Taking the Mask off...my Journey from Dr. Seuss to the Bible: A Chronology of Self Reflection Based on Events Tied to Emotions

By Keith Cooper

Taking the Mask Off... was a hard book for me to write.

What started out as daily journa

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors' Tranquility Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781960675026

Book preview

Preface

You want me to do what?

I want you to write a letter to your dad telling him how you are doing, what are your regrets, what do you seek his forgiveness for, and then I want you to bring it to me, she said.

You’re kidding, right? I replied.

Nope, I’m expecting it in two weeks, she said firmly.

Let me back up a bit. My therapist and I have a wonderful relationship. She is a 100% wonder and tells me I’m full of it. Hence, we are a wonderful team.

About eight years ago, as I sat in her office, my emotional index was a 3.5 out of 10. I was in the dumps. Like most situations, when it rains, it pours. I was going through a divorce, a change of jobs, and some health issues. We had a great discussion until the topic of my dad came up. It was then I shared with her how disappointed I knew he would be with me if he was alive today, given my behavior and what I’d become. I shared how I’d wanted to be like him all my life—a humble individual who never sought any corporate objectives, who treated everyone the same.

Yes, my dad is deceased, and at the time of her request to write him a letter, he had been in heaven for nineteen years, which explains the point in the opening exchange above. As we went through my many issues, her homework assignment for me was to write a letter to my dad, telling him what I’m doing and how I’m feeling, and to bring it to her. I did just that.

I found some time in my new 500 sq. ft. unfurnished studio apartment, using an unpacked box as a table, and wrote a handwritten letter to my dad, telling him what had been going on in my life. I talked about my great kids, my job, the weather, my mom in Georgia, and more. It was a great letter, full of all the positive things in my life. Why would I want to trouble my dad with bad news? He’s in heaven, so the last thing he wants to hear about is complaining, right?

Well, a week later, I pulled the letter out of the box and rewrote it, this time focusing on the task my therapist initially gave me. I wrote how I felt going through a divorce, how I felt I was a failure and had let him down, how all I ever wanted was to be like him, and how, ultimately, I was ashamed of myself. It still included the positive aspects of my kids and how great they were doing, but it also included the fact that they were not speaking to me due to the divorce. It was a heartfelt, honest letter penned until late in the evening.

About three days later, I took the letter in and gave it to my therapist. She read it, handed it back, and said, Great. Now read it to me.

I got about halfway through the letter when tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t finish it. She looked at me and asked, Why are you so hard on yourself?

I just don’t ever want to let my dad down. I failed him and I feel so bad about it.

I don’t agree with you, Keith. Before you see me again, I want you to go home and sit down, and I want you to assume your dad read your letter, and I want you to pen his response back to you.

Well, this was a real WTF moment. She was quickly losing her wonder with me. I said, You want me to put myself in my dad’s shoes after reading what I wrote to him and write a letter back to myself?

You got it. See you in two weeks, she replied.

I was in shock.

I had learned to fly a plane at fifteen and soloed it on my sixteenth birthday. I was licensed to fly a float plane at seventeen years old. I went to West Point a month after graduating from high school, and at twenty-two I had completed Army Airborne and Ranger Training.

Throughout my military career, I have jumped out of helicopters, jets, and propeller planes and spent the night outside at twenty below with no external heat source. I was serving inside the Pentagon on 9/11 when the plane hit, and then two years later I was serving in Iraq during OIF II. I’ve flown numerous general aviation airplanes, later becoming certified as a FAA-licensed Airline Transport Pilot. I’ve experienced five engine failures over the course of forty years, including three in a plane with one engine. Of all those traumatic experiences, of all the lost sleep, heartache, sadness, and frightful moments, both personally and professionally, assuming the role of my dad for this homework assignment was the absolute scariest feeling I’d ever had.

For two weeks I wrote, rewrote, cried, lost my appetite, lost weight, isolated myself, etc. Finally, the night before my next appointment with my therapist, I finished the letter.

As I drove into her office complex, I thought about reading it to her. How could I get through it this time without breaking down? Would she think it was truthful?

After arriving and sitting down, I just stared at the wall next to her chair. She asked, How was it?

It was literally the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life

Good.

I handed her the letter; she read it carefully, then handed it back to me. I asked if she wanted me to read it aloud like the last letter, but she said no.

I then said, Do you think my dad would approve of the letter?

She said calmly, Well, if he didn’t, you wouldn’t have written it. She then explained that sometimes the exercise is really the event. The shedding of weight, lost appetite, and sleepless nights were my therapy to rid myself of the doubt I’d once had.

I’m sharing this experience with my therapist because, for years, I did what most do. I held it in. For eight years, I sucked it up because I’m a man, and remember, a real man shows no emotion, right? Wrong!

I recall my time during Army Ranger training in Dahlonega, GA, when, in the mountain phase, while learning the Australian rappel, it was raining, and I slipped on the cliff and banged myself up a bit. The Ranger Instructor at the top of the cliff looked down at me as I turned upside down, getting tangled in the ropes. He could see I was holding my arm and yelled, Ranger, hurry up and get off my cliff! Remember, pain is just weakness leaving the body!

I did as he said. I held my pain in, and for years, every time I was in pain, especially emotional, I led myself to believe it was weakness leaving and I would be stronger afterwords. My lack of understanding of what he really meant by those words, my immaturity, my stubbornness put an imprint on my life that was more confining than any mask.

It wasn’t until I was watching Saturday Night Live (SNL) on November 7, 2020, that I snapped. I was reawakened. Ironically, it took a comedy, an SNL monologue, to recall that letter that I wrote my dad. The SNL host was talking about the mask we all wear, how we need to be more understanding and forgiving regardless of our political affiliation. In a sixteen-minute monologue, he was addressing the ills of a nation that had just gone through a horrible divisive period and needed someone to bring us together.

But I felt as if he was talking to me. It was the same feeling you experience in church when you’ve had a bad week and you cringe because you think the pastor is speaking directly to you. The SNL host reminded me of what I’d asked my dad for years ago in the letter I wrote. I wanted to be who he taught me to be, without any masks. I was crying because the many masks I had been wearing all those years were so evident.

• The mask of conformity in a world that so needs a change.

• The mask of happiness when I was so sad.

• The mask of success when I had fallen.

• The mask of what’s important when I confused it with what’s urgent.

The monologue was a mirror that brought out the problems in America and closer to home, the problems in me. I had to change my Lazy-Susan-self, showing only the parts I wanted others to see while wearing a mask that hid the parts I was ashamed of.

I decided to capture the next eighteen months of this roller coaster world and my life using the backdrop of what I learned as a kid reading Dr. Seuss at our cabin and as an adult confined during the COVID lockdown—lessons to love myself again. Yes, this was going to be another explanation to my dad, but this time it wouldn’t be a letter. It would be a book. A memoir loaded completely with vulnerability and an admission of guilt, grounded in the truth. A book not only asking for forgiveness but a book that would let my dad know that even when I went down the wrong path, I really did know the right way based on his teachings to me fifty years ago.

At times, I fell backward to move forward.

Reading this memoir will be a journey of independent stories, from the lessons within Dr. Seuss to what I learned from my dad during our time at the cabin, to nature, and then to God. A journey from Dr. Seuss to the Bible. It is my hope that my sharing will result in your success. I hope we learn from one another. I look forward to hearing from you on my website, www.longlakelore.com. I recommend you don’t try to read the entire book in one sitting. Instead, try reading story by story, taking a pause to think, and maybe discussing if a partner is nearby. As you read, try to replace my characters with those in your life.

Each story has two parts: 1) the writing itself, and 2) a few thought-provoking questions in bullet form and italicized. All writing, albeit not in any sequence, revolves around one of the four masks I was wearing and how life changed when I took them off.

Thank you for reading my book. It’s now time to begin our journey. Together, let’s follow the ideas in this book through your personal experience and better ourselves and those we love.

Dr. Seuss says, Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. Or, as the Bible says in Romans 12:2, Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Introduction

My Journey From Dr. Seuss To The Bible

As mentioned in the preface, I finally realized just how many masks I needed to shed. To start this painful task of shedding, I relied on lessons I learned. These were lessons I learned watching cartoons, lessons from my youth growing up in the outdoors of Alaska, and lessons from watching nature. However, the most important lesson I re-learned was the greatness felt when you learn to love yourself again and focus on God. This is how my journey took me from Dr. Seuss to the Bible.

My journey was not easy; I initially put a barrier around my heart to hold in negative emotions and feelings. My first writings were all joyous, positive, and somewhat emotionless. It was during the third or fourth writing that I realized my words were coming from my mind and not my heart. At that point I began the longest journey of my life—I had to make the seemingly impossible eighteen-inch trek to move my writings from my brain to my heart. It was now time to take my many masks off, masks that felt like they were affixed to me with super glue. I knew pulling them off would undoubtedly leave open wounds. But open wounds need fresh air to heal, and I knew that sharing these writings with you would be the fresh air I needed. Yes, in the end I will have some scar tissue, but scar tissue is a small price to pay for the freedom of not wearing masks.

My journey led me to read many books from military leaders to religious and spiritual figures. I finally realized what others had told me all my life: God never changed; I had to be the one to change. So, I changed. Once I concluded that my issue was a problem others shared, I decided to dedicate this book to my wonderful kids as a snapshot of their dad and others who were like me.

I decided, as I wrote, that I wanted to challenge myself and