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

From high school on, I had been surrounded by expecta-
tions that I would ascend to some sort of major leadership.
When I was twenty-nine, the president of a prestigious college
visited me in Berkeley to recruit me for his board of trustees. He
was doing it, he joked, because no one on that board was under
sixty, let alone thirty; worse still, not one of them had a beard,
which I could supply as part of the Berkeley uniform. Then he
added, "In fact, I'm doing this because some day you'll be a col-
lege president -- of that I'm sure -- and serving as a trustee is an
important part of your apprenticeship." I accepted his invita-
tion because I felt certain that he was right.

So half a dozen years later, what was I doing at Pendle Hill,
a "commune" known to few, run by an offbeat religious com-
munity that most people can identify only by their oatmeal--
which, I hasten to add, is not really made by Quakers?

I'll tell you what I was doing: I was in the craft shop mak-
ing mugs that weighed more and looked worse than the clay
ashtrays I made in grade school, and I was sending these mon-
strosities home as gifts to my family. My father, rest his soul,
was in the fine chinaware business, and I was sending him
mugs so heavy you could fill them with coffee and not feel any
difference in weight!

Family and friends were asking me -- and I was asking
myself -- "Why did you get a Ph.D. if this is what you are going
to do? Aren't you squandering your opportunities and gifts?"
Under that sort of scrutiny, my vocational decision felt waste-
ful and ridiculous; what's more, it was terrifying to an ego

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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