Non conforming, but not

There was the editorial in The Times today by Alan Ehrenhalt about conformity and non-conformity over the last 50 years here in America.

I lived through all that. I never conformed, but you'd never know that just by seeing my life. The sixties hit me about four years before everyone else. I was wandering The Village before I could drive, looking for what was cool, and what was going to change the world. Even then I knew it needed to be changed.

I was two blocks away from Dylan before anyone knew him. I probably passed him on the street. Maybe it would have been something. But since I didn't know what I was looking for I didn't see him. I went to college instead.

I was a writer in college, a maverick, iconoclast. I said sarcastic things that were clever. I was against things that needed to be opposed. But when I saw the line, the other side of which you got your head smashed hard with a billy club, I passed.

Last week, in The Times Book Review they highlighted those who crossed the line early and often. Hunter Thompston, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Courtney Love, and
Al Goldstein were up there, among others. They lived hard. They drank, they wrote, they screamed, they pissed their pants. They often died young.

Bipolar is what they would call them today, if they were unlucky enough to get near a psychiatrist.

I didn't do that. I went to graduate school. I raised my kids.

I sent around nasty notes. I campaigned hard for losing causes. I still tried to offend people when I could, while still keeping the marriage together. I played a lot of basketball without dunking.

Maybe that's why I enjoy so many clients who take it to the edge. I like to help them lean over without falling into the abyss, or maybe I catch them on the way down. I think they know that I feel some hint of admiration for their exaggerated, futile attempts.

The skill it takes to try something real and fail is greater than what it takes to follow the yellow brick road to success.