate.
They were also ultimately exceptionally competent. I wanted to be like both heroes in many ways.
So i began to emulate them!
To emulate: to match or surpass (a person or achievement), typically by imitation. "lesser men trying to emulate his greatness"
My compulsions demanded that i demonstrate those traits which i admired most in both. To do so, I also had to understand why i did or didn’t do anything. So i studied the potential scientific explanations why my heroes might have thought and acted as they did, projecting those reasons to understand why i thought and acted. This reflective process forced me to look deep inside myself so i could understand, appreciate, and respond to the apparently conflicting motivations which had often challenged and confused me.
The learning certainly served me well during my 2nd chosen metamorphosis at 40. I had given up a life-time job guarantee, a professional 15 year role with all the respect it afforded me, and more money than i could ever spend to try and manifest my dream.
But when i voluntarily gave up all the perks, i seemed to also have given up my identity, again. All i wanted to do was sit in my backyard on a toad stool, watching the stream meander down to the ocean. I was totally confused, and it took a skilled psychotherapist to help me see that i had the means and tools to move forward. The map would come as long as i trusted myself. And it did because i did.
The last time i decided to morph was when i retired 15 years ago. The transition was easier than i had ever imagined, so i had obviously learned how to manage the plethora of emotions and challenges i would encounter. It was comparatively a cake-walk.
Some people judge that i spend too much time inside my head; the truth however, is that the reflective, analytical process has and is my compass; enhanced by the engineering genes my father bequeathed me, I have the formula and the means with which i can navigate my life’s journey, white water and all.
With patience, self confidence, openness, and total self-honesty, and with help from close and loving friends, skilled mentors, and a talented psychotherapist, the journey has been wonderfully satisfying.
That’s the short story, since the long story is much too long for any blog. 
My bottom line is that i’ve lived the life of my dreams, joyful and satisfying, with more fun ahead.
My experience is that the hard work never ended, it just got easier; mostly! Enjoy the journey, since anything else will be a waste. That’s my philosophy.
Respectfully, joseph ravick "If you light a candle for somebody else, it also brightens your path." - Zen aphorism
The Resolver 
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