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"You
Do Not Belong to You. |
In 1927 my wife and
I were living in Chicago, in a one room apartment on Belmont Avenue. We
were penniless. Five years earlier, our first daughter had died on her
fourth birthday, having gone through infantile paralysis, flu, spinal
meningitis and pneumonia. It was a long and terribly painful thing for
us when she died. About that time my father-in-law, an architect,
had invented a new building material. I liked this man very much - and
I thought his invention would be useful. I finally organized four small
factories around the country making this material.
I worked terribly hard, but the minute I got through work for the day
- I guess I was in a lot of pain because our child had died - I'd go off
and drink all night. I had enough health, somehow, to carry on. But the
company failed and some very prominent people had bet money on me. So
I was in disgrace and utterly broke. At that moment a new life, our daughter
Allegra, came to us.
I appeared to myself, in retrospect, a horrendous mess. I found myself
saying, "AM I an utter failure? If so, I had better get myself out of
the way, so at least my wife and baby can be taken care of by my family."
At that time Lincoln Park, right on Lake Michigan, was one of my favorite
places. I would run through the park at night, and I knew every inch of
the lake edge. So I knew just where to go when I decided to throw myself
into the lake, fully intending to commit suicide.
I stood by the side of the lake, hesitating. All my life, at home and
in school, I had been admonished: "Never mind what you think! Listen!
We are trying to teach you!" But by that lake side I was forced to do
some thinking on my own.
I asked myself what a little penniless human being with a remaining life
expectancy of only 10 years - I was 32 and the life expectancy of those
born, as I was in 1895 was 42 - could do for humanity that great corporations
and great political states cannot do. Answering myself, I said: " The
individual can take initiatives without anyone's permission."
I told myself: "You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do
not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you
will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling
your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience
to the highest advantage of others." So I vowed to keep myself alive,
but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is
born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own
thinking instead of trying to accommodate everyone else's opinions, credos
and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving
of problems that affect everyone aboard planet earth.
I didn't want to waste a second, so I slept that way that certain animals
sleep: lying down as soon as I was tired, sleeping a half hour every six
hours. I also decided to hold a moratorium on speech. It was very tough
on my wife, but for two years in that Chicago tenement I didn't allow
myself to use words. I wanted to force myself back to the point where
I could understand what I was thinking.
I decided to forget about earning a living. It seemed to me that humans
are honey-money bees, doing the right things for the wrong reasons, just
as the bee pollinates the flower.
Released from the idea of earning a living, I was able to address problems
in the biggest way. I decided to commit myself to the invention and development
of physical artifacts to reform the environment. I decided that a plurality
of such artifacts had the potential to evoke humanity's most intelligent,
interconsiderate qualities. It became obvious that if I worked always
and only for all humanity, I would be optimally effective. I'd be doing
what nature wanted me to do, and nature would literally support me.
Once I decided to do my own thinking, the first question I had to ask
myself was: "Do you have any experiential evidence that forces you to
assume greater intellect operating in the universe?" My answer was swift
and positive. Experience demonstrated an orderliness of interactive, exceptionless
principles. I was overwhelmed by this, and more convinced that my purpose
was to abet the inclusion of human beings in the design of the universe.
I'm absolutely convinced that everything that has happened to me since
that time has been through my commitment to this greater integrity.
Many times I've chickened, and everything inevitably goes wrong. But then,
when I return to my commitment, my life suddenly works again. There's
something of the miraculous in that.
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