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Survivor’s Guilt? Reconciliation with Death? [ Post #13]

We’ve heard about survivor’s guilt, you know, when someone survives an accident in which others were killed. That nagging, perhaps lifelong feeling of guilt of “why me?” Why did I live and all the others died? Yes, I should just be happy to be alive and count my blessings, there’s no reason to be racked with guilt for being so lucky. Except that life doesn’t work that way with our psyche. It can be a bothersome phenomenon, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually.

It took me some time to realize on some level that I was feeling the effects of survivor’s guilt, in a sense. Let me explain how this feeling has come about. It has a lot to do with my work life, my thirty-three years in the airline industry. You see, I worked with basically the same group of people all of those years. From age 25 on, the same people, perhaps a hundred or so co-workers, often in close quarters, day in and day out. We were just kids starting out in life, then young adults, then middle-aged and finally older adults hitting retirement age. I knew these people well. We grew up together, married, had families. All the life events that occur over the years. I think that is quite unusual in this world, to experience all this with the same group, like a large family.

Most people I know, outside of my work group, don’t stay in a job or single career or stay in a single company for their entire work life. Most people do not have the same co-workers at retirement age (60’s or so) that they had in their twenties. A very unique situation and work life.

So, in a sense, it was a very close-knit family of co-workers for several decades. Like I said, this is very unusual these days for most people. We really knew each other, we lived through so many life events together. And then, one by one, we started thinning our group through death. It seemed to be a continuous decimation of the ranks and it kept happening at a faster and faster pace as we aged. There was a period of a few years where I was going to funerals or memorial services at least once a month.

These were people my age or very close to my age. These were very lively, fun people in a close-knit work group. I began to think to myself, “wow,” I am really surrounded with a lot of death. When I would tell my other friends about this phenomenon I was experiencing, they could not relate to what I was going through. Their responses would be like, “gee, that’s weird, I experience a death of a friend or loved one every few years, maybe, but nothing like what you are experiencing.” It got to a point that most of my friends and co-workers were gone. I began to feel like the survivor of my work group. Then it hit me, this feeling I had was somewhat similar to the phenomenon of survivor’s guilt. Unconsciously I was thinking, why am I still here? All my friends are gone, many who I felt were a lot healthier and livelier than I.

So, I have a close relationship with the death experience. Even in college, I spent one summer living in and helping out in a mortuary. I would help the morticians during the day and I would be the caretaker of the mortuary all alone at night. (Don’t ask to see my pictures from those days. I’d even have friends come visit me at night and show them around and they would faint on me.) So, death has been no stranger to me.

So, this survivor’s guilt and my experiences have caused me to reflect on a lot on the end of life. Call me morbid if you must, but I see great value in not denying death but rather in reconciling myself to the inevitable. Do I have a fear of death? Most of the time, no, I don’t feel I do. On the other hand, yes, there are brief periods or terror regarding the end of it all (this earthly life). Fortunately, most of the time I’m okay with this birth, life, death thing. I am spiritual, but I also am human.

So, what’s the bottom line of all of this? Well, three years ago, my brother-in-law died in his sleep. It was the day before his seventy-eighth birthday. He had planned to go golfing with his wife (my sister) that morning and before going to bed he was saying how good he felt and how he was looking forward to the next day with great excitement. But the next day was not to be as he passed away early that morning as he slept.

That experience has really affected this whole “thinking of death” thing. Besides all my friends dying around me, this sudden death hit me hard. I realize that every day or every night could be it, my last day here. I’m very aware of this fact. I now really live every day as if it could be my last. I mean really, this is not just a trite saying for me. Every day I think, am I living this day as I would if I knew that this was my very last day on this earth?

So, I feel I’ve learned my lesson through all this experience with death. I have been blessed with a long life. A lot longer life than I expected in my early, very dark and depressed, pessimistic years. I love every minute of life. I do not get bored. I will not let the crap of this world knock me down any more. Like I’ve said in an earlier post,my personal religion is now very simple, “love, trust God, and *#$&/% the rest!” May we all find our peace with life and the life force, which I call “God.”

Wally

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Our Shadow, Our Dark Side [ Post #12]

This has not been an easy subject to write a blog post about.  I will try to briefly explain the topic and give my thoughts on it.  Many books have been written regarding our “dark side,” or our demons.  All I can do in this short post is give my thoughts.

I think we all can acknowledge that the evil people in our world have a serious problem with their dark side. No question that evil criminals have serious flaws or demons that cause them to act out in evil ways in our world.

I want to turn, instead, to another sector of our society and talk about our shadow side of our lives.  I’m talking about the “good” people in the world.  Nice, good, even religious and spiritual people in our midst.  I think we all have our dark side, we all have our demons that we have to deal with, or not deal with in life.  One way or another, they do affect us and influence our life, thoughts, and actions.

A good book I recently read (twice, I am planning a third reading soon) is titled “Spiritual Bypassing, When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters,”  by Robert August Masters, PhD.  It is concerned with religious and spiritual people who think they do not have a dark side to their personality and life.  Now, as mentioned in my previous posts, I have spent a lot of my life with religious people, church people.  I have seen that though they are nice, good people, they, too, have their own “demons” that do affect their lives and will keep them from having really free, joyous, honest and psychologically clean lives.  I must include myself in this assessment as I too have my shadow side and have had my own demons to deal with during my life.  

What the author of this book deals with is how often religious people use their spirituality and their spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with damaging, painful feelings and unresolved wounds.  This is often ignored in our society, we just go on with our daily lives and live in a limited, wounded manner, even if we don’t realize it.

Now, I know some people have found resolution to their wounded parts through therapy.  I also know some people who have had a lot of therapy and don’t seem to be much better in regard to handling their dark side.  Personally, I had a breakthrough when I had a session with a medium and had contact with my deceased parents.  I finally cleared up what happened in my childhood that was not pleasant for me, even though I was not conscious of a lot of the issues we had.  I feel like I had $10,000 worth of therapy in one hour and a half session with my medium.  I totally resolved any early childhood issues for good.

Like I said, I think we all have our wounded parts that need healing.  I still have issues to handle.  I have my father’s temper, that’s a difficult one to totally eliminate (thanks, dad! ).  But my point is, we do not handle these issues by using “spiritual bypassing” or using spiritual bs to just pretend we do not have demons in our lives, a shadow or dark side that God or Jesus or whatever has handled or swept under the rug, so to speak.

The more unresolved issues we have in life, the more our life is limited, as I see it.  Limited in that we are not really free and have real total joy and a sense of a close relationship to all of life and to the Divine life that is available to us all.  I’m not saying that therapy is the answer,  maybe it is for some.  There are different paths to handling these issues in life.  I’m just saying I sometimes see spiritual  people that seem to use spiritual or new age bs to think they have no dark side whatsoever in their lives.

I’m all in favor or living the “good life.”  That includes cleaning up the messes we may have made in our lives.  Heal our wounds, learn to love and practice forgiving all the time!  My particular spiritual path involves working on forgiving everyone and everything.  Not an easy task, not a necessarily pleasant task.  I do not want to be crippled by the past.  I love freedom and  joy and openness and loving relationships.  That’s my choice in how I live and I recommend it.  

Wally

  

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The Unseen Side of Life [Post #11]

Ok, now we are getting into what some would call the “woo woo” stuff.  I think we all have a sense that there is more to life than the “visible” world that we live in daily.  But what exactly is beyond the visible world, though, is the question. And, of course, everyone has a different opinion about this.

First off, science says that we only see about 5% or so of what makes up the visible part of life as we know it.  So 95% or more of existence in “invisible.”  So that really is not “woo woo,” but rather science!  But, as I said, what is the invisible or unseen world, the unseen side of life?

Religions deal with this realm of existence and they seem to have lots of explanations for it all and often claim to have it all figured out.  Some are rather rigid and certain that they have the answers to what the unseen world is and are very precise in explaining it all.

I covered briefly in my blog post #7 my religious and spiritual journey, explaining how I wandered all over the spiritual map in my life from conservative, fundamental evangelical Christian religion, to strong atheism and back to an open spiritual outlook on life.  I explained how I always had a feeling that there was more to life than just the physical, material, visible and tangible existence we experience day to day.

It was just a vague feeling I had of something, I was not sure what, though.  I definitely had some strong beliefs in this area.  I absolutely did not believe in any “afterlife,” any existence beyond this earthly life.  Of that I was certain!  Life could not possibly go on after physical death, no way, no how.  Even though I felt a spiritual dimension was possible in this life, even real , there was nothing, I was convinced, once this life was over.

Well, that belief of absolute certainty got totally blown up about four years ago for me.  Through a dinner conversation with a friend one night, I made the bold decision to have a session, a reading, with a medium, one who claims to be able to have contact with those who have died, or as thy would say, passed over, are behind the veil, on the “other side,” etc.  My friend told me of an incredible reading he had with a medium and I was intrigued, though an absolute unbeliever in such stuff.

I figured this was the time to do some research and see what all this stuff was really about.  I figured I would waste my money and have a “reading” just to fortify my unbelief and skepticism on the existence of life beyond this earthly one.  This would be money well wasted, I guess you could say.  So I plunged in a set up a reading.

Now this was really an unusual situation for me, as the reading was to be over the phone with a medium in New York State, someone who knew nothing about me and was just a voice over the phone.  

The session lasted for an hour and a half, but immediately after we started, I was blown away.  For the entire session this person told me things no one could ever know about me, my family, my friends, and my life.  Family and friends came through the medium and communicated with me, in the exact way they would have spoken if they were right beside me.   Over the next three years I had two more readings, each one just as amazing as the first one (one session was shared with a good friend also on the phone with the medium).

So, my belief system about continued consciousness after death was been absolutely turned upside down.  That experience has totally shifted my life in new directions.  I have since had several “psychic” type experiences and had to look at life very differently than I had in the past.

So, now I know. I know that there is the unseen, invisible, spiritual world for certain!  Do I understand it?  No, I do not.  It is a mystery, that’s the way it is.  I deal with that as best I can.  It really does change everything when your belief system is totally overhauled like this.  I see things differently, I live differently.  I do see more “wholeness” in my life now.  It’s easier to trust in life, or as some would call it, to have faith.

So, there is an unseen world out there, or rather, in here, or right here.  It’s truly a mystery.  But, I am not going to fall for anyone who says they have it all figured out.  It is a mystery.  Always has been, always will be.  We do have to trust the mystery if we are going to have the good life we have been given.  A good life we have been given for some reason, often a mystery for most of our lives.  So, I would just say, “just go with it, trust and let life be, it works out eventually, even if you don’t see it all now.”

In future blogs I will probably get more into the invisible world and the religious and spiritual worlds we all have some experience with.  Topics I have been tossing around in my mind lately have been things like: what is God?,  Sin (yes, sin), death, etc.  You know, the light topics of life.  Anyway, we’ll see what develops as I ponder things.  I hope you’ll check in regularly to see what’s up as I let my mind meander.

Wally 

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Traveling the World [Post #10]

I am a very lucky person in that I was able to realize my dream of traveling the world after finishing my education.  I had decided that that was what I wanted to do as I drove away from Chicago, leaving seminary in 1972.

In 1973 I started my airline career and after six months I took my first  trip as an airline employee and  literally went around the world.  We had an around-the-world flight at the time and I jumped on board for a three-week journey heading east, averaging three days at each stop along the way.

I went with a friend from work that I didn’t know well, so it was quite an adventure.  Our first stop was Portugal.  Our first night there I discovered that he did not care for foreign food.  I thought well, this will be interesting, traveling the world and trying to find American food everywhere we go.  Like, what’s the point of going around the world and not sampling each country’s cuisine?  Oh, well, on we went.  We visited Italy, Greece, Israel, India, Thailand, Taiwan, Okinawa, Guam and back to the U.S. through Hawaii.  All in three weeks.  For a twenty-five year old, that was quite an introduction to the world.  It’s one of those things you are glad you did when the opportunity presented itself.

I of course learned a lot regarding the different cultures and people that make up our world.  Learned some history.  Learned that traveling the world with someone you hardly know can be interesting.  Learned a little about sexual addiction as my friend found a hookup (female) in almost every port.  Yes, quite an education.

After that big trip I traveled a lot.  I would take a few extra days off every month or so and go to Europe for short stays.  I also traveled the U.S. a lot.  It was a lifestyle I really enjoyed in the early years of my career.

When Terry came into my life we kept up the pace of my travel bug.  Fortunately he loved traveling also.  We did trips to England, Scotland, Iceland, as well as much domestic travel.  It was nice to have a travel companion and we traveled well together.

I’m so glad I did all the traveling I did when I was younger as I would not want to travel like that now.  Times have changed so much.  Flying was not the hassle that it is now with crowded flights and cramped seating.  In the old days it was much more comfortable and I was often able to travel in first class.  Oh, well, I’m glad I took the opportunity when it was available  and I had lots of energy to go, go, go!

At this point in life I do not have the same interest or energy I had back then.  I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, and really have become a homebody in a sense.  We still like to travel but enjoy car trips and train trips more.  A five-hour plane trip is my limit these days.  Hawaii makes a nice break from routines twice a year and the beauty there is as good as I’ve found anywhere.  We also have our other favorite places to visit like Sedona, Branson, Charleston, Edisto Island (S.C.), Savanna and others.  We also try to see a new place every year.  But the pace has slowed.  Lots of places I haven’t seen, but that’s fine with me.  I’m glad I started early with this travel thing.  Life does change.  Life’s been good.  I can’t imagine what life would have been like if I had never done the traveling I did do.   I’ve lived my dream and I am living my dream, just the pace has changed.

Wally

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Hate and How We Handle People We Hate [ Post #9 ]

Well, There’s a word that packs a punch, that throws life off-center, that destroys and kills, often literally.  It’s a word that’s very topical in our world today.  I wish it wasn’t so, but, as they say, “it is what it is,” and we are living in a very hate-filled, hate-obsessed world if one focuses on that aspect of life.

As a child we probably didn’t think much about the emotion of hate.  In childhood we would casually say we love something or we hate something. No big deal.  We love our parents or we hate our parents.  We love or hate our siblings.  We hate or love broccoli, etc.  We love school or we hate school.  I don’t think we were taught the potential damage hating could have at that stage of life.

But advance to the later years and we see hate is a very destructive energy to live with.  Gangs thrive on hate as do most criminals.  Left unchecked, hate just becomes a way of life or at least a part of life.  Yes, it has always been that way.  History is a continuous story of war and killing.  Look at religion, another continuous tale of wars and atrocities.  

Looking over my life, I do not recall actually hating anybody.  There were a lot of people I did not like, people I did not see as good or nice people.  But “hate,” I don’t know if I would say I hated anybody.  I do recall one time when a supposed “friend” all of a sudden decided he hated me.  We were co-workers and I thought good friends until one day in casual conversation I mentioned I was gay.  Kaboom!  He flipped out and started screaming at me how I was evil and God was going to kill me.  God was surely going to kill me, no question about it.  I deserved to get AIDS and die, and soon!  Wow, I did not see that coming.  He hated me ever since that moment.

Now, I grew up in an environment of hate.  I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, in an all-white area of Los Angeles.  In my immediate environment I was taught that we hate Catholics, Jews and ni**ers.  I did not understand this attitude, so of course I was called a ni**er lover by family members.  I, of course,  was confused as I did not understand this concept of hate that was so natural in the people in my environment.    I guess I was the proverbial “black sheep” of my family and environment.  Over time I’ve been labeled a communist, un-American, bleeding-heart liberal, etc.  Wow, all because I was not hate-filled in my attitudes and thinking.

So now, here we are in later adulthood, and it just doesn’t change much, does it?  Look at the world, look at how people are treating each other. Turn on the news.  I was at the grocery store recently and two people were going at it, screaming awful, nasty things to each other.

So, how do I handle the people I hate in my life.  Well, for starters, I don’t feel that I hate anybody.  Really, I mean that.  Can’t stand some people, that’s for sure.  I find some people awful, disgusting, even evil, but I would not say I hate anyone.  I think hate is a line I will not cross.  I find hate to be too destructive and harmful and dangerous in my life.  My getting worked up and hating people is not for me.  I’ve got enough to do making my life work out how I want it to be.  I don’t have the energy to hate and be distracted from all the good in life.  I will let karma and God work out dealing with the awful people in this world.  Really… as they say, “it’s not my job, man!” 

  


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Why I Love Funerals [Post #8]

Well, that title probably got your attention.  But there is truth in that statement.  Let me tell you why I love (good) funerals.  Now, I know funerals are very sad events.  At the last funeral I was at, the best friend of the deceased started his eulogy with the statement that “funerals suck!”  And that is true.  Of course funerals suck.  But there is a sense in which I love funerals.

At most funerals (and at memorial services) I get to hear the deceased’s life story.  I get to hear stories of their life that I would never hear otherwise.  It is my last chance, usually, to find out very interesting facts about the fascinating life they lived.  I happen to love people’s life stories.  After all, we never really know most of the people in our lives.  We know very little, usually, about our friends.

So I sit there and am amazed by what I learn as people share their experiences and knowledge of their dear, deceased loved one.  I am sad that it takes a funeral to learn about my friends, to really know who they were.  As I see it, by then it is too late to appreciate their life and let them know.  I guess it’s better than never knowing the stories, I just wish they had shared more of their real selves while they were alive.

Which brings me to today, and me and my writing, blogging, and speaking.  Several years ago, while visiting my nephew in Florida, he handed me a book.  The book was my father’s memoirs, an autobiography.  My father apparently typed out these pages of his life story a long time ago, but nobody knew of this until my nephew found them among boxes of family “stuff” after my father’s passing.

My nephew had these pages printed up in a book and gave a copy to family members.  What a surprise!  I never knew much about my father and reading the book filled in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of him and gave me an appreciation of what he lived through.  And that got me thinking, Maybe I should do something like that, get my stories out there, out of my head and into the world, or at least out there for my friends to know.  I thought about it, realizing, yes, we don’t know people and their life stories until their funerals, and then we don’t know very much, usually.

The problem is, writing your memoirs or autobiography can be a daunting project.  I was interested, excited and committed, but it is too easy to procrastinate to just write the long story of one’s life.  I realized I might never get very far with the project.  That’s when the thought of internet blogging came to me.  I realized I am not a “techy” type person and probably couldn’t handle writing a blog, but doing some research I discovered even people not computer savvy could do it with a little help that was available.  So, I plunged in, and here we are. I realized that besides my life stories, there are other subjects I could write about.  I have lots of ideas, so there is always something to write that might be of some interest to someone.

I have a little public speaking/preaching  background, having been to seminary.  I enjoyed that and I got some good reviews.  But that takes a lot of work in preparation, plus I have to seek speaking opportunities (sell myself, etc.), and then the audience is usually rather small, and who is going to remember anything I said a few days later.  I find it easier to sit down and write and when I do, there is a written record to come back to if I or someone else chooses to.

So, that was the genesis of my blogging project.  I like having good conversations with people.  I like really learning about people. I want to know about people before they die.  I say, let’s be more open with our lives, that’s my wish and desire.  We get too hung up on the unimportant things in life.

Wally

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Time for a Little Religion: Born Again Christian, Atheist, Then ??? [Post #7]

Okay, I’ve covered briefly my chronological life in blogs 3 through 6. Nothing controversial about that, just pretty objective.  Now it is time to get into controversial subjects.  Yes, we’ve all been warned to stay away from religion and politics in polite conversation, etc., but well, a blog does get into these areas sometimes.  I’m hoping to stay away from politics, there’s enough of that elsewhere in the world and on the internet.  But religion, well, that’s a factor in my life that’s always been of some significance, whether good or bad.  So, we will take a quick tour of my spiritual journey, if you will.  We’ll start at the beginning.

When I was a child, my family made us go to church, even though we were not a religious family, as I saw it.  I really did not understand why we were made to go, but I guess that was pretty much the norm back then when couples had children, even rather “secular” couples.  We did say grace before meals and I was taught the bedtime prayer, “now I lay me down to sleep.”  But that was about it for religion in our family.  My dad did like our minister because he talked football a lot, but he was not big on religion, really (my father, not the minister).  My father did use God’s name and Jesus’s name, but not in a sacred way, if you get my drift. (Unfortunately, I picked up this habit from him and haven’t quite rid myself of it yet).

In high school I had what you could call a “born again Christian” experience.  A coming to God and Jesus was good for me at that time as I was having problems living with my family and a spiritual/religious dimension in my life helped a lot.  I do not regret that experience at all at that time.

After high school I went away to college, to a Christian college in Seattle where I had three friends from my high school days.  It was a new life for me, being away from home.  I got involved with a group of friends there, good people.  They were charismatic Christians, which means they were really on fire in a religious sense during that chaotic time. It was the 1960’s, a wild time of the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy, Kent State killings, etc.  Sometimes I am amazed that we lived through such an insane time.

There were drugs, there were the Jesus freaks, Woodstock, all of that.  But I ran around with my “spiritual” friends and it probably helped me survive being in such a group.  We had good times hanging out together and going to church.  

When college was over I continued on to a theological seminary.  I was there for one year and I learned a lot.  I got to study deeper  the interesting subjects of church history, theology, ethics, etc.  I remember being told that what we learned in seminary we do not want to tell our congregations  when we become ministers because it may damage or destroy people’s faith.  Like I said, I learned a lot.

I left seminary, got a job with an airline and did the career stuff.  Life was rolling along pretty well.  For a while.  At some point, I began experiencing a “crisis of faith.”  I challenged my religious beliefs with deep study and deep reflection and thought.  I guess real life was beginning to affect me and my spiritual assumptions.  Not an unusual experience for some people.

I do realize, and I do know a lot of people that never seem to waver in their religious beliefs since they were children, indoctrinated into whatever church or religion they were brought up in.  But this was not my situation. I went from no faith to a fundamental, conservative Christian faith, to theological study and on to the dog-eat-dog real world of cruelty and awful people and situations in the world.  I could not put it all together.  So, I decided I was, after all, an atheist.

Well, this was an unexpected turn in my life.  But one I took seriously.  When I decide something, I really make a decision and commitment.  So, I joined the American Atheist’s Association, based in Austin, Texas.  It was headed my Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a very famous atheist activist.  I even attended one of their annual conventions and got to be with her and her family (pictures were posted on Facebook a while back).

The convention I attended was a very interesting experience.  I met a lot of people who felt like I did about religion at that time, but something began to gnaw at me.  I realized a lot of these people were very bitter, unhappy people.  I realized that atheism is really just another “religion.”  They have their strong, set beliefs and they hate anyone who does not agree with them.  In fact, they really hate agnostics who question whether there is a God or not, as they see agnostics as weak people unable to be strong and stand up and be atheists like they are.

So, I learned a lot being with those atheists and it caused me to reevaluate where I really stood on this religious/spiritual thing.  As I thought it over, I realized I have always felt there was “something else” in life, something in the invisible world of the unseen forces or energy active in life.  Maybe it wasn’t the childhood concept of God that I (and most children) had at one time early in life.  Even the concept I had of “God” in college.  Maybe I had to grow up my concept of God or whatever was active in life behind the scenes, in the invisible, unseen world of the spiritual dimension.

I studied a lot on religious and spiritual subjects.  I began checking out churches again.  I discovered a branch of religion and even Christianity called “new thought,” not “new age,” but new thought.  It was a much better match for me than the standard,  conservative, mainline, fundamental protestant Christian church.  I found the Unity Movement (Unity churches) and Religious Science churches fit me better than anything else.  I find Science of Mind (the teaching of the Religious Science church) and Unity teachings are my best expressions of my spiritual experience now.

That is a brief trip through my spiritual journeying of my life.  Recently I sat down to draw up my most simple definition of my beliefs. It turns out it is very similar to Jesus’ statement of his theology (if we can call it that).  He said the ten commandments from the Hebrew Bible can be condensed into two commandments, to Love God and to Love your neighbor as yourself.  I came up with a seven word religion that really is it for me: Trust God and Love and F the rest.  That really covers everything if you think about it, as I see it.  

 

 

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The Airline Career and Retirement [Blog post #6]

I spent thirty-three years in the airline industry (1973-2007)  I don’t know many people that stay in one field, job, or a specific career for their entire working life.  I did because I did not want to change careers. I hated the anxiety of looking for a job and the job interviews and all that, and once I had the job I liked, or at least in the field I wanted to be in, that was it as I saw it.

It was a rough field to be in, as there were always strikes, layoffs, and pay cuts all the time. There was never any sense of real job security, at least not for very long. But the work was exciting enough for me to put up with the bad times and “hang in there.”

I had many different jobs with the airline. I started in the kitchen, went to the commissary department (loading food and supplies on the planes), then the ramp (baggage handler) and then airport agent, working at the ticket counter and the boarding gates.  I was laid off during the Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm) but took a new job in the city ticket offices.  Those were the days before etickets and people had to buy paper tickets to travel.

I enjoyed the new job in the city ticket offices.  My supervisor gave me the position of working “vacation relief” which meant I would go and fill in in offices where someone was on vacation.  Often it was out of state and it was a one-person office, meaning I worked all alone for a week or two.  I loved that.  When I was not filling in for a vacationing employee, my home office was the Beverly Hills ticker office at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, owned by Merv Griffin.  I got to talk to him a little bit when we were walking around on breaks.  Of course, in that ticket office we handled ticketing for many  celebrities.  It was normal to see movie stars, etc. almost every day.

When I was “on the road,” I got to be in places live Denver and Albuquerque and Phoenix. I loved that. Staying in hotels and seeing the area and getting to know new cities for a week or two at a time. Being my own boss with no one looking over my shoulder was wonderful. It was a great time.

I eventually stopped my piloting and sold my membership in my flying club and partial interest in our aircraft.  My flight instructing at Santa Monica Airport was very short-term, but my love of aviation and piloting never wavered. During that time I lived on the beach at Santa Monica (eleven years). That beach apartment was in a dream I had many years before I lived there.  I had a very strong and vivid dream of me living right on the beach in Santa Monica. I learned that we can create our own dream conditions in life.

Half way through my airline career my life made a big turn. I had lived with a friend for many years but it was not a good relationship and I eventually lived alone. My social life was getting pretty stagnant so I made a very bold move and decided to take up country western dancing.  Someone years earlier had told me I should look into country western dancing as a fun activity. 

I did some research and found where there were dance lessons being given in the area.  I just jumped right in and very quickly met someone who just “clicked” with me (and vice versa).  The chemistry was immediate and intense and finally, in 1990, I left my dream location at the beach and moved inland to the Hollywood area. Believe me, I did not see this change coming at all.

It was nice having an improved living arrangement and not living with someone who was not a good match for me.  Twenty-five years later we would get married, another thing I never imagined or saw coming in the early stages of the relationship.  Of course, we needed same-sex marriage to become legal, and it finally did.

When the terrorist attacks of  9/11 occurred, big changes came to the airline industry. American Airlines bought out TWA after our third bankruptcy and took on the TWA employees.  So many other airlines went out of business in those days and the employees lost everything.  Fortunately we kept our jobs but for TWA employees to keep their full-time status and their seniority (seniority is everything in the airline business), they had to go work at the St. Louis airport.

For me that was a “no-brainer” and I decided to move to St. Louis and work there.  Fortunately, Terry was my registered “domestic partner” then so he got free airline travel.  He came to stay with me in St. Louis every other week and every other weekend I would spend my days off at our L.A. home in Hollywood. Another time in my life when it all worked out just great.  That was a good time living in both places and being together a lot of the time. Terry loved the traveling to be with me in St. Louis.

Well, it was good times followed by bad times, in a sense.  In 2004 American Airlines “downsized” the airport hub in St. Louis and I took a position back in Los Angeles at the airport.  I lost all my seniority since I left St. Louis, and it was as if I was a new hire, I had no say in anything with no seniority.  No choice of shifts, no choice of days off, no choice of vacation weeks, etc.

I lasted for two years at LAX and then decided I could take no more.  My dream airline job had changed too drastically for me to keep doing it. I took my retirement at age 58.

My story improved very quickly when I retired.  Now, I am one of those who loves retirement.  I truly believe I was made for retirement. No more having to spend all my time and energy working for some company, and for some boss that often times is a real jerk ( I did have a few bosses that were good or okay, to be fair) Now my life and my time were mine!

So there you have a quick romp through the basics of my life. Yes, it was very basic and perhaps shallow autobiography, but more may be revealed in future blog postings.  At least now you have the outline of my life.  My whole life is perfect looking at it from my current perspective.  I see how things happened and why certain thing happened, even if they did not look like very good experiences at the time.  The bad times, the dark times, yes they exist, but they are just parts of the puzzle, the big picture!

So now you know the basic outline of my life and we can turn to other topics in my blog.  I hope you will stay tuned and see where we go.

Wally

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California Here I Come (Right Back From Where I Started From) [Blog post #5]

(A continuation of my bio from post #4)

So, I’m driving back to California from having left seminary in Chicago, pretty sure I will not be returning to finish my Masters of Divinity degree (M.Div) or to become an ordained minister.  It’s been a while since I left home in California for college and seminary, five years in fact.  It is a fun drive, going by way of St. Louis and Albuquerque, places that would play a part in my future life.

As soon as I’m in L.A., it’s off to Yosemite National Park in northern California, as during my year in seminary, I had signed up with a program called “A Christian Ministry in the National Parks), an organization still in existence.  I will be on the ministry staff for the summer there, doing whatever duties I am assigned, along with a “secular job” (that was the package deal with the program).

My ministerial job was to be the chaplain at the park hospital. I didn’t even know they had a park hospital before arriving there.  I did visit people there and enjoyed the experience.

That summer my mother was diagnosed with cancer, so I headed home a little early, before my summer commitment was completed. She lived two more years, so I was glad to be home for that time. I was on my search for an airline job, and I finally landed one (pardon the pun), after having a couple of short-term jobs, working for a church friend in his bulk mailing service and as a cashier at a Mexican restaurant.

Eventually I got a job with an international airline, TWA (Trans World Airlines) I was excited to finally have the job that would allow me to see the world and give me the money to do my flight training and possibly be an airline pilot. It was a foot-in-the-door, low level job to begin with ( a dishwasher at night in their flight kitchen/dining unit as it was called).

A few of my friends there went on to become big shots in other fields, but it was sort of fun having these humble beginnings. One became a CEO or President of a cruise line and another became a founder with his wife of an international evangelistic organization.

After six months of work I got laid off.  I was qualified for airline employee travel after six months, so a friend and I decided to take three weeks and fly around the world, as TWA and Pan Am both had round-the-world routes back then. The employee service charge for the ticket was $57 and an additional $57 if we wanted to upgrade our flights to first class. So, for $114 we got our tickets and took off. We did get first class on most of our flights!

This was one of those “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunities and I grabbed it! This was the beginning of a habit that has served me well in my life, seizing the opportunity when it comes along. I had now secured the job I dreamed of as I drove away from Chicago and seminary just two years earlier.

As soon as the trip was over I was recalled to my job and I remained with the airlines for thirty-three years (the last five as an employee of American Airlines after a takeover/merger in 2001.

I did put my dream of becoming a pilot in action and got my pilot licenses. I became a private pilot, then a commercial pilot, and got my flight instructor and ground instructor certificates. I joined a flying club where club members were part owners of a fleet of airplanes which we could rent to ourselves for a very cheap rate at the time. I took friends and family members on flights all the time. A favorite trip to Catalina Island to have lunch at the “airport-in-the-sky” and have buffalo burgers. They had buffalos roaming around the island.

I did do some flight instructing work at a local airport, hoping for pilot jobs to open up with the airline. As it turned out, my airline pilot dream was not to be. The timing just was never right.  When I was ready, they were not hiring.  This was another lesson learned in my early life, that some things are not meant to be, deal with it!

I was at least doing work I enjoyed (I had advanced to airport agent work working the boarding gates and ticket counter, etc.) I met many famous people. I was traveling the world and flying in my own plane in my off- duty time.  I cannot imagine just having a “regular” job, it was not for me.  This was exciting and life was good, very good!

(To be continued with probably one more posting on my bio, then on to other topics)



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After college and seminary – real life – YIKES! [Post #4]

(Continuing from blog post #3, I will, in the next couple of posts, finish a very brief outline of my journey on my “path,” then on to other topics.)

So, I did have a good college experience in Seattle.  I never really knew what I was going to do after college.  I thought of teaching, but after a short stint of being a teacher’s assistant in my first year of college (a fifth grade class at a local school), I realized that was not for me.  So, I ended up majoring in history for no particular reason other than I had taken a lot of history classes.

I did enjoy being away from home and loved living in the dorm at school.  When I had a chance, I would drive out to the Magnolia Bluff area of Seattle, overlooking Puget Sound and contemplate life and my future while watching the ships and ferries cross the sound.  It was a great time just sitting there in my little VW bug, absorbed in thought. I spent many hours there over my four years thinking what am I going to do with my life, but no answers came to me.  I realize now that I was really just delaying getting out into the real world and having to “do something” with my life.

The social life was good. I developed some very good friendships and ran around with a good group of people.  I did like the academic life, this coming from someone who never thought of going to college at all while in high school.  

That nagging thought kept coming to me, about what I was going to do after college.  That thought became acute as graduation neared.  By the time graduation did come, I had decided I would continue with school and go to a theological seminary in Chicago and study and possibly prepare to be a minister.  That would keep me from having to face the “real” world for a while longer.

So, it’s 1971 and I am in seminary studying for the ministry in an evangelical church.  Once again, another good experience trying out new things in a new environment. My first year there was exciting and I learned a lot and even did some preaching at a hospital connected with the church.

As I say, I enjoyed the year there but as the year ended I had decided that maybe I needed a break from all this.  I had been in school for a long time. So one day I talked to the dean and informed him I was planning to take a break from seminary to think things over.  He seemed to understand but told me, “Wally, I know you will be back. This is where you are supposed to be, this is your path!”

One memory that is burned into my mind as if it just happened yesterday was of that day I was driving away from Chicago in my VW bug packed to the ceiling with all my belongings. I looked out my window as the Chicago skyline faded into the distance and the thought really hit me… WHAT NOW! This is it, I now have to really face what am I to do with my life, no more hiding in the academic world.  This is it!

At that very instant, I realized that I wanted and needed to get out and travel and see the world!  That was it, the thought hit me like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. The next thought was, how am I to do that? What type of employment would allow me to fulfill that desire and goal? I knew I wanted to fly, be a pilot, but that would take time and money for training.  Ah, I thought. Maybe I should work for an airline.  Travel and see the world while I train and become a pilot. Yes, that’s what I will do! Bingo, all those years unsure of what I wanted to do finally had some resolution in my mind.

It’s amazing how a thought like that just hits you out of the blue in an instant, and you know it is the right idea. So, I’m going to try to get a job with an airline and travel and get on with my dream of being a pilot which I had since the age of six.  The pieces of the puzzle (of my life) are finally coming together! 

                                          _______________________________

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