11. THE MYSTERY OF COMMITMENT
After David’s funeral, I flew to New York to talk to Bernadette. I felt she was the kind of friend I needed at this time—someone who could understand at a deep level the inner struggle I had been having over the past few years.
I had not seen Bernadette since that Sunday morning in Cannes back in 1976, but when I had returned to Houston then, I had found a small package waiting for me. It bore a return address of the small hotel in Paris where Bernadette had stayed those few days during her meeting there. In it was a paperback book carefully covered in beautiful wrapping paper so as to make a new jacket. The book was Demian, by Herman Hesse. There was an inscription on the inside cover from Bernadette, and only one page had been marked by turning the edge of the page down. The passage read:
Each man had only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself. … His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.
Over the ensuing years I had often turned back to that passage and the story of Emil Sinclair’s youth, a classic document of the most ancient of all quests—the search for self-knowledge. In New York, Bernadette and I spent a day talking together about the apprehension and anxiety I felt over the step I was contemplating. Bernadette, like Anthony, was helping me to see more clearly the path I was choosing to take.
From New York I went back to London, thought for several weeks, and finally made the toughest decision I’ve ever made in my life: to resign from the law firm, to leave the partners and colleagues and friends who had been such a big part of my life for so many years. Leaving these people was like leaving members of my own family. I had spent twenty years at the firm by that time, and it was tough to break away. At first they tried to dissuade me from leaving. Then, when it appeared that I was going and that nothing could stop me, the mood changed. It was more like a divorce. I think they felt rejected, and I felt misunderstood. They thought I was crazy to walk away from a successful law practice to do something that no one could really understand. I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t share a whole lot of the dream with them because I felt embarrassed to do so. I didn’t think they would fully understand—I didn’t even fully understand at that point, so how could they? I heard a lot of talk about the fact that “Joe’s gone off the deep end.” In a way, I guess I had. I felt very different and removed from my peers and colleagues. I felt just as if I were going on a long journey, and it would be quite a while, if ever, until I would return to be with them. I walked off into my own world.
I realize now that for at least a couple of years I had been growing more and more apart from the world of my life before my journey began, and nearer and nearer to this different person who was on a journey. Part of this was wrestling with my fearfulness and denial of my capacity to make a real difference in the world—the “Who, me?” syndrome. I had found so many ways over the years in London to rationalize how important my busy life was. “I’m up to my eyeballs in building the law firm. Anyway, how could I ever get my arms around building better leadership for the country?” I kept denying my destiny because of my insecurity, my dread of ostracism, my anxiety, and my lack of courage to risk myself. I was yielding to the pressure I felt within myself to conform to my peer group. Somewhere, deep down, I knew that to cooperate with destiny would bring great responsibility, and I was too fearful to accept that responsibility. I realize now that I was being called to engage my destiny, and by doing so, as Joseph Campbell says, I would be yielding to the design of the universe, which was speaking through the design of my own person. But I was unwilling to make the supreme effort that called for.
In Houston, when I felt called to fulfill my dream and shared it with Tom Fatjo, I ultimately filed it in “the box labeled ‘too hard.’” I couldn’t get past the fear of the unknown and the material sacrifice I would have to make. I was fixed in my cocoon of security and remained, in large part, in the sphere of the comfort of familiar people—my own tribe, so to speak.
Yet, on another plane, I was spending more and more time alone, writing and reading and thinking and reflecting and meditating. This is what I did with my evenings and my weekends. Every spare moment was engaged in the inner struggle, thinking about the new forum, seeing pictures of it in my mind, pictures of how it would be, and pictures of the results. Over time, the pictures of the new enterprise became all-consuming. This vision began to pervade every part of me. I became it and it became me, and it was to be that way for the next ten years.
At the moment of decision, it was as if I had no real choice. It was not so much a decision about what I “ought” to do—rather, I could not do otherwise. At this moment, says Rollo May, one arrives at a point where freedom and destiny merge. It was at this point that my words became action.
In London, I began selling everything that I had, all the material goods and the trappings that I had accumulated—my DB5, my BMW, my flat in Chelsea. I guess that I was getting ready for the journey, getting ready to travel light.
My last evening at work, my English colleagues had a little cocktail party for me. It seemed that they were more accepting and understood what it was all about more than my American partners did. I think it was because in many ways my American partners and I had grown up together. They knew the old Joe and had not gotten to know the new Joe. My English colleagues had been with me for the entire three years, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, I think they saw this growing within me. At any rate, the evening I walked away from that going-away party was when I knew my commitment was firm. There was no turning back. This was it.
At the moment I walked away from the firm, a strange thing happened. I clearly had no earthly idea how I would proceed. I knew next to nothing about leadership curriculum and development. I knew no one who could help me on the substantive side of things, no network of experts. The resources necessary for a national effort would be enormous, far exceeding my own capacity. I had none of this, only myself. Yet, at that point, strangely enough, most of my concerns and doubts about the enormity of the project were erased. I had a great sense of internal direction and focus, and an incredible sense of freedom that I had never felt before in my entire life. I had committed to something far larger than myself—and through that step, as I was to realize over time, I would achieve a quality of meaning and adventure I had never before attained.
As I had no specific knowledge, only the guidance of the dream I had formed during the two weeks in Steamboat Springs, I made up my mind to take one day at a time, one step at a time. There was an inner confidence that things would work out in the right way. This was a kind of commitment that was not entirely new to me. I had experienced some of these same feelings as I had stepped out to help form the insurance company and the Alaskan refinery and in building the law firm. But in each of those instances, there was a group of us, and we had among us the experience and expertise on which to build our confidence. In this instance, I was alone without any expertise or experience whatsoever. All I had was my dream and my inner resources.
Paradoxically, at this moment I had the feeling of certainty that I would accomplish this dream. I felt nothing could deter me; I would not let anything get in my way. Looking back, I was so single-minded at times that I unknowingly offended a lot of people, including some in my family, very close loved ones, and members of my firm. I feel badly about that now, and hope that I’ve learned a valuable lesson from that. But I had a highly focused commitment that continued to drive me forward. As I look back on it, it was almost irrational, because the dream was so large.
The day I left the firm, I crossed the threshold. From that point on, what happened to me had the most mysterious quality about it. Things began falling into place almost effortlessly—unforeseen incidents and meetings with the most remarkable people who were to provide crucial assistance to me.