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"I was a cop for
twenty friggin' years. When I was forty my
daughter left home and then two years later my
son left. Then I got to see that I didn't have
much of a relationship with my wife because I
had spent all the years of my marriage working
and not really participating with the family.
With the kids gone we didn't have much use for
each other, I guess. After a couple more years,
my wife left and all I had was the damn job. The
next year I had my twenty [years] in at
age forty-six and had to retire. Nobody wants to
have too much to do with ex-cops except other
ex-cops but they're tapped out & burned out
just like me. I got to know what lonely was real
fast. There was no real relationship with the
kids, and a fat, middle-aged ex-cop doesn't do
too well at those singles things. If it hadn't
been for my grandkids I would have ended it
right then. I still don't have much going with
my son, but my daughter and her kids keep me
alive... Somewhere along the line I figure I
missed something, and I'd sure like to find it
before I die. I'd like to know that my life was
worth living." Carl, from a Man In Transition
workshop, 1992.
For many modern men, our story is our life. The
story that we were told as youngsters, the story
that we perceived from the input of our peers as we
grew up, the story that our teachers told us about
our abilities, the story that we assumed because we
believed that we are our results. For too many men
it is a story of doing rather than being. The story
all too often is a self-imposed isolation that
creeps silently into all aspects of our
relationships with the outer world.
Joseph Jastrab said it perceptively in his book
Sacred Manhood/Sacred Earth (Harpers
Perennial, 1995),
“An isolation sets in, the pain of which
is often met by further isolation. Keeping
one’s story to oneself is painful; it exiles a
man from the nurturance of community and robs his
culture of the gifts of his humanness. It keeps him
confirmed in a well-worn and static story that no
longer responds to a changing world. In this
guarded secrecy, our wounds fester rather than
heal. And by our example of secrecy, we teach our
children to be afraid of their own
truth.”
My friend the ex cop was caught in a story of
uselessness. When he no longer had the one thing
that he had learned to identify himself with, he
lost his story and therefore his self-identity. His
solution was to recreate his story. After realizing
that all of history is merely a collection of
stories that we agree to believe in, he decided
that if he were gong to survive he would have to
change his story. It really wasn’t a difficult
thing to do. I met him when he was just miserable
enough that literally anything would be better than
where he was. But Carl was not sick. He, like so
many of us, just needed to be heard. As he listened
to himself tell his story he began to see things
that he had not seen before, things that he could
change. So, he changed his story a little at a
time. He did it not by going into denial or lying
but by simply changing his perspective. He began to
look at what he had accomplished in his career
rather than the negatives that had so depressed
him.. He began referring to himself as an ex Police
Officer rather than an ex cop. He joined a health
club and became intent upon regaining a reasonable
and healthy body, finally became a volunteer
trainer at the club specializing in helping seniors
citizens plan exercise programs. He went back to
school at a local community college and earned a
certificate in nutrition. Within three years he had
changed his story, his life, his reality.
When I last spoke to Carl he had met a
delightful and creative woman, had worked hard at
reestablishing contact with his son and
couldn’t get enough of his grandchildren with
whom he had created a powerful bond. His life, he
told me, was sweet. It was, he confided, very worth
living.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, Carl
was my first coaching client in my own transition
from therapist to life coach. I was also holding on
to my story about who I was even though it
wasn’t working for me. What I realized was
that there’s a little bit of Carl in every one
of us, cop, salesman, engineer, professor, CEO or
therapist. We can all change, grow in a specific
direction, become better, different, whoever we
want to become if we are willing to change our
story.
— ©Copyright 1999-2003, Kenneth F.
Byers
This article also at:
http://www.kenbyerscoach.com/Newsletter.html
Citation
— Byers, K.F. (2004). Transitions. Torque,
4(1), February 2004.
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