“A Conversation of Note”

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—8/16/10—When I was much younger, my first wife, Sara, would often say during an argument, and not in a mean way, but rather in a kind of difficult-to-hear, instructive way, “You know, you have a lot of barriers.”

Being the enlightened and sentient person that I thought I was at the time, I took this as a full-frontal challenge to my whole being and to my complete worldview of myself as one of the educated and open humans walking about on our fair planet. This couldn’t be me.

Wrong.

After having conveniently forgotten this rather salient critique of my persona for the last several decades, and being in the middle of a particularly difficult, emotional and often clarifying period of my life, it occurred to me recently that, yes, surprisingly (to me!), I see that I DO have many barriers in me, and they are the same barriers that we all have to varying degrees, and they show up prominently in how we talk to people.

This was brought home to me again not by another example of my not being able to communicate well with someone, but rather by the obverse, finding myself in a free-flowing, rich-to-the-bone conversation with an old friend. When it was over, I was renewed and alive in a startling, rare way.

This all happened at a summer camp for Aikido, the martial art that I teach. My partner in this exchange was a teacher of mine, a friend and mentor. Although he is my senior in the art we practice, we are both the same age and have experienced many of life’s similar ups, downs and sideways, usually met with the same wry desire to learn from it all and move along.

With a beer or two under our belts and an evening of unlimited time stretching before us, we began talking. It was instantly a deep, friendly, probing conversation. We had the immediate, visceral understanding that we could speak about real things that mattered to us. We spoke of former lovers, families, business, our understanding of Aikido, how we really felt about close and not-so-close friends, what ate at us, what fulfilled us, moments of true romance in our lives, what we longed for . . .

I realized later that what bowled me over was the absence of fear in our talking: fear of sounding foolish, fear of seeming weak, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of seeming “less.” We both listened carefully; we both spoke fully and openly.

I don’t know about you but, for me, normal conversations range from pretty good to guarded. Ordinary talk is often fraught with opportunities for you to feel like you’ve given away a secret, shown yourself to be less than your own noble image of yourself. Sometimes it’s me; sometimes it’s my partner in crime, the other half of the conversation, who seems to have . . . barriers! Yup, there they are right before my very eyes.

While studying with a truly wise woman, Mrs. Dooling, a “teacher” in the deepest sense, I learned a very valuable piece of wisdom: the only way to change something in you is to first be able to see it—nothing can happen before that. This sounds simple and straightforward, and it is but, like many things ostensibly simple and straightforward, it is often deep and difficult.

Having a great conversation floored me, not only for the joyously warm connection it gave me to another human being, but also for suddenly spotlighting all the barriers within me that almost always prevent this type of rich moment from happening. All the little devils of King Fear were there at the barricades, running about in front of the fire, casting big, looming shadows, trying to frighten away the truths hiding behind my lovely barriers. Yet through a common trust shared with another person, I was able to hurdle my barricades this time and run free.

Those giant cavorting figures usually do their job, scaring me half to death, but freezing them in a single moment of recognition showed them to be the wispy ghosts that they truly are, mere puffed up mice in a maze, swept aside by a stout heart.

My wife, Sara, was right about my barriers. And my teacher, Mrs. Dooling, was right about trying carefully and honestly to see oneself.

No more, nor no less, is required for the fight to jump those barriers, even for a moment, and to move forward into the light of a more honest and more open life.