Above All Else, page 2
It immediately occurred to me that I had to be strong. It may have been new to me, but they had been dealing with it for over a month. I was experiencing this grief for the first time, but I would have to do so on my own. I didn’t want to drag my friends and family back through it all again.
If only they knew what I knew. If only James had been able to share with each of them what he shared with me. I knew that our friends were gone, but that they were okay. I knew they had more places to go, more things to do, and more fun to have. I knew we hadn’t said good-bye, only, “See you later.” I wanted to share this with everyone, but I also knew that they would think I was nuts and that the brain damage I had suffered was more severe than they thought. I kept it to myself, except for telling one person. As James had requested, I called his mother, my dear friend Rita, from my hospital bed and passed his message on to her.
“You need to go get control of the situation.” What exactly did James mean? I thought about that a lot. I believe he was alerting me to the fact that I was about to wake up in a different world than the one before the crash. I would be arriving in the middle of a situation that was overrun by sadness, fear, helplessness, and defeat. I believe he was warning me that many people were going to try to define the situation for me and tell me what my limitations were. He was telling me not to be a victim, not to let anyone but me decide my fate and that I didn’t have to let go of my dreams. There was more to “life” than what we experience in this physical world. He was telling me it was all okay.
James was reminding me that prior to the crash, I had taken control of my life. I had found an activity that I loved, pushed myself to be the best I could possibly be at it, and set my sights on becoming the best in the world. I had shown the courage to follow my dreams and the faith in the world to believe that the few things that were out of my control would work out as they should. This attitude toward life had never steered me wrong in the past. And it wouldn’t then.
I believed him. I trusted him. And I decided.
2
Following Your Dreams
HUMAN BEING ARE born dreamers. Through dreams we explore our limitless imaginations and consider the true possibilities of things we perceive to be impossible. Most great human achievements began as someone’s impossible dream, a crazy fantasy. It was the dreamers of their day who imagined electricity, flying machines, walking on the moon, running a four-minute mile, or instantly communicating on a cell phone or the Internet. All of these were considered impossible right up until the moment they actually happened. Soon after, they were thought of as everyday occurrences.
Our dreams provide us a stage from which we can fantasize about things that don’t seem feasible within the constraints of our physical realities. They encourage us to question our often false perceptions of the limits of those realities. Through our dreams we are open to exploring all possibilities. Without our dreams, we too often surrender to our established limitations and underestimate our true potential.
Dreaming is an essential part of what it means to be human. The same way we are born hungry and need to eat to grow, our minds and souls crave inspiration and need our imaginations to show us all what we are truly capable of being and doing.
It is human nature to want to expand our capabilities. As long as we can imagine reaching the next level in our chosen field, most of us will instinctively want, and choose, to do so. Once babies have crawled, they want to walk. As soon as they walk, they want to run. Once they can run, they want to jump. We are rarely satisfied with where we are while we can still imagine, and believe, that we can do more.
Few things have the power to motivate and inspire us to reach for our full potential the way our dreams do. Successful people from every walk of life—be they athletes, musicians, soldiers, doctors, policemen, firefighters, entrepreneurs, or entertainers (just to name a few)—usually agree on one thing. As children, long before they ever achieved success in their field, they dreamt and fantasized about becoming great at what they did. It wasn’t money or fame that inspired them as children. It was the pure love and purpose for the activity itself. Most of them can hardly remember a time when they weren’t insanely passionate about it. Every dreamer is not successful. But every successful person is a dreamer.
As children, we all had dreams like these. But in our early years, most of us were discouraged from believing that we could actually live our dreams and achieve our highest ambitions. We were more often pushed by family, friends, and society in general to take a more secure route, keep our expectations low, and avoid failure and disappointment. We were guided by advisors to go after goals they thought we had the best chance of accomplishing, ones that didn’t demand too much effort from us.
As opposed to looking at things from a perspective of abundance, we chose to see things from a minimalist perspective. Minimal desire leads to minimal goals, requiring minimal effort. Since we would be aiming so low, the likelihood for success was high so there was minimal chance for disappointment. But is the definition of success aiming to be half of what we are capable of being in a field that we tolerate but certainly aren’t passionate about? I don’t think so. And fortunately for me, my family didn’t think so either.
3
It All Starts at the Beginning
I WAS BORN DANIEL Lee Brodsky on February 5, 1962, in Albany, New York, the second child of Len and Mimi Brodsky. My brother Cliff was born twenty-three months earlier. I have amazingly clear memories of my parents from when I was as young as three years old, snapshots of the treasured moments that occurred most often. I remember running up and jumping in my dad’s arms when he came home from work, being held between him and my mom while they were dancing and listening to music, and sitting on the couch together while they read to me.
Most vividly, I remember learning to swim. My dad would put a hand under my belly to hold me up while I practiced kicking and swimming strokes. I was terrified, but I knew as long as I could feel his hand, I was safe and would never sink.
Before I could swim on my own, that hand was gone. My father died in a car accident just before my fourth birthday.
There may be some cosmic design determining the mother who gives birth to us, or it may simply be a matter of pure luck. But if it’s luck, I hit the jackpot with Mimi Brodsky.
I realize I am somewhat biased, but I believe my mother to be the sweetest, kindest, most loving, giving, unselfish, compassionate person the world has ever seen. And as long as I’m bragging, I will back that up by saying I have no doubt that I could send out an e-mail requesting references for her and would receive literally thousands of responses before the day was over.
I am in awe of how my mother handled being a thirty-year-old single parent of two young boys whose father had just died. It was her desire to be the best mom she could possibly be and to raise her boys to believe that pure unconditional love was their birthright. Achieving this goal was her definition of winning, and nothing was going to stop her.
My mother is a world-renowned early-childhood educator. She has written several books, including textbooks for college students majoring in education. In the early 1960s she wrote a book, The House at 12 Rose Street, about a black family moving into a white neighborhood and the difficulties they faced. She wrote this in the early years of the civil rights movement, always way ahead of her time.
Her capacity for love is endless. She sees the potential for greatness and genius in everyone she meets and, given the chance, will discover that potential in them.
She believes that at the core of every person is an imaginative, optimistic young child. Like that child, my mother has an uninhibited love of life, games, and fun. She understands that it is through this pure joy that children recognize and live their dreams, no matter how silly those dreams may be. It is through those dreams that children and adults are genuinely motivated, inspired, and in a place where they are most capable of learning and excelling.
Mom always encouraged me and my brother to be the best we could be at whatever we chose to do, but didn’t care if we were better than anyone else. She sees a person’s level of enjoyment, fun, learning, sharing, and giving as measures of success as opposed to the standard judging tools of scores, results, and placements.
But she also made it clear that the bigger our dreams, the more work would be required of us. The work should be fun, but hard work it would be nonetheless. She was a living example of this. Every free second she had, and most of them were in the middle of the night, we could hear her typing away on whatever writing project she had going at that time.
Mom’s parents, Joe and Iris Kaplan, were her examples.
My grandfather Joe was the son of Russian immigrants who had escaped to America in the early 1900s. Iris was born in Romania, one of seven children, walked across Europe, got on a boat, and finally made it to New York when she was about fourteen.
Despite having only an eighth-grade education and three children born between the Great Depression and the start of World War II, my grandfather still managed to take care of his family. He made it possible for them to have opportunities and freedoms beyond anything his parents could possibly have imagined when they boarded the boat to come to America. This was his definition of winning, and nothing was going to stand in his way. He accomplished this through hard work, a fantastic sense of humor, and a persona that made everyone want to be his friend, his partner, and his colleague. Or if possible, just more like him themselves.
Joe Kaplan was a huge person in my life. He was the pillar of strength, both physically and emotionally. He was strong, confident, and not to be messed with. But he was also every bit as warm and loving as he was tough. He sang to us, played with us, and constantly made us laugh. He was whatever any of us needed him to be, the perfect teammate.
After my father died, my grandfather was in many ways like a father to me. Over time our relationship evolved and grew. He never stopped being “Gramps,” but he also became my best friend.
We never lived in the same town and only the same state for a few years, but I traveled to see my grandparents as often as I could. Sometimes it was with the family, but I also did many trips on my own.
They had a quote on their kitchen wall:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I didn’t really understand what it meant, but thought it must be important.
My brother Cliff and I were the classic middle-class American brothers: rough-and-tumble, playful boys. Being the older, bigger, stronger brother, Cliff would always beat up on me a bit, but just enough to keep me in line and to be sure I knew he was the boss, never enough to hurt me—much.
Cliff was always a great role model. Besides being tall, handsome, funny, and brilliant (every bit that obnoxious), he also had the confidence and drive to pursue the things he loved with utter conviction. He had many interests and excelled at everything he did. If he did it, he was the best at it, and there was nothing he couldn’t do—sports, music, writing, school. I remember thinking how cool it must be to be so good at everything. And wishing I was that good at anything.
As Cliff ’s little brother, it was hard to follow in his footsteps. Not that anyone in my family had asked me to follow anyone. No one in my family asked me to be as good as Cliff at anything or to even pursue the same things he did. But little boys recognize the admiration that “winners” receive, and they dream about being good or even the best at something. If only I knew what I wanted to be the best at.
Despite being surrounded by great influences, I was a very average kid, and that’s putting it generously. If you ask my mom, she’ll tell you that for the most part I was a sweet, kind, fun child. I usually made a positive contribution to whatever I took part in, just not that much of one.
I was by far the shortest kid in school, camp, and in my family. Being so tiny, I couldn’t help but be cute, but had no chance of being handsome. I may have been funny in that I provided some degree of entertainment for people, but definitely not because of my quick wit or sharp sense of humor. I wasn’t stupid, but was certainly never accused of being a genius. I liked music and enjoyed singing, but was always in the background, never the lead vocalist. I liked sports and took to most of them pretty easily, but didn’t excel at any. I was a good teammate but never the all-star or team captain.
In school when the other kids had learned their times tables, I was still counting on my fingers. When they were reading chapter books, I was still trying to grasp Run, Spot, Run. Mom couldn’t figure out my resistance to opening a book. Cliff had been reading sports books and memorizing hundreds of facts at the same age.
Mom took me to an optometrist. I was thrilled at the potential excuse of bad eyesight. I eagerly walked into the doctor’s office and sat down to have my eyes examined. I looked through the test glasses at the rows of letters, each one smaller than the one above it. I was disappointed to discover that I could see them all just fine, crystal clear, even the tiniest ones. I guess it really was my fault I was doing poorly at school.
But I didn’t want to take the blame, or be without the comfort of an excuse, so I faked it—I lied. I told the doctor the wrong letters on the lower rows. I chose to create a false reality that gave me the convenient excuse of having a problem that didn’t actually exist. But once I had glasses, I still couldn’t read. This would be my first (unfortunately not my last) lesson: that my excuses, no matter how convenient, were rarely my real reason for not excelling.
I put very little effort into practicing sports and trying to become better because I didn’t believe I could ever be really good. “Why should I try to be better at basketball when everyone towers over me?” “It’s not my fault I’m so short.” “I’d make the football team if I wanted to try out.” “I’m as smart as those honor roll students. They couldn’t get Cs like me if they cut class as often as I did.” I had such a huge selection of excuses I didn’t know which one to pick first.
I mostly got involved in activities that boys were expected to do. These were the things the kids in the neighborhood did, or Cliff did, not necessarily the things I loved and was drawn to.
As a child, the thing I enjoyed most was to play with my action figures. I could play for hours and just live in fantasyland. Very often I would even act out the game without the toys. In my pretend world, I could be as good as I wanted to be at anything. I could fly around as Superboy (rarely Superman) or fight the bad guys as Robin (never Batman though). I liked to play these games with friends, but they only pretended to pretend; to me it was real. I was the best pretender around.
Most of my friends grew out of these childish pastimes long before I did, and Cliff was never into this sort of thing. Playing these baby games was looked down upon. So I became a closet pretender and would play by myself where my fantasy and my dream could be undisturbed by anyone else’s limited imaginations.
It was difficult to excel at something if I didn’t love it enough to put the work into it. But the things I loved weren’t things that others saw as worthwhile, and were certainly not praiseworthy. There was nothing to be gained and no victory to be won from them other than the love and joy of the activity itself.
4
Finding My Passion
AFTER MY FATHER died, Mom felt the urge to move away and have a fresh start. In 1967, she loaded up her boys and moved from Albany to Honolulu. Hawaii was still a young state then, a secret-paradise location that had hardly been discovered.
It was in Hawaii that I first remember falling in love with the idea of flying. The Hawaiian sky was such a dynamic, incredible sight. It was bluer than blue and the clouds were alive. I’d watch them build high into the sky as they reached the mountains and just as quickly fade away when they came over the water again. They were constantly changing, evolving, growing, and disappearing.
There were many species of beautiful birds that called the Hawaiian sky their home. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them as they soared in the sky or cruised just inches above the ocean water. Sometimes they would circle quietly overhead then suddenly dive straight down like missiles, hit the water, and launch right back in the air, carrying fish they caught. As they flew in to land on the beach, they would “flare” their wings to sit up and stop as they gently stepped onto the sand.
I remember not only watching the birds fly, but also watching how they flew. Analyzing how they would use their wings, their angle of attack, when they would flap their wings, and when they could glide without flapping. They were even better flyers than Superman.
I couldn’t understand how we could call ourselves the dominant species when we required elaborate machines to carry us in the sky while baby birds just had to have the courage to take that first step out of their nests. I would chase after the birds leaping into the air with my arms outstretched like wings, trying to launch into flight. Flying in planes was great also, but I wasn’t flying, the plane was. I didn’t want to fly in a flying machine. I wanted to be the flying machine. And I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.
Flying became the most frequent theme in my pretend games. It was always the greatest superpower of all. X-ray vision and a body so hard that bullets bounced right off it were nothing compared to being able to fly. Flying was the full-purpose power; I could fly to the rescue or fly away to escape, whichever the situation called for.
By six I was searching for ways to be airborne. I would jump on trampolines or leap from the highest diving board I could find just to hang in the air and enjoy those few seconds of flight. I would swim underwater by pushing off the wall and gliding like a bird on the air. Even flaring to land like the birds I watched had taught me.
