Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

Hidden in my desire to become an "ad man" was a life-
long fascination with language and its power to persuade, the
same fascination that has kept me writing incessantly for
decades. Hidden in my desire to become a naval aviator was
something more complex: a personal engagement with the
problem of violence that expressed itself at first in military fan-
tasies and then, over a period of many years, resolved itself in
the pacifism I aspire to today. When I flip the coin of identity
I held to so tightly in high school, I find the paradoxical
"opposite" that emerged as the years went by.

If I go farther back, to an earlier stage of my life, the clues
need less deciphering to yield insight into my birthright gifts
and callings. In grade school, I became fascinated with the
mysteries of flight. As many boys did in those days, I spent end-
less hours, after school and on weekends, designing, crafting,
flying, and (usually) crashing model airplanes made of fragile
balsa wood.

Unlike most boys, however, I also spent long hours creat-
ing eight- and twelve-page books about aviation. I would turn
a sheet of paper sideways; draw a vertical line down the mid-
dle; make diagrams of, say, the cross-section of a wing; roll the
sheet into a typewriter; and peck out a caption explaining how
air moving across an airfoil creates a vacuum that lifts the
plane. Then I would fold that sheet in half along with several
others I had made, staple the collection together down the
spine, and painstakingly illustrate the cover.

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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