Dan Kempner
Editor
Legacy Magazine
I was standing, poised, on a street corner in Luxembourg. Before the ink had dried on my high school diploma I’d taken off for Europe: I was 17 and this was my first hour out of North America.
I had no appointments. No one was expecting me, anywhere, ever. I was free for the rest of my life – or as free as my meager savings allowed.
And yet, though the light was turning red, my New York reflexes shot me off the curb and across the heavily trafficked intersection. Horns blared. Germanic faces stared stonily at me. Local fists shook in my general direction.
I had no destination. One side of the road, in other words, should have been as good as the other. Yet I had pelted across like I was late for a meeting with the Grand Duke. Why? Why had I done that? I hadn’t thought, or planned. I just went.
The metaphor was excellent. My whole trip, designed around leaving home for the first time, was the same. I hadn’t thought, and I certainly hadn’t planned. When the moment came that I was old enough, I bolted, though I was too inexperienced to know where to go, or why.
The problem, my problem, was that this exact scenario continued for about the next 40 years. I wasn’t living at my parents’ home any more, but I was still bolting forward without thinking. Horns blared, but I ignored them. Faces stared stonily, as I made one bad decision after another. Fists shook as I blundered about. Sure, I was off on my own, and I had all the responsibilities of an adult. Hell, I looked like an adult, and talked like one. But I still had no idea where I was going, or why.
In some cultures, such as the one where I live in Vietnam, many men never leave home at all. Three or four generations stay in the same house and, as new baby boys are born, and old ones die, everyone moves up a rung.
Perhaps that would have been better for me: at least, as I careened around, I could have remained in my infantile state indefinitely.
As it happened, I got tired of being a little boy. And it was so embarrassing. To fail to plan and execute so often and to constantly be digging out of holes and cleaning up messes only a boy would create.
The decision, at long last, to take responsibility for everything came late, but it came. I cast around for help. I joined organizations and attended various open houses, reaching out for community. A man at work wouldn’t shut up about his men’s team this and his men’s team that, so I went there. That – over the next decade or so – did the trick.
I no longer hear the little boy’s voice in my head. And I’m more thoughtful, now, about how and why I cross the street.
