Some Experience Required?

In my youth, I was very fortunate to have had my college education and most of my bills paid for by my parents. And so, sitting in my subsidized existence, I would philosophize at lightning speed and convince myself that my ideas were truly original, and that I would some day be canonized, once my brilliance fully illuminated the beshadowed lives of those dull-witted old farts whom I was convinced only feigned wisdom. I also felt that they did so at my expense. 

Yet it seemed that my delusions of eventual intellectual immortality were constantly interrupted by a nagging feeling in the back of my great brain that I really had no earthly idea what I was talking about at all, and that my life led thus far was no more profound than a russet potato.

Then I got my first job in the real world where I now believe the bulk of my education actually began. I got to work with a band of truly decent caring folks who had barely finished high school, yet this educated idiot learned way more from them than from all my years in cloistered academia. In my first real job, I got to swim with sharks, get chased by a bear, perform my own music in front of thousands, step into North Korean territory, and most importantly, learn the meaning of true friendship.

And during law school, when my wife and I went hungry so that our first child could eat, I learned even more. In fact, I got to spend an entire generation happily and sometimes not so happily putting the needs of my wife and children ahead of my own self-gratification. I have no regrets. I learned how to love someone besides myself and still got to keep every precious experience.

And when I got to spend 22 years fighting tooth and nail with nothing more than my wits to give a second chance to thousands of poor souls who would otherwise have been crushed flat by a monolithic, heartless, politically motivated criminal justice system, I learned even more.  I got to keep those experiences as well.

And now, at 55 years of age, I get to start putting what little I have learned heretofore into some kind of perspective, a big picture, that I feel so fortunate to be able to begin painting, albeit by numbers, because as I have also come to learn, there is no truly original or profound work under the sun that I, as a human being, can up with. I can only mix from known colors as my mind’s eye sees fit. And those colors on my pallet come from an ocean of  real-world life-long learning in which I, for whatever set of reasons, have been somewhat successfully dog-paddling.

And for those of you who are on the beach, but have yet to take off your shoes and get your feet wet, please be advised that you have nothing to lose, but the pasty-white pallor that tells everyone a good  swim and a little sunshine wouldn't hurt you a bit!

J. Brandeis Sperandeo