“I Coulda Been Somebody!” Reinvention in Mid-Life by Jennifer Manlowe

Terry Malloy, a former middle-weight boxer, (played by Marlon Brando), speaks to his brother, Charlie, in the back of their car in the 1950s movie, On the Water Front, it is clear that his reflections express regret for not taking more risks during the first half of life.

Terry now works at the docks of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), the corrupt boss who exploits the desperation of day laborers. What Terry sees at the docks repulses him.

In an economically-depressed environment, much like our own climate, many are out of work, more gather by the docks each morning hoping to secure work for that day than can be hired, placing Johnny Friendly and his forces in a position to capitalize on their hungry situation. Those who complain of the working conditions or wages one day don’t work the next day, or are placed in harm’s way. Consequently, most tolerate being abused.

Still, Terry doesn’t see how he might make a bigger contribution in this situation than he ever could as a famous boxer—one who sought his own fame and profit over a meaningful life. When our value depends on making an impression rather than contributing great things in our community, we can grow dispirited, without heart and hope.

Here’s an example of the conversation of egoic-regret, rancor, blame and his current feelings of ordinariness.

Charlie: “Look, kid, I – how much you weigh, son? When you weighed 168 pounds you were beautiful. You coulda been another Billy Conn, and that skunk we got you for a manager, he brought you along too fast.”

Terry: “It wasn’t him, Charlie, it was you! Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, ‘Kid, this ain’t your night. We’re going for the price on Wilson.’ You remember that? ‘This ain’t your night!’ My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Charlie, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn’t have to take them dives for the short-end money.”

Charlie: “Oh I had some bets down for you. You saw some money.”

Terry: “You don’t understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it. It was you, Charlie.”

Though this is a work of fiction, it has great resonance with many of us. Sometimes we blame others for our despair or resign ourselves to the smallest version of ourselves to avoid embarrassment, failure, discomfort or ridicule.

Clients in search of life direction (especially after age forty) often wonder what they might have been had they only applied themselves in school or after college. Instead, they chose the easier, softer, safer way; the way of their peers or the “familiar” way—the choices their family-of-origin thought was more impressive or worse, practical.

Famous dancer Martha Graham reminds us that we must listen to our deepest calling, the truth of who we are and bring this authenticity (our being) into the world of doing. She writes,

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique…. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” ~ Martha Graham

Before we can affirm, even authorize the next stage in our lives, we need to affirm the first half, no matter what choices we have made or have not made when we were younger.

So many of us find ourselves moving as fast as bumble bees in search of honey–seeking that golden ring of “better than the present.” Pausing and reflecting, as Socrates reminds us to do for a “life worth living,” can be a way to turn around unrewarding habits of regret and despair for creating a more enlivening future.

It’s especially heart-warming—especially on Labor Day—to know that Terry, eventually wakes up to his true potential. He comes to see that his struggle for fame could morph into something more useful not only for himself but for those around him. He uses his heart to give him the guts to organize his peers to stand up to their corrupt bosses thus enabling them all to receive better working conditions and more-adequate pay.

How might we turn our lives, and our sites for income, toward a more worthy and rewarding focus? Don’t we all have “bigger fish to fry” than our own personal profit/ego?

It can be a challenge to think of the good of the whole when we’re feeling financially desperate or personally despairing about a less-than-ideal past. My motto is much like the book by Martha Sinetar, Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. I say, Do What You Love to do for others, the Money Will Follow.

What you love to do for others needn’t be a form of martyrdom. As Harold Thurman Whitman says: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!”

What do you love to do for others that brings you the most joy? Do that and I promise you a rich and enlivening future beyond your wildest dreams.

Keep your mind open, experiment, and let me know how it goes. If you need my support to hang in there in this experiment, please contact me and we’ll see what we can create together.

Life Design Unlimited

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Steering by Starlight: Find Your Right Life No Matter What by Martha Beck

You may have heard of best-selling author Martha Beck through her advice column in Oprah Magazine or through her many books: Expecting Adam, The Joy Diet, Leaving the Saints, Finding Your North Star, or Four Day Win–all available at my favorite independent bookstore Powell’s Books. Psychology Today, NPR and USA Today consider Martha “the best known Life Coach in America.” Beck is a very straightforward writer who believes each person has an “inner-compass” and has available to them “limitless possibilities” to help them locate their “just right” lives.   

I have envied Martha Beck for a long time and was motivated to choose the profession of “Life Design Coach” because of her own courage to do so. At present, she now calls herself a “personal trainer” saying, “I work with healthy people to help them achieve maximum fitness–that is, well-being and quality of life.” After being professors, both Martha and I chose to forego the prestige of upper-crust academia as well as to abandon our restrictive and misogynous religions’-of-origin.

Both of us have conducted research in China and–in our advice giving–we tend to use the three great Chinese philosophies of Daoism, Buddhism and, Confucianism (with a feminist slant). Just like Beck, I received my graduate degree from an Ivy League School in the early 1990s and published research that was focused on women, social-psychology and religion.

It seems that we were “separated at birth” because of our pasts, because we both like to write helpful books, and because we each regularly publish essays offering personal and practical advice. But enough about our common threads in the great garment of life. It is more important to convey the unique messages of her latest book, Steering by Starlight.

Steering by Starlight, according to its introduction, is about “finding and following the life you were meant to live: your highest and happiest possible destiny.” The theory that Beck uses is much like the multitude of helpful books on business and self-help shelves. She assumes, along with much Ancient Greek and Indian Philosophy, that there exists a fundamental purpose to everyone’s life and believes that we all have a  particular dharma (in an Indian-philosophical sense). If we ignore this elemental calling (or dharma) we will be thwarted.

When I say “thwarted” I mean we will feel “ill at ease” until we honor our “true selves” or our “innate destiny”–something that will forever follow us, haunt us, and hunt us down until we honor its mandates.

I can see why Beck left behind her position as a sociology instructor at Harvard University because her hope-filled theories would be critically eviscerated at any academic conference.

Why? Because Beck’s fundamental beliefs would be considered totalizing, essentialist, simplistic and a typical example of the naively Western grand narrative in a Postmodern (“pomo”) sense.

The great 20th-century French sociologist/philosopher–Michel Foucault–would shame Beck for mimicking the homogenizing, colonizing and mono-mythic paradigms of the uniquely-American project called the “Human Potential Movement” (HPM).

To wit:  HPM was a superbly optimistic movement that arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and was formed around the concept that humans could cultivate their “extraordinary potential.”  Its advocates believed that this buried treasure lay largely untapped in most people. The movement took as its premise that in discovering, developing and releasing one’s inner potential she/he could experience an exceptional quality of life filled with simplicity, happiness, creativity and abundant fulfillment. 

Why would Foucault reject such an optimistic theory? In brief, (and if he were alive), he would accuse Beck for proffering “a reductionistic fantasy” that assumes humans could be hygienic individuals who live unaffected by their surroundings. He would mock the romantic idea that people, by muscular will alone, would be able to “throw off” the multiple cultural influences operating within and all around them. If readers are interested in learning more about Foucauldian frameworks, I’ll offer these in another book review (I promise)!

But, if you must read an alternative to this common (reductionistic) mistake in career-advice literature, read my very favorite business book this year called Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career by a very plain-speaking French sociologist and philosopher named Herminia Ibarra. 

Like Foucault, Ibarra does not subscribe to the fashionable belief in pop-psychology, i.e., that there is a singular treasure (or self) within all of us that will point us to the work we were meant to do. Rather, she urges readers to experiment and even play with their identities–which she says, are always multiple and naturally morphing according to whatever social-context or in which ever job they find themselves.  

For Ibarra, such multiplicity need not be “read” pathologically nor must it cause a baffling crisis of identity. Rather, if accepted, this fluidity of “self” can be freeing, relationally-responsive, dynamic, intimate and spontaneously-inventive.

Even though Martha has abandoned her “pomo” philosophies, I find her work unique and quite forward-thinking when she turns to the latest research in psychiatry, neurology and related fields for the ruts we can return to and the ways we might change these phenomena.

Too, Beck writes in a way that will speak to anyone with a ninth-grade education–the target audience, in terms of literacy, of the average person who buys self-help books. For instance, she keeps her writing teacherly and repetitive; she identifies and reiterates three simple stages along the vocational path to recapturing a satisfying life that include:

* “the stargazer” a metaphor that helps readers understand why it’s so easy to lose themselves in an endless quest for self-knowledge; she offers strategies for sighting their “North Star” (a trope of her earliest career book and career workbook called, Finding Your North Star);

* “the mapmaker” simile used to evaluate one’s unbearable situation in order to plot a different course for the future;

* “the pathfinder” which explores the “adventures” or trials that may be encountered as one travels along their ever-challenging, new life course.

Whether one is seeking better relationships, more focused career direction, physical fitness or to create a more harmonious lifestyle, Steering by Starlight’s stories, experiential references and up-to-date, neuro-scientific evidence will guide HPM believers to “actualize their human potential,” uncover their own “inner compass,” and perhaps, find their way in the world.

Note: Even though I may sound a little sarcastic in this review, I appreciate the courage, humor, and Beck’s approachable framework; I use her framework often as a creative career consultant, in my own Life Design Publishing business as well as in my writing.

What do you think about your own potential? Are you cynical about change or are you hopeful about releasing possibilities for vocational transformation? P.S. You might want to order another helpful book for those seeking wisdom for those “in transition” called:  Polishing the Mirror: 90 Days to Vocational Clarity  Order Now.