some guy in lebanon

“Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes.”

That is the opening line of the first number of a play I saw when I was 14 years old.

Incidentally, I was on my first trip to New York City, my first trip “solo” (visiting my God Mother), my first Broadway play, and it was the first time I knew how many minutes partitioned a year.

A lot has happened since then.

If I were to characterize the twelve years since that trip to New York, it would be a series of adventures of an ever accelerating scale.

Simultaneously, I would submit that the past year would best be described as a catalog of misadventures, proportionate only to the degree to which I was capable of finding trouble (or trouble was capable of finding me).

Misadventures, then, are what are on my mind as I sit here in the Bad Homburg Arcade, outside Frankfurt, Germany, writing this long-overdue post longhand as I wonder why the past year was the way it was.

Why the struggle? Why the trouble? Why did my good fortune turn to bad in an instant, and what is the use, therefore, of attempting to contrive a definition of a year like this past year based on something so innocuous and conspicuously nondescript as five hundred thousand plus minutes.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes ago I sat in Amman, Jordan with $71 to my name and over seven thousand dollars in credit card debt. Barred from Lebanon, I had yet to cement a deal with Henry Ijams to return to America and consult with PayStream Advisors in Charlotte, North Carolina, when I would veer away from the precipice of insolvency at the last second.

In fact, fifty two weeks ago the reality that my possessions, my money, my apartment, my work, and indeed my entire life had vanished like a mirage had yet to fully set in. I possessed a vague plan to move to Dubai, or to London, and I was seeking more detail on another vague plan with a Lebanese lawyer to post a bond in my name to guarantee one more Lebanese three month tourist visa (the money for which I didn’t have)… and I’d then have 90 days to secure a work permit (for which I had no guarantee).

Fifty one weeks ago, I was completely broke and out of time. I didn’t need to listen to Sultans of Swing to hear about Dire Straits. I’d moved, the previous year, to one of the world’s most troubling and confounding locales, and confounding trouble had finally caught up with me. It was time to turn tails and run. I bought a flight to New York and left the Middle East.

Prior to that, whatever was going through my head as I slept on the floor of a friend of a friend’s condo in Abdoun, Amman for a month, I seem to have repressed. I recall arriving at Queen Alia Airport (that would be the airport I’d passed through a dozen times on various other adventures, the airport that King Hussein named after his third wife… who died in a helicopter crash) feeling rather numb. I now had $40 dollars and that was after an emergency inter-Curtis loan. $40 would not get me from New York to Charlotte, so thankfully Oni bought my train ticket south… although I know that he could barely afford it either.

Charlotte was a whirlwind – I won’t get into the details too much – but the experience was a jarring transition… although the crummy neighborhood on Wilksonson Boulevard that I moved into reminded me of certain other seedy places around the world I’d seen.

Accepting the job with TWI was essentially under duress (although indeed it was a timely blessing), as I’d made little headway with my debt and my gig with Henry was over – the inevitable consequence of the professional opportunity was the complete disintegration of my personal life and eight months of 14 hour work days, 7 day work weeks, and months in solitude.

In less than eight months I have ignominiously joined the 100K club at United Airlines, so it surprises me to have only seven counties under my belt this year. Nearly 100% of that travel was solo. The job? Replacing inventory management systems, which probably hold the rank of “most boring ERP systems ever.”

Living in Germany for a lot of that time was particularly difficult – although the autobahn must be experienced to be believed. I don’t speak the language, I don’t know anyone here, the TWI team here has the highest of expectations, and the project began without a plan, without guidance, and previously implementations had not gone well.

I must of course thank TWI for the opportunity to complete a project so prone to failure…

13 months ago I was certain of my future in Beirut. My first post in exodus 12 months ago was titled “some Guy in the World,” as I suddenly felt I was a citizen of nowhere, which I never wanted.

What I’d failed to see at the time, however, was that my newly contrived status would unleash me from a long-held belief that my location should define my experience.

Instead, what I am now aware of is that the truth is the opposite: My experience should define my location. In fact, my experience should define everything.

This awareness had its tradeoffs: I acknowledge that the past year has had a hardening effect, and the past 8 months with TWI in particular have been desensitizing and lonely.

But I should not assume that the effect was dehumanizing: Quite the contrary. The journey over the past five hundred twenty five thousand six hundreds minutes was Sisyphean and I am better for it.

I chose a path whose consequences I wrought, and as I watched the boulder roll down the mountain last September, I turned to push it back to new heights consecrated in the knowledge that my future was in my hands.

As that is the case, that this past year has been Sisyphean, I must turn to Camus to properly understand my year, and its epilogue, so forgive my aggressive quotation of his work, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” (which you can read in full by clicking here):

Camus states the gods believed, as they punished Sisyphus, that “there is no more dreadful a punishment than futile and hopeless labor.” I know I have believed the same thing at times.

As Sisyphus, “stole the god’s secrets,” he was punished with the task of rolling a rock up a mountain, only to have it roll back down, in an eternal torturous cycle.

But, as Camus states, Sisyphus, “is. As much as through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life (meant) for him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole of his being was exerted in accomplishing nothing.”

And so as, “Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward the lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit, he goes back down the to the plain.”

I, like Camus, am most interested in that moment when Sisyphus turns to watch the boulder roll back down the mountain, for that is where I was a year ago, and it is where I find, for all intents and purposes, myself today.

For this is, “the hour of consciousness when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks towards the lairs of the gods,” when, “he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.”

Indeed, “if this myth (of Sisyphus) is tragic, that is because our hero is conscious… the lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.”

As Sisyphus’ return to the rock, at the base of the mountain, were his, “Nights in Gethsemane,” (the garden where Jesus begged God His Father for an alternate fate, and received no answer) so too were my nights, one year ago to the day, in Amman.

“But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.”

Camus quotes Sophocles’ Oedipus: “‘Despite so many ordeals,’” despite exhaustion and misadventure and misfortune, “‘I must conclude that all is well’, and that remark is sacred.”

“All Sisyphus’ joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him.”

His absurd struggle causes him to, “Say ‘Yes’, and his efforts henceforth will be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny… he knows himself to be the master of his days.”

“At that subtle moment when Man glances backwards at his life, Sisyphus returning to his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates the series of unrelated actions which became his fate, created by him.”

So, we leave Sisyphus as he proceeds to his boulder. We board the plane, pack the car, collect whatever is left after our choices lead us to disaster, and leap forth to whatever is next. Because we can, we must, and therein lies the reason that we can: Because we exist, and our actions, and their consequences, are proof enough that our existence is our own. Were it not for consequences stemming from our capacity to be deliberate, our humanity would be empty and our lives inescapably droll. To act, to choose, to be, is our gift, and any curses that stem from that gift pale, in comparison, to inaction.

In Camus’ immortal words, “Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.”

“Each atom of that stone, every mineral flake of that rock-filled mountain, in itself informs the world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

I too conclude that all is well.

A year of struggle has yielded new friends, new love, new passion, new insights, new wealth, new opportunities, new risk, new growth, and an altered endeavor that is wholly my own, despite the unceasing mist that hides the path forward, and its boulders, from view.

It is with hubris, and without trepidation, that I will turn Monday morning to descend this year’s mountain. I have already paused long enough for consideration, and my clarity in this moment is my triumph, my higher fidelity – it is the evidence of, and the reason for, my happiness.

It is in these moments that we should measure our years, and our lives.

Without Gethsemane, without God’s punishing silence or life’s innumerable obstacles, without our trials, without the mountain, how would we measure our triumphs? How could we ever be happy?

Without the actions we take that seal our fate and ignite our adventures and our misadventures, how else would we measure our years besides the droll of passing minutes?