My son Jefferson asked that I help him complete an assignment...receive a letter from someone who has known you over the last four years of high school.....
6/7/2005
Dear Jefferson,
Pauses along the way…
I think this resembles all stopping points, all pauses if you will in one’s life. Where you sort of find yourself looking about…taking it all in…relishing life’s beauty in some instances and at others wandering aimlessly. Joy is one’s fuel…life is balance, journey onward.
Year 1: In the moment going with the flow
The first year of high school, you seemed to focus on being fashionable, integrating other’s values, trying on different facets of personalities that seemed somewhat foreign to your previous experience. You sort of carried a silent motto that if it could be detected in your actions was, “Life owes me…how do I get paid.” Much of your time was occupied on the phone, on chat, on friends, on passing the moment away. The goal was here and now, the immediacy of the pay back rather than the long term…life.
Year 2: Everyone’s expectations are killing me
The second year was compare contrast. You seemed to carry with you rationalizations that would allow for you to get by, to limit the experience of living, to insulate you into some predefined existence that must have appeared safe to you. Your guiding principle to the outside…to the parent at a distance…was fear. Fear of growing, fear of becoming, fear of independence. Limiting, but normal states of mind at this age. Your actions became short sighted, your thoughts contorted to fit some idea of what life should be in the moment and a want to exert control on everything and everyone—to make things conform to the world as it ought to be according to Jefferson. And although this is similar to your freshman year, the difference is you were a year older—and you knew better. You knew that machinations, the mind games that you were playing on yourself, but to admit that explicitly, that was the difficulty. To acknowledge all these things that we all feel—recognizing they are universal, applicable to all, that was the thing that wasn’t quite clear. This was perhaps the hardest year…a year where all the insecurities, doubts and anger surfaced in unison. A year I think to an extent you spent in isolation, at the perimeter, a year spent taking inventory and wanting to make up for something that you felt you had lost.
Year 3: Proving all y’all wrong
Turning the corner and piercing the surface. Where the previous years external expectations became a driver made real by a trip to the East Coast. I could call this year, “The year of snapping out of it…”, but I think it is the year that you proved who Jefferson Eberhardt is and will be. The year that you defined success for yourself, that you decided that you had this life—that it’s precious and that time is short. That becoming a man meant more than what the surface texture showed to the world—that to be, is to be your full person, from the look in one’s eyes to the very core of what defines you. Introspection became your friend, being internally motivated became a way of being, seeing opportunities, making an effort, wanting the positive became your secure base. This is the year that you began to see you. This is the year that the reflection in the mirror held an embrace, a smile, a sense of joy in being. You proved the best within.
Year 4: Pay it forward, honor yourself in action
And this past year, a year like no other…recognition that everything changes and evolves…that there is this natural tendency to grow in some direction and better to choose that direction than to fall into one. Introspection became primary to you, a mode of being, a sense of wanting to see things as they are and learning from them. You have come to understand the difference between things being what they are, and the evaluation you impose on them. What is a thing in and of itself vs. what do I think of this and how does it fit into my life. This is key Jefferson--pivotal, it is an explicit point in one’s life where you understand what true control is in life—the choice in how one reacts to their circumstances. I have seen you look to your core, to stand in front of the mirror of yourself and see your reflection not in black & white as you once did, but in technicolor--vibrant, alive, living and striving to reach your goals and make those dreams a reality. I have seen you honor others, and yourself in a manner that lends such grace to the experience, that people are changed—their eyes a little wider, their sense of benevolence reinforced. From Craig to Becca (and all the crazy characters that lie in between those two extremes), to friends who will now see you off to college, who are proud to have known you and have derived great value from your participating in their life. I have seen this, lived by your side in a somewhat removed silence, but that ‘Amen’, that ability to breathe freely and deeply…the boy who became a young man.
Looking back….
Am I one of the luckiest people on the face of the earth? I think so. You represent the very best that is possible within humanity Jefferson—a realized mode of being—how to be the example of the change that is needed in the world. Journey onward…journey onward and be that beacon that re-affirms what life can be when one chooses to strive toward the best within. “Can I go swimming with you guys?” And that smile on your face—that sunshine that radiated from you…and how much we fell in love with that nine year old little boy.
"So we listen to these voices, to these people who have survived. They speak of many things, in simple and profound ways. Like children finding shells on the beach, they appear to rush upon us without artifice. They look at life with the defenseless eyes of the innocent. They seem to move, to turn with special grace even when disfigured by their ordeal. They laugh and smile in a manner that must be familiar to angels. They are different now, and they can never go home again—not to lives once lived. The effect varies, of course. With some people, it is less visible than with others. Yet all of them, in one way or another, have merged into a new existence with a greater openness to the totality of life. For some, it is too much to describe in words. They fall silent, unable to explain it. Others will take your hand or touch your arm while speaking—a physical linkage practiced most often by saints and sinners who know that words alone can never explain or harness the human spirit. Regardless of any religious belief, they have experienced a last supper, a personal agape, a shared awareness that the loving substance of their mortal existence is destined to pass to others. In effect, they can never rise again from the table of their naked selves. And they continue to experience it. They are like all other people—only more so.” We the Victors
Well done Jefferson, well done. All my love and support always…even in it’s eerie silent form…remain a hopeful monster!
xo,
Zane