DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

The title of the post comes from a walk late in the evening to the Regulator Bookstore on 9th street maybe ten days ago, when I came across a book. I remember thinking then 'you can't judge a book by its cover but they sure do expect you to' as I read the title of a short story series: and we sold the rain.

I love throwback titles like that (a la The Sun Also Rises) and so thought I'd grandeloquate here. The reference is to the graduation ceremonies for my sister, though like any reference, that's only the literal meaning. At the ceremony the wind whipped up and tore through like a proud parent eager to dominate the festivities with her cheers for her own. As we sat in the sunlight the north-chilled air knocked down every seat that awaited the graduates. Men would dash, members of the school board I later learned, to pick them up, and as the last domino in the assembly righted, the wind would knock them all back down again. The Sisyphus-an task looked idiotic and foolish to those on the outside - but was it not that important that the chairs stand tall against anything that would try to knock them down? Did the graduates not deserve at least that much respect?

I wonder honestly about what it will mean to leave soon for Uganda and take an opportunity to reflect - on chairs sure. But also to think about an article sent to me by Tim Gu about leadership and growing up, written by David Brooks (access it here) that might potentially help to reveal a place for me in the role that I seek. An article that lends me the hope that the dreams which I brought with me to college might be the same dreams I take with me when I leave.

By now there is little in the way of secrecy when it comes to the plans I harbor for my life. I want to help lead the nation and to help make its laws and determine its course. But do I have the steel and the resolve to do so? These are the questions I harbor for myself and have left me uncertain. The question boils down to this seemingly innocuous conceit - humility. In this article by Brooks, in a music video by coldplay, and even in chairs blowing down on a wayward football field in the middle of rural California, the idea returns again and again. How can a virtue be a character flaw?

Just one of the most important questions I hope to answer in Uganda.

As the days wore on past finals, languishing in the dolorous Durham summer with its ribald heat that crawls up and under clothing only to prod you with a thousand tiny pinpricks, the robes came to me in the most casual of encounters.

“Hey man, these were Ben’s robes. You want ‘em?” Lee asked as he pulled them from his backseat, readying to go.

At the time I agreed, as I like to think anyone would, without thinking. Perhaps not fully realizing it would be the last time I saw Lee for a long time. Or that with the passing of the robes the journey was finally over – Lee, the last of my wise men, was gone. I did not think that then, but it must have been in my thoughts. For as I watched his car creep slowly down Chapel drive from the West Campus Bus Stop and disappear within the circle, I clutched more tightly than I necessary to the graduation robes he had worn, that had been worn by Ben before him, and that would one day be worn by me.

It would be easy to say the robes changed everything this summer. That with them came vigorous confidence, and a guarantee of success like those who have worn them before me possessed. Instead I admit they are only folds of fabric. Unlike the mystical jeans of the novel which inspired this reflection, they do not fit me any better than they fit Lee.

Yet to look at them is to gain confidence. They remind me of the thousands of ways things might have been different. They exert a slight but persistent tug that seems to say that this trip to Africa might just change everything.

Now, going to Uganda was not the first on the list of possible summer arrangements. Indeed, the journey to Nkokonjeru involves more twists and turns than one might patiently allow me to transcribe. So the highlights might be important enough to mention, and then we can continue.

In the summer preceding Junior year I felt keenly aware of a hollowness inside. The hole had been growing for some time, and I was fortunate then to know as I know now that this emptiness was unspeakable desperation. Desperation to see at least one decision affirmed or to find one success. The feeling, if I were to describe it to someone who has never felt it, feels much like being lost and following the only compass you have, what you know to be your only hope of finding your way; Realizing hopelessly that it points every direction but north.

It was in this context that I continued the arduous journey through college, plodding through the motions of plans laid long before their execution, plans which no longer really made sense. To see me was to think everything was normal, but inside what had once been vigorous passion sparked by an intense internal activism, one might call it my ’spark’, had gone out. Imprisoned in the shell of a life which no longer seemed to belong to me, I entered winter break with plans to escape.

The goal of giving up took two forms: investment banking or a trip to nowhere.

Investment banking offered the opportunity to stop thinking about all of the pernicious motives which had driven the development of my old identity. Investment bankers measure themselves by something so easy and so virile – money – that it seemed like a perfect plan. You think only vertically and horizontally – promotion and completion – and your reward is your bank account. There is no room in such work for other measures of success. What car do you drive, what women can you get, and what sort of digs can you live in are the only questions posed, and they are easily answered questions. To the multitudinous measures and oblique dreams of a restless wanderer, investment banking was ready to impose an order on my life. I was a hunk of clay ready to enter that kiln and take a final form and make this my new profession and my new passion. There was only one problem.

My interviews.

They could tell. Perhaps behind my eyes or in my demeanor I do not know, but they could tell there was a possibility that I might bolt. And there is no money in hiring an intern with no plans of working for you if you offer him a job. And so bank after bank after bank said no.

And as February drew to a close, the realization came that plan B would be it for me. I would need to find a place where no one knew me, and more importantly, one where I would not know myself. I confided in Lee that I wanted to go. I had to be away, that I needed to divorce myself from my own life for a while if only to figure out who I truly was. After all, I told him, how can you see what you really think and feel under the weight of the expectations of everyone around you (and secretly, though I did not tell Lee, under the weight of your own)?

Lee, like all the great dispensers of advice I have met in my life, just looked at me with all the appreciable knowledge which makes him who he is, and he agreed. He threw in for it, and I could not have been happier. He had the perfect spot picked out for me, if I would only apply. Uganda with DukeEngage he said - and starving for direction, I followed right along.

At the time, Lee was going. Things changed. Other opportunities arose for him, and in the dim recesses I wonder if it wasn’t all intentional. That I should sign up thinking myself protected by his wisdom and experience, only to have him slowly back away and disappear. Regardless, I now find myself off to Uganda a stranger. Thankfully, Lee was the only one who knew of my secret intentions. He was the only one who knew that this trip was more about me finding me, than me DukeEngaging the world (and hopefully at the time of this posting it is too late for them to revoke my ticket).

So I come full circle to the Robes he left me, before he said goodbye for good and headed off to Cambridge via San Francisco. In these robes once stood two of the strongest spirits I have ever met - two men whose compasses worked just fine. And so as I reflect in the hours before the journey begins on all that has come before as a way of interpreting all that will come hence, I know that they both pointed me toward these Robes for a reason. The trip to Uganda, paved not coincidently by both of them, was not accidental at all. And I have to do it alone. The Duke of Ben Abram and Lee Pearson was the cradle of my nascent adulthood, but one cannot stay in the cradle forever.

And even though I cannot see it now, I use the robes as a guide. With them I have faith that somewhere near the center of that dark continent I will find what I am looking for, and perhaps this wasting in my spirit might turn to strength on which to draw.

Then I might become the rightful bearer of such expectant garments, and pass them on as well to one who needs them.