Lessons from Nowhere

By Kelly Muir

We've been sold the lie that one's story is only worth sharing if it's perfectly manufactured to convey victory or success. This false belief overlooks the most important stories: those of the messy journeys and imperfect lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781544533483

Kelly Muir

Kelly Muir is a professional martial artist, author, and entrepreneur, passionate about sharing her experience of growing through life's extreme highs and lows to help others learn from their own. Today, Kelly admits to being a wildly annoying wine snob, a huge fan of her mastiff dogs, and a dedicated-but-incompetent gardener. Of all the fascinating journeys of her life, she is most proud of her four grown children. While she will always consider herself from Nowhere, Kelly is honored to have called Bexley, Ohio, home for a quarter of a century.

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Copyright © 2023 Kelly Muir

All rights reserved.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-5445-3348-3

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Contents

Prologue

1. Facade

2. Change

3. Visualization

4. Resourcefulness

5. Destruction

6. Leadership

7. Emptiness

8. Rules

9. Fearlessness

10. Freedom

11. Risk

12. Statistic

13. Obstinance

14. Confliction

15. Accountability

16. Denial

17. Resilience

18. Courage

19. Perseverance

20. Sharing

Epilogue

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Why the Rabbits Have Short Tails

At one time Rabbit had a long tail.

Early one very cold morning, Rabbit was out hopping and playing. He looked and saw Fox coming up the trail. Fox had some fish with him.

Wow, I’ll ask where he caught these fish, Rabbit thought. When Fox got there, Rabbit said, Fox, where did you get those fish?

Fox replied, I caught them at the river. It was frozen over, but I dug a small hole in the ice and put my tail through. I sat there for quite awhile. My tail began to get heavy, so I pulled it out, and fish were hanging on it.

Rabbit started hopping very fast toward the water.

When he got there, he dug a small hole in the ice and dropped his tail through it. It was very cold, but Rabbit kept sitting on the frozen ice.

When he thought he had enough fish, he gave his tail a pull, but it would not come out. He pulled again, but his tail had frozen to the ice and wouldn’t budge. So, he gave it a hard jerk, and the tail snapped off.

That is why Rabbit has a short tail today.

—Traditional Choctaw Tale

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Prologue

The first time that I read a traditional Choctaw tale to my daughter, she reacted with confusion.

What did I just listen to? she asked, giggling.

It’s one of the Choctaw legends, I replied.

She wasted no time letting me know how she felt about it. Well, that’s a horrible story!

Why? I asked, curious about her response.

I mean, the rabbit wants to get some fish, then its tail freezes and breaks off, and what…that’s the end?! She threw me a look as though I should have known why it was a terrible story to share.

I sighed. Well, you have to think deeper. Its purpose is to make you question why the rabbit did that—and what the consequences were.

She groaned and threw her hands in the air, exasperated. Ughhhh—does everything need a lesson attached to it?!

I just laughed. My kids hated it when I made everything into a life lesson. For years, they had listened to me asking them what they learned from a bad day. If they had a hard moment, I’d ask them what the lesson was. If they had a fabulous experience, I’d remind them that they needed to show gratitude. Every moment of life is meant to teach us something, I would tell them. That is the purpose of living.

Of course, teenagers rarely want to hear that. And, let’s be honest—they aren’t alone. Many adults don’t want to hear that, either. Yet the idea that our lives are meant to teach us about ourselves and others is not a new philosophy.

Consider the history of the Choctaw stories. In the Choctaw culture, the tales, also known as Why, Trickster, or Open Ended legends, were passed down from generation to generation in spoken form as a way to teach. This tradition had one main objective: to encourage thought.

As a tribal member, I receive one of the ancient legends as a holiday gift from the tribal leaders every year. When I was young, I didn’t have anyone to explain them to me, and I thought they were confusing, and the abrupt, awkward endings often left me feeling as though they weren’t quite finished. For years, I could not imagine why they would send something like that as a gift.

Back then, though, I didn’t realize that somewhere along the line of modern human history, long after the Choctaw legends were created, two lies about storytelling emerged. The first was the idea that only extraordinary moments are worthy of being shared. The second, and perhaps the more damaging of the two, is the idea that for a tale to be great, it must pull together at the end so the person hearing it walks away feeling good. This shift from Native Americans’ purposeful storytelling to the European idea that stories should have a happy ending has resulted in an unintended consequence in our modern culture. In an effort to entertain children, parents these days almost exclusively select stories that result in the victory of the main character. This not only robs the reader of the chance to learn, but it also creates an erroneous belief from a young age that one is entitled to a life where everyone lives happily ever after.

The Choctaw didn’t believe either of those things. For them, the objective of the legends was to help one reach a place of wisdom. That revelation was life changing for me. The idea that the purpose of a tale was to teach, not to entertain, helped me to recognize that every story has the potential to educate. This includes the most important account of all—someone’s life story.

I applied the Choctaw philosophy to my own life. On average, I moved every seven months for the first twenty years of my life. This presented a practical problem: when asked where I was from, I never quite knew how to answer. It embarrassed me that I didn’t have anything to offer up. Heck, I didn’t even know where I was from! Once I made the connection between the Choctaw stories and the lessons they were meant to teach, though, I realized that my answer was the most obvious of all; I wasn’t actually from anywhere specific, and as it turned out, that provided me with a great opportunity. In the same way that the characters in the Choctaw stories were meant to teach the listener, I realized that my long journey living in so many places was intended to teach me, too. So, from that point forward when someone asked me where I was from, I had a quick, and proud, response; I am actually from Nowhere.

You are getting ready to read about my journey through Nowhere. The events of my life are no more, or less, important than anyone else’s. I did not write about them because I am a world-famous artist, musician, scientist, or anything, really; I didn’t invent something or go to space. I wrote about my life because now I understand that all stories matter, and they are meant to be shared. When people share their authentic experiences, not the false narratives often created in modern movies, books, or social media, they help others to understand that the magic of a life isn’t found in the perfection of it; instead, it’s in the messy middle. The true gift of anyone’s journey is the lessons they learn in the hard moments.

We are all living our own open-ended Why tale. In the same way that Choctaw children could choose to interpret stories as a lesson, we, too, can choose how we interpret moments in our lives.

The Choctaw tales taught me that whether a story has meaning is as simple as whether we choose to make it so. Keeping that in mind, there will never be a story as important or as powerful as our own.

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Lesson #1

1. Facade

The houses on Diane Drive were the epitome of the 1970s Pennsylvania middle class. Evenly spaced with perfect symmetry, the red brick homes sat on impeccably maintained plush green lawns. They were quaint homes with no fence to border one from another. This setup allowed the neighborhood kids to run between each other’s backyards, filling the air with squeals of laughter as they absorbed every ounce of warmth the Pennsylvania summer sun had to offer. In this community families knew each other and helped to parent each other’s children. Everyone pitched in to ensure that everyone else was safe. The adults regularly gathered on their porches, relaxing in lawn chairs as they enjoyed cocktails or beer and playfully debated the news of the day. The neighborhood was inviting. It was predictable. It was comforting.

I didn’t live there.

I lived across the street, high up on a hill in a much larger home that sat all by itself and overlooked the lovely homes on Diane Drive. Our big white house was built in the 1800s. Located on the corner of a busy intersection, it hid behind a tall wrought iron fence. Someone passing by may not have even noticed it because of all the old, glorious trees that surrounded it and loomed over the property as if providing a protective barrier between the house and the rest of the world.

When a visitor drove through our main gate, they had two choices. If they turned left, they would be delivered to the front of the historic house. If they turned right, they would find themselves on a driveway that would take them to the back, where they would be greeted by our two grand Cadillacs parked neatly in front of the garage. The inside of our house was as spectacular as the outside would indicate. With two magnificent staircases and three fireplaces, it was majestic.

The expansive home, known by family and friends as the White House, was an epicenter for entertaining. While it may not have been as cozy as the homes on Diane Drive, it had a muted warmth to it. My siblings and I had whole rooms filled with toys so we could play to our hearts’ content. In stark contrast, we also had rooms filled with custom drapery, the finest marble, delicate crystal, and silver to be polished.

My parents, Larry and Charlotte, often invited a steady flow of his work friends over for cocktails and extravagant meals. They carried an air of superiority, a desire to be noticed and identified as the family who had both money and prestige.

About six feet tall with jet black hair and a thin face that highlighted his cheeks and jawbone, Larry was a steely combination of blue-collar work ethic melded with a white-collar sense of privilege. A lanky man, he moved quickly and intently everywhere he went, walking through his days with purpose. His tailored clothes were always pressed, and his shoes were polished so well that he could catch a glimmer of himself as he walked. Purchasing the historic estate home that sat on top of the hill was more than an award for his effort—it symbolized that he had left the steel mill life from his youth far in the rear view.

Underneath his exquisitely crafted image, though, Larry was still the boy from the mill town stuck between two lives. In one, he had money and status. In the other? He was still the young, insecure boy who simply wanted to be with his friends, sitting on the patio and swapping exaggerated stories. When my parents traded their first, small house for the White House, those two worlds often collided in the most intriguing way, culminating in a house filled with friends, music, cocktails, and laughter.

Larry’s exuberant personality was contagious everywhere he went. He made people comfortable with an uncanny ability to remember the smallest details about them—often asking about their spouse or their children, even if he had only talked to them briefly months before. The way he spoke to others always impressed me, and, especially, the manner they seemed to listen to him. During those fun Pennsylvania nights when his friends were over for drinks, Larry told stories throughout the evening with a loud, animated voice, sending everyone into fits of laughter that rolled over the lawn and faded into the tree line. At only thirty-three years old, he relished every moment of his life living high up on that hill.

Charlotte was equally stunning. A member of the Oklahoma Choctaw Nation, her Native American heritage was obvious with her dark hair and olive skin. She had light eyes, a huge smile, and a slight build. She was always meticulous in appearance, with her hair flawlessly coiffed in a bouffant updo, studious cat-rimmed glasses signaling her high fashion sense, and accessories that matched her expensive polyester jumpsuits.

In the 1970s, women were fighting for their place in society, and though Charlotte was an extraordinarily talented athlete, she was not encouraged to pursue her love of sports. Rather, societal norms pushed her toward the acceptable route of marriage. In that era, women were not asked what they wanted to do with their lives. Instead, they were expected to become wives, and wives were meant to support their husband’s professional efforts without ever questioning their decisions. Of course, they were also expected to maintain a spotless house and present children to the world as clean, respectful, and well-behaved future citizens.

Charlotte embraced her position in life with unmatched enthusiasm. She ensured that Larry was fully supported in his business endeavors. She took extraordinary pride in being the hostess who created unforgettable events, always serving wonderful meals and decadent food. She would have live lobster flown in from the East Coast and imported delicacies to be displayed at dinner. The life of a woman pursuing a place in society suited her, and she wore it like a delicate gown that flowed effortlessly on her small frame.

She fussed over the cleanliness of our large home. It was not at all uncommon to hear her vacuuming in the middle of the night to ensure that the house was impeccable when everyone woke up. She painstakingly chose the interior decorations of the house, making sure to tend to every detail. Every room displayed her skillfulness at presenting a flawless appearance. Even my bedroom was elaborate, right down to the long, flowered drapes and matching comforters on the twin beds.

Charlotte also made sure that my siblings and I were physically cared for and presented publicly with unquestionable detail. Even as a small child, I was indoctrinated into the proper ways to wear my hair, the importance of a good stylist, and the reason for dressing nicely if visitors were dropping by.

As a business consultant in a large firm, Larry’s job required extensive weekly travel. So, each week, as if playing a clearly defined role in a movie, our model family would march out of the house wearing our church finery and step into one of our Cadillacs to take him to the airport. Five days later, we would repeat the process as we returned to pick him up. It was the Muir routine.

As we set off for the airport each week, I sat in the back of the Cadillac imagining that I, alone, was going to the airport for a trip to a faraway place. I never dreamt that I was a princess or living in a fairy tale—I left that dream for other little girls. Instead, I imagined that I was a powerful businesswoman on her way to important meetings. On the next trip, I would decide that I was a famous person heading to see my adoring fans. Those trips to the airport became the canvas for my imagination. I envisioned, in absolute detail, what I wanted my future

Reviews for Lessons from Nowhere

[Alvin E. Mathews · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A compelling and inspiring story of challenges and triumphs, well told.