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

Perhaps there is a lesson here about the complexity, even
duplicity, we must embrace on the road to vocation, where we
sometimes find ourselves needing to do the right thing for
the wrong reason. It was right for me to leave the university.
But I needed to do it for the wrong reason -- "the university
is corrupt" -- because the right reason --"I lack the gifts of a
scholar" -- was too frightening for me to face at the time.

My fear of failing as a scholar contained the energy I
needed to catapult myself out of the academy and free myself
for another kind of educational mission. But because I could
not acknowledge my fear, I had to disguise that energy as the
white horse of judgment and self-righteousness. It is an awk-
ward fact, but it is true -- and once I could acknowledge that
truth and understand its role in the dynamics of my life, I
found myself no longer embarrassed by it.

Eventually, I was able to get off that white horse and take
an unblinking look at myself and my liabilities. This was a step
into darkness that I had been trying to avoid -- the darkness of
seeing myself more honestly than I really wanted to. But I am
grateful for the grace that allowed me to dismount, for the
white horse I was riding back then could never have carried
me to the place where 1 am today: serving, with love, the acad-
emy I once left in fear and loathing.

Today I serve education from outside the institution --
where my pathology is less likely to get triggered -- rather than
from the inside, where I waste energy on anger instead of

LET YOUR LIFE SPEAK

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