BRATTLEBORO — How do you know when's it's time to step back, sit down, or go home? When do you know the job is done?
These questions confront almost every working person no matter the field; athletic, corporate, professional, or public (as in politician). Eventually, we all must face our own work mortality - hopefully, long before our actual one.
People work for many reasons: status, power, wealth, community, or simple survival. Most have faced mini-retirements during our careers, some voluntary, some not. It is unusual to find someone who has not been laid off, transferred, fired, or “externally repositioned” during their working life.
But the challenge of facing the big one - when you go home forever - is not something that most do well or are well-prepared for, especially if you have your personal and professional identity so intertwined that you are afraid that you might not know who you are and might be afraid to confront that person you don't know well - you.
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Currently, our White House resident seems to be playing out this drama in public for all to see. Where would he go, what would he do?
He has built a sand castle around himself his whole career without ever having to confront the reality of who he really is. He is not alone. I suppose that many of us have done something similar, although maybe not on the same scale.
Donald J. Trump might have experienced financial or personal failures before and he has explained them away. But he has never been fired before.
He has been the “fire-er,” not the “fire-ee.” And now, he has experienced the most public of firings in this presidential election year.
He cannot explain it away with excuses of the economy or other external exigencies. This election was a referendum on “the Donald.” He failed and was summarily fired.
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Why do his followers so willingly accept the president's allegation - with no substantiation - that the election was rigged?
Perhaps because in his failure, they recognize themselves and their own unwillingness to accept the truth of the collapse of their own personal façades and fantasies. If they could not personally succeed, they could succeed vicariously through the imaginary success of the public image of Trump.
But now, the real Trump is exposed, and his supporters cannot accept this or themselves. They are naked and vulnerable. There must be some other explanation, however fantastical or conspiratorial it might be.
As Polonius once advised his son, Laertes, in Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own self be true/And it must follow, as the night the day/thou canst not then be false to any man.”
We have seen ample evidence in Trump's four years of public life, and before that, that he might have circled the truth, but there is little evidence that he ever actually landed on it or would know if he did.
So the continuing creation and re-creation and manipulation of his public image has been his secret sauce. To what extent will he go to protect it? How much does the prospect of knowing his true self frighten him?
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I can speak for myself, on careful reflection, that my own mirror is not exactly spot free, and it would be easy to blame my own failures on externalities beyond my control.
Hiding behind the curtain of my own fabrication may provide temporary respite, but ultimately it is unfulfilling and a potential source of my own self-destruction. We all must face our own demons eventually. I take no pleasure in pointing out the glaring cracks in the façade of our most public representative.
I can only say that I recognize them for what they are, and I know I have and must continue to grapple with my own.
Finally, the difference between Trump and me is that the state of our nation and democracy is at stake. My failure is personal and painful for me and may have brought pain to those closest to me. But I will not drag down a nation and a people by my failure to deal with myself.
No matter what mountain we might climb during our working life, we can never enjoy the view unless we realize that the most important challenges we face are internal and those of our own making.
If we cannot enjoy the view, we need to look internally first and follow the advice of Buddha: that your life may be measured by how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
“Hey, Mr. President - it's time to let go!”