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

investing it in hope. This pathology, which took me years to
recognize, is my tendency to get so conflicted with the way
people use power in institutions that I spend more time being
angry at them than I spend on my real work.

Once I understood that the problem was "in here" as well
as "out there," the solution seemed clear: I needed to work
independently, outside of institutions, detached from the stim-
uli that trigger my knee-jerk response. Having done just that
for over a decade now, my pathology no longer troubles me:
I have no one to blame but myself for whatever the trouble
may be and am compelled to devote my energies to the work
I am called to do!

Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and voca-
tion: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on
people and situations -- projections that serve mainly to mask
our fears about ourselves -- and acknowledge and embrace our
own liabilities and limits.

Once I came to terms with my fears, I was able to look
back and trace an unconscious pattern. For years, I had been
moving away from large institutions like Berkeley and George-
town to small places like Pendle Hill, places of less status and
visibility on the map of social reality. But I moved like a crab,
sideways, too fearful to look head-on at the fact that I was tak-
ing myself from the center to the fringes of institutional life --
and ultimately to a place where all that was left was to move
outside of institutions altogether.

Now I Become Myself

29

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