An Acquired Taste: Lifelong Optimism, Skepticism and Darn Good Luck: A Memoir

By Jerrold Lee Shapiro Ph.D.

How does a kid from the streets of the Boston Ghetto end up spending his adult life in Hawaii and Northern California? This memoir was written for two reasons. The first and most important is to be better known by my children and grandchildren. The nature of my early life would seem inexplicable today. Not only are the years gone to the dustbin of history, but so is the neighborhood and lifestyle.
Thus, it is also an attempt to comprehend better the trials, tribulations, missteps, great moments, and victories (large and small), as I approach my 9th decade of life.
Throughout the book, I try to be transparent, while exploring motives and reasons for my becoming a transplant, far from my roots. I try to explore my journey primarily through the lens of several crucial junctures and transforming choices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781669802556

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Copyright © 2022 by Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/07/2021

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CONTENTS

Dedication

A Brief Forward

Part i: CHRONOLOGY

Chapter 1: Memories Are Made of This

Chapter 2: A Little Personal History

Chapter 3: Family of Origin

Chapter 4: The Ghetto of My Childhood

Chapter 5: Schooling Before College

Chapter 6: Colby College and Waterville Maine (1960-1964)

Chapter 7: 1964-1966+ Northwestern University: The Latin School Years Redux

Chapter 8: My Internship Year in Hawaii: A Major Turning Point

Chapter 9: Waterloo, Canada, St. Bonaventure University: Three Years Before Returning Home to Hawaii (1967-1970)

Chapter 10: My University of Hawaii Years: The Start of my Career - 1970-1982

Chapter 11: New Life Plan

Chapter 12: The Tumultuous Decade 1983-1992

Chapter 13: The Nineties: 1992-2000

Chapter 14: The New Millennium

Chapter 15: 2010 – Present (2021)

Part ii: PASSIONS

Chapter 16: Music

Chapter 17: Take Two and Hit to Right

Chapter 18: Writing

Chapter 19: Friendships: Loved and Loving

Part iii: LIFE THEMES

Chapter 20: People I Have Met

Chapter 21: Reluctant Administrator

Chapter 22: Honors, Awards and Modest Fame

Chapter 23: Rounding Third and Heading Home

Part iv: APENDICES

Appendix A: A Letter To My Dad

Appendix B: Published Works

Appendix C: Memorabilia And Nostalgia

Dedication

This book is truly written for two people whom I dearly love. I undertook the entire project as a way of trying to inform my children about the eras of my life that occurred decades they were born. My history is buried in time. Most of my family is gone, as is the ghetto neighborhood of my childhood, and the lifestyle I lived, and was pressured to promulgate.

It is my greatest hope that you will both read this with an increased understanding of who I am and some of your historical roots.

To Tasha and Gabe: I will never be able to express how much I love you nor how much I admire you as people.

To my grandchildren who may someday read this, I hope it is meaningful to you as well and brings a smile when you think about Zaydeh.

And to friends who care enough about me to learn more of the subjective side of my life, all I can say is that the ways you have sustained me in life, and loved me, have been the essence of the pleasures I have experienced.

Finally, and most importantly, to Susan, who has made my life better than I could have imagined, and who will always be the love of my life. There is probably very little content here that will be a surprise to you, but rest assured, I could not be who I am today without your love.

A Brief Forward

I have long desired to age like a fine wine. I wanted to be savored, and have a good finish on the emotional palate as I grew older. Despite the fact that I have never left college, I think it is time (as I approach my 79th birthday) to stop asking the question, What do I want to be when I grow up.

This Memoir is my attempt to view the past through the rear view mirror of my reminiscences of my eight decades on earth. As I look back on my very fortunate life, I am aware of some trials and tribulations, close calls, a lot of hard work and perseverance, many life transitions, and a fruitful search for love and acceptance.

As you will read, I not only desired acceptance, but I wanted it for who I am, rather than for conformity, and acceptance of external limits. For this reason, I believe that throughout my life, I have been an acquired taste. In general, the more others have come to know me, the more they have appreciated me, and my often unconventional sense of humor. I hope this is the experience you have while reading about a life path, far removed from the one that seemed destined by my culture and family. Indeed, the neighborhood and culture in which I was born and grew into adolescence is itself now an anachronism; a relic of Jewish life in the 1940s.

It is important to keep in mind that is a personal remembrance, not a consensual history. What else can a Memoir be, but an account of how I personally experienced and reflected on events? I believe that my lifelong search for meaning has been a guiding beacon. Predictively however, whenever I seem to grasp any semblance of true meaning in life, it has become ever-more elusive. I can only conclude that my search is also the goal.

By putting pen to paper, I offer this reminiscence for you to draw your own conclusions, about the metaphoric gustatory questions I pose about my personal identity.

➢ Am I truly an acquired taste?

➢ Am I conventional and ordinary, or atypical and eccentric?

➢ Have I truly aged like a fine wine, or is my aging more akin to the fate of bananas?

To anyone who takes their precious time to read this, I offer my thanks in advance. The process of writing has been very powerful and meaningful to me. That process and the desire to be more fully known are the primary goals of such an endeavor. That matches my lifelong quest for experiences of intimacy, and my unceasing search for meaning. It is the creating more than the outcome.

Indeed, as I reflect on it, the outcome for all living things is the same. To underscore that notion, I titled my acceptance presentation for the lifetime achievement, Faculty Senate Award at Santa Clara, Life is a Terminal Illness… and It’s Sexually Transmitted

The true questions are not what we achieve or acquire, it is how we live our lives and what we contribute to others. It reminds me of an old Talmudic curse about being the richest person in the graveyard.

The Big Dilemma

As you will read in this book, my early life had no shortage of adversity. Some of it came as a result of prejudice against the minority group in which I was born. Some of it was a result of growing up with shortages and financial struggles, characteristic of a working-class family. Some came because of being targeted during my school years. Some was the result of my parents’ fears and anxieties. Some clearly came because of my outsider identity and personality.

Overcoming adversity became a major motivating factor in my life. The person I am today is clearly a function of surviving and surmounting those early challenges. Some of the scars of early hardships seem like badges of honor.

I grew up with a security-first orientation and have never completely shaken that pull towards the safety side of the freedom-security continuum balance. It often meant excess caution and also working more than one job to help support the family. Indeed, I was in my mid to late 60s before I felt truly financially secure.

When I became a father, I was confronted with an ongoing dilemma. I had conflicting desires. I clearly wanted to make my children’s lives far easier than mine had been. I wanted them to have advantages that never even occurred to me as a child or teenager. Between Susan and I, I think this has been a challenge successfully met. However, I have always been concerned that a lack of adversity can be very demotivating. My worry was that if things came too easily, it could negatively affect character, integrity and toughness.

For my sixteenth birthday, I desperately wanted a Revere reel-to-reel tape recorder. My parents, combining my Chanukah and birthday presents, gave me half of the $106.00 needed for purchase. I had to earn the remaining part (shoveling snow and working as a soda jerk). It was the best present they ever gave me. I loved that tape recorder even more than I had anticipated, and I felt great pride in ownership and the value of a personal buy-in. I have tried to keep that lesson alive for my own children. Giving them whatever I could, but wanting them to participate in feeling that it was something earned. Many times, I just wanted to write a check for whatever they wanted, but I have felt a need to hold back, to have them contribute some personal effort to the endeavor. My fear of the demotivating power of largesse has always been in my mind.

A challenging component of this dilemma is that my children have grown up in Silicon Valley, in one of the upper-middle class towns on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula. They have not had to deal with a ghetto existence. Some of the struggles I had to face have thankfully not been visited upon them – although no childhood is devoid of difficult trials. Within the framework of the upscale neighborhoods and families who were not limited by academic-level salaries, it has been important both financially and emotionally, to hold the reins tightly at times. Indeed, when my daughter was a teenager, wanting to do something that her peers were doing, she opined that I was "the strictest parent in the history of the peninsula!" Although it was troubling for me to deny her something she wanted, I did feel that being considered so strict was a small badge of honor. I thought that I must be doing something right.

I am very proud of what both my children have accomplished. I don’t know what role my dealing with my internal conflict about the value of well-earned scar tissue has played as a component of their integrity and success. I know that given my personal experiences and beliefs, it is what I have had to do.

Transitions

In my subjective life, there have been a few crucial moments when I took an alternative path, and in doing so, I travelled into a different future. Those choices and events are the backbone of my story. As a quick spoiler alert the seven taken crossroads that dramatically altered the prior trajectory of my life include, in chronological order:

1. choosing Colby College,

2. meeting Viktor Frankl,

3. going to Hawaii for my internship,

4. leaving Northwestern for the University of Waterloo,

5. meeting and marrying Susan, and

6. being a dad to my two children.

7. moving to Northern California

And now, my life trajectory as I know it…

Part I

Chronology

It is time to explain myself—let us stand up

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself.

I am large. I contain multitudes"

Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

Chapter 1

Memories Are Made of This

What is a memoir? That question above all others may be the reason that this is such a challenging endeavor. Writing this memoir has turned out to be far more difficult and complicated than I envisioned. It has taken a couple of years to pull it together, at least partially, and the writing process has gone much slower than in any of my sixteen previously published books.

I have spent a lot of time wondering and talking about why this has been such a unique challenge. I have not found it difficult to talk about my experiences. I have not felt like there was much to hide in my history. Of course, some adventures during the halcyon days of the 1970s, between my marriages are not described in detail. That is less because of my own discomfort or regret, but more about others viewing those days through 21st Century lenses.

So why has this been such a humbling experience?

Do I think it hubris to put my own life to pen and paper? Do I have an expectation that it would be too ordinary to be of interest to anyone besides myself? It may be more likely that by penning this mini "parvus opus," I am acknowledging that the time of my life is elapsing. Is my mortality and aging showing here? That notion would certainly inhibit the writing process.

Are There Themes That Define My Life?

One of the most puzzling aspects of this writer’s block is my search for themes or overriding patterns that define me best. Wouldn’t it be easier for someone else, a diagnostician perhaps, to describe the tenets and motifs that motivate my life choices and define me? From the inside, it seems far more dynamic, mutable, confusing and complex to summarize who and what I am. Perhaps I am just much more normal than I have always believed. Perchance, I am just one of those human beings whose life seems to defy such conclusions, or maybe I am simply more of a paradox than others. I seem somewhat enigmatic to myself and clearly to others in my life. I don’t have ready answers to those questions here. My long career as a psychotherapist would suggest that I know others better than most, and see my own inner experience as less readily categorized, but that may just be my ego talking.

At least one perspective to consider is that, my differences, lifelong skepticism and sense of being an outsider are self-motivated. I avoid being pigeon-holed out of anxiety (primarily the holocaust and being identified as part of a group that was to be persecuted, writ large in my psyche), but also because normal seems somewhat soul-deadening. I don’t think I have taken extraordinary steps to stand out from the crowd, but somehow, I have stood apart, and have not lived out the life that seemed pre-ordained by my birthplace and ancestry. I must consider that I feel more at home in that unpredictable role, despite my contradictory deep fears of abandonment and isolation.

I suspect I am an acquired taste; not always as attractive on first meeting, than I become as I am better known. I don’t think this is because of attempts at any deliberate subterfuge. I think my better qualities emerge as I allow my protective qualities, like a fairly acerbic wit, to recede, or become more a part of the complete package. If you, as a reader, find yourself put off by earlier parts of this text, it might be consistent with initial personal meetings. I ask that you read a bit further, with a hope that initial impression changes.

The Problems With Memory. Of course, in any history, biography or memoir, there are pragmatic challenges. What to include and more important, what to leave out. There is also the inevitable problem of recalling events and periods of life, because memory changes so much as we grow and mature. Do I recall all the great successes? Is my focus on those events that have been life-changing? By contrast, am I prone to recall every failure, and few of the successes? Do I subconsciously embellish wins and losses? Memory is arbitrary, and so much influenced by the current ego state. Yet for a memoir, perhaps all the historical facts do not have to be consensual or verifiable. Maybe what I remember is bigger or smaller than what actually happened. Perhaps I am more of a hero or goat in my personal memory than others would conclude or remember. These questions are all challenges for any memoir that strives for accuracy, and that serves as a legacy to my children or grandchildren.

As I engage in this endeavor, it is curious to reminisce, and to realize that I have never consciously experienced a new year, beginning in January. Indeed, I have been on an academic Calendar for 72 years. As I write this, I am about to begin my 61st year in a college/university setting – to some extent obviating the need to address that question, what do I want to be when I grow up? As I approach 79 years of age, I am still a full-time professor at Santa Clara University. In some significant acquiescence to aging, I have closed my private practice in clinical psychology and ceased consulting with family businesses.

Lucky in Love and Life

I feel blessed in this life. My marriage and family have been both loving and rewarding. We have two great children, who never fail to impress me, three grandchildren, a wonderful son-in-law, as well as a large extended family of in-laws, nephews and nieces. My son, Gabe completed his master’s degree, has a good profession in information security, and recently purchased his first house in San Francisco. Tasha, my daughter, is an ER nurse, an amazing mom, and a triathlete. She and her husband Aaron, have three children (currently 12, 10 & 6).

Among my greatest blessings are deep and long lasting friendships; many for decades. We have also managed to become relatively financially secure, something that was not portended given my background.

My career as a psychologist, professor and author has been most satisfying. I feel the respect of my colleagues, and the grad students I teach. There have been several significant accolades, awards and honors. I have also been able to pursue my love of music, playing and singing in folk groups through the years.

The best of fortune has allowed me to live in two great places, Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area and through the years, I have had the opportunity to travel (amazingly far and wide, given my upbringing). So, legitimately, a memoir could just end here with thankfulness for the life I have lived, the many blessings I have received and the immense good fortune experienced. As much as I would like to focus on agency, and believe in being self-made, I can never dismiss the factor of luck in my life. I have been remarkably fortunate. There are so many accidents of fate that their influence cannot be discounted. My DNA reports indicate that I am over 97% Ashkenazi Jewish. Had my grandparents not fled Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th Century, my family would likely have been annihilated by pogroms or the holocaust (as were many somewhat distant relatives). Indeed, my very existence has been the result of generations of chance and genetic survival.

I was born into a working class home in Boston in 1943, so I missed WWII, Korea and primarily because of the timing of my birthdate, a marriage deferment, and academic position, was not drafted during the Viet Nam war.

I grew up in an intact home. My parents stayed together until they died in their late 70s. My sister is alive, married to a wonderful man, and well. All of these things occurred with no real input from me. I was just the beneficiary. My parents’ focus on education and my inherited intelligence allowed me to get into good schools. I survived life-threatening accidents and illnesses, in no small part, by not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, in 1966, I managed to dodge a terrible accident on the snowy Edens Expressway, North of Chicago, when a semi-rig jackknifed swatting several cars off the highway. I somehow managed to swerve to safety. In another life-saving dodge, I had to cancel a connecting flight from Chicago to Boston at the last minute. That ill-fated plane crashed with no survivors.

I have avoided devastating consequences of youthful risk-taking. I have had the gift of longevity. Thank goodness, my children have to date also avoided personal tragedy. I cannot begin to overestimate those factors of destiny in who I am, or what I have become. I may well be simply a reflection of my ancestry, genetic lottery and vagaries of my habitat.

Carpe Diem. I have also made some lucky choices that I will describe in greater depth in the following chapters. How did I know as a very naïve high school senior what a good fit Colby College would be for me? I met Viktor Frankl there and it changed me. I had the opportunity to grow intellectually and personally in a very supportive college environment. I learned about the life of a professor there, and I found my musical self. My leaving Northwestern for Hawaii (and Waterloo) were carpe diem choices that changed my life. I recognized some moments and took risks that paid off, such as returning to Hawaii as a professor, being involved in consulting and clinical work as a psychologist when opportunities came by, leaving for a one-year trade as a professor at UCSC; a choice that ultimately precipitated a move to N. California. Most significantly, meeting Susan Bernadett at a moment when we were both free, and pursuing that relationship into a marriage that has defined more than half of my life. We plan to celebrate our 41st anniversary in June 2022.

Finally, when things have gone badly, as they have many times throughout my life, I have had the perseverance and optimism necessary to see them through and rebound.

Within the complexity that defines my existence there has been a long-term ongoing search for meaning (thank you Viktor Frankl), and my Jewish capacity to be aware of risks and downsides, as well as the victories. I think my love for baseball is a fitting metaphor in my ongoing experience of hits and misses.

A Few Words About Baseball and Existential life

One of the great advantages of baseball and all its related kid’s games was that we had a healthy dose of realization that victories were short-lived, and that losing was an integral part of games, and of life. As a psychotherapist and professor, the feel for everyday losses and recoveries were ingrained by those early street and field experiences.

For me, the metaphor of baseball for a healthy life is significant. In baseball as a hitter, getting things right three times out of ten is superior. That means an expectation of inevitable failure, seven out of ten times, and the important thing was not about failing, but what to do to recover.

It wasn’t the event as much as the reaction to an event that I could control. This is one of the lessons re-learned from my connection with Viktor Frankl. It is doubtlessly why he seemed to be speaking from within me, rather than to me. Thankfully, I learned that lesson long before I became a psychotherapist or parent. There were so many times things didn’t work out the way I hoped, but there was always tomorrow to fix it.

It was major learning to be able to accept, even laugh at the funny ways a ball bounces, a wind blows altering an expected trajectory, a fly ball being caught up on an overhead electric wire, or on a tree limb. Errors are inescapable, umpires will make mistakes and there are no video replay challenges in life. There are only responses and endurance and coming back out the next day.

Of course, this sense was annually reified being a Red Sox fan since the later 1940s. There was always failure lurking within an inch of success (snatching defeat from the jaws of victory). Those failures were often at most excruciating moments, and the inevitable refrain was wait til next year. Until this century and the miracle in 2004, being a red sox fan was to experience annually, the triumph of hope over experience. What I had to learn was that was the point – hope is the answer; not the particular win or loss.

Like life, success in baseball is not linear. There are twists and turns and ultimately the goal is to come home. Presumably that is what I am doing in this memoir

I Am Not Easily Categorized

Perhaps I should leave it there, but such an introduction would seem incomplete without briefly describing some of the paradoxes that have accompanied me, my entire life. I am confident and anxious. I am a skeptic and a romantic. I am introverted and extraverted. I am gregarious in groups, and I am shy. I have capacities to be athletic, and also to be a couch potato. I am intelligent, and naïve, very unaware of some things I should have learned ages ago. I am obsessive about some things and compulsive, particularly about saving, and yet I am also impulsive, able to let even important things go. So, who am I? My hope is that the process of writing my memoirs, I will discover some larger truths about who I am, where I stand on this earth, what I am becoming, and what meaning my life has as a legacy.

A Few Lifelong Attributes

I have always savored the complexities of the human psyche. My career choice to be a clinical psychologist was no accident. I love the differences between, and contradictions within people, more than likely a projection of self-reflection. We humans are very hard to put in boxes, and I am far from an exception. There are apparent paradoxes in my personality and throughout my life I have defied stereotypes. Some of this may become clear in this Memoir.

Many have tried, with some frustration, to discern who I truly am, including a few of my personal therapists, some colleagues, and certainly myself. I recall a specific time when my Jungian therapist inquired as to whether I was an introvert or an extravert. My only honest answer was, yes. For me, it always depends on the context in which I am operating. There are few endeavors more introverted than writing, and writing this memoir is indeed even more a source of introspective energy. Yet at the same time, I am writing this for my children and potentially my grandchildren, so that they can know parts of me better, and to have some understanding of a background that no longer exists. I gain connection by being known. I learn best when in a group, batting ideas back and forth. What could be more extraverted than being energized by social interaction?

I am also capable of creating (and collecting) a chaotic work and living space, and yet have some contrary OCD qualities. An example of my organizational skills, or lack of same, is the way this narrative evolves. There are some themes and some chronology, but there are also many asides and thoughts that seem to me to be connected, even if they appear to be digressions. It’s the way my brain works – my humor is almost always a reflection and verbalization of my primary process – essentially the offerings of my unconscious processing; loose funny perspectives and associations.

The Hope. At the core of my being, it seems to me to be fairly simple. I seek to be a Mensch; a person who loves and is loved. I try to live up to the standard of a good guy that was provided by my father, and a few mentors and personal heroes I have been lucky enough to meet. Yet, more nuanced examination offers enigmas, and no simple answers. Indeed, it opens up far more intriguing questions.

Blocks. I have lived with significant anxiety since I was very young. I inherited a security-first orientation and a combination of anxiety and wariness from both my parents, and the entire neighborhood in which I grew up. Indeed, two events that occurred by the time I was just a toddler – the holocaust and the Great Depression had a lasting impact in both serious and frivolous ways.

Endurance. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst: I remain optimistic despite the security concerns and always had a sense that I could bounce back from crises. I have been very lucky in my life in love, parenting, grandfathering and professionally. Somehow, despite a series of setbacks, I was always (perhaps unreasonably at times) confident that I could bounce back better, and end up on my feet, despite some very difficult times.

In what was a propitious form of luck, I got to meet Viktor Frankl as a freshman in college. Suddenly and uniquely, I felt that my way of experiencing life was truly understood. It seemed as if he were talking from inside my psyche – Martin Buber would have been proud of that I-thou moment).

Teamwork. I always loved being part of a team. There have been a large number of personal triumphs, awards and recognition, yet any personal acknowledgments always seem secondary to the success of the group. I have often sought out talented others in an attempt to enhance and be a valued part of the ensemble. Music groups are a good example, as are my sports endeavors. I eschewed individual sports for the team variety. Sometimes, I was the front man, but often I was a background contributor who relished enhancing others. Winning or losing was often secondary. I have always preferred it if the team develops cohesion, and does better than the sum of individual efforts. Of course, I like to be acknowledged for being part of that team, but that is not my primary motivation.

I once read that it was bad if good things happened to an enemy, and it was worse when good things happened to a friend. That is the opposite of my experience. I do compete vigorously with those I consider rivals or blocks to my goals, and have certainly experienced some (justifiable) schadenfreude, but I applaud and revel in the successes of those with whom I am close.

Outside; Looking In. This team orientation might in some ways, be my adaptation to a feeling of not belonging. My sense of teamwork is quite a contrast to my belief and lifelong experience of always being something of an outsider.

As you read this, you may be struck with how fortunate I have been and how much good luck I have experienced. I certainly believe that I have lived a blessed life. I have been very lucky in so many ways. I am also aware of the many struggles I have had over the years, how many dangerous situations I have been able to escape, and how I always thought that I could come out the other end, despite those who would endeavor to suppress me in a variety of ways. This will become most clear when I describe my experiences in school. My career as an academic was to some extent, unconsciously driven to correct those wrongs I suffered as a student.

A combination of arbitrary, incompetent and sometimes sadistic experiences from authorities, and my mother’s ability to deny my perceptions led me to be a lifetime skeptic and questioner. I simply often doubt the veracity of what I am being told, especially by those in positions of power. My ever-questioning stance has been the trait that has often got me identified as a problem, and also has allowed me to thrive. I cannot explain how that skepticism co-exists with my optimism, but assume the combination promotes survival and growth. Since childhood, I have been very aware of the context in which content occurs.

In most things I wanted to do (and anxiety didn’t keep me from trying), I assumed I could do well, perhaps better than the average person. Of course, reality often intervened to indicate that belief may have been a glaring expression of overconfidence. One striking example of this was when I went to a major league baseball tryout camp. I was advised by the coaches, and my own very clear realization, that I should stay in school. In other realms of life, I am fairly conventional (although my ability to experience atypical perceptions and see humor in most situations seems somewhat unique). My expression of that humor has sometimes got me in hot water.

And So We Begin This Lifelong Journey

As I commence, a few sustaining themes in my life are my capacity to love and love deeply; how much anxiety has driven much of my almost 80 years on earth; my perseverance in the face of adversity; being driven to be creative and make a contribution; and my deep questioning of authority, and disbelief of commonly held truths.

Among proudest accomplishments throughout my career has been my role as father/mentor. I have long been able to identify talent (often among the reticent or shy) and making it easier for those people to thrive. There are scores of former students that I have influenced, who have made great careers in the field. I have also done my best to be a good and loyal friend, and have avoided cutting off people because of slights or hurtful actions. These general themes or attributes will hopefully become apparent in my descriptions of personal history in the next several chapters.

For the rest, I leave it to you to discern. Is my life as sui generis an existence as I sometimes believe? Maybe, I am far more simply described than I imagine. As I pondered earlier, maybe I have just worked hard at being complicated and out of the mainstream. Of course, that opens the possibility that my being different and hard to pin down easily is my ongoing self-illusion.

I have tried to be honest in both what I said and did, and in my self-reflections. If you read this monograph, you will have the opportunity to judge my success.

I was born at a very early age

Chapter 2

A Little Personal History

I am basically a transplant. I have been in many places, and have been reinventing myself for the better part of eight decades. Although I have new and deep roots in my life now, they are not sown in the soil of my ancestors, nor do they follow what was bashert: a pre-ordained life trajectory. I am not complaining about this. I am quite satisfied with, and proud of, the life I have built. I am just noticing the discrepancy between where I was groomed to be, and where I am. That external experience is consistent with my inner life.

The Outsider

Growing up, I always felt like something of an outsider. It wasn’t a paranoid or rejection-kind of experience, simply an acknowledgment that what I was experiencing often wasn’t aligned with the mainstream. Sometimes, I had similar perceptions, just uncommon interpretations of what those events meant. I often saw events differently from what seemed like consensual reality. Unlike many around me, more often than not, I had a tendency to focus on process; the context as well as the content – an attempt to comprehend what was really going on, rather than what I was told. I have also always had a tendency towards seeing humor in situations that many would see as incompatible with such perceptions.

In my family of origin, I was the first to go to college, grad school or get a Ph.D. I was one of the first to move away from Boston. Contrary to the pressure from my ancestry and in that