Thomas Sullivan

I can’t afford to look in the mirror. Not the one that looks back anyway. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, I try to hang my adornments on my soul. That way there is no visible evidence to confirm or refute that I have any adornments. I guess breaking even in life is starting to look good to me. For better or worse, it’s increasingly difficult for me to motivate myself toward the collective thinking of society. That isn’t a lack of respect, but a lack of confidence in conditioned mindsets. I don’t know whether competition was just kicked out of me or if I’m defaulting into Zen. I do know that Janet Berliner’s recent column about nasty competitiveness among writers has me thinking about the whole thing.

Competition is a bloodstained mirror.

I can tell you this, the most competitive world I’ve ever lived in was the swimming world, and relatively little of the competition took place in the water. I’ve seen adolescent suicide, coached two swimmers who two different people we’re trying to murder, and witnessed a lesbian vendetta on a major city common council over pool time. A coaching friend of mine had his eyes gouged out, was garroted, shot in the head six times, and dragged behind a car on a chain by an irate parent whose child had been chewed out on the deck by one of my friend’s assistant coaches.

Competition is a seed with many mutations.

Maybe that was why I took the name Altruists Anonymous for the last ragtag group of athletes I trained, instead of something like Crimson Fanged Screaming Ninja Walruses. But there would not have been an AA, had it not been for Bill pond. Bill was an ex-cop from small-town Middle America. Plain and unassuming, you would never notice him unless you had time for slow-motion wisdom to unfold. He showed up at my $7/week room at the Lawndale Hotel at a time when I wanted nothing to do with giving or getting from the world. You remember the Lawndale Hotel, don’t you? This link will take you there http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2007/01/16/thomas-sullivan-empty-boxes-i-have-worn/. That was when, little more than a kid myself, I was wearing paperclips for shoelaces and driving a car that sounded like an MRI clunking, thumping, and thudding through a body scan. I had just quit coaching, and Bill was the last parent I would have expected to see. Of all the ones who asked me to reconsider, he was the only one whose appeal was not based on competition. He stood there in a room so small that he blocked the light fixture and I sat on the bed so that there would be room for him to stand. He had one sad little boy, he said, who didn’t know what to do with himself. On a team that set 48 national age group records that year, his son Jimmy was never going to score in the medals, and he knew that. He also knew that it didn’t matter.

Competition within your self is self affirmation.

But Jimmy Pond turned out to be the greatest athlete I ever coached. He never won a trophy or a race, but he had the heart of a stallion and the simple honesty of a Huck Finn. Alone with him in the subterranean confines of a glowing green pool at 3:30 a.m., I have seen him cover distances nobody cares about with an effort no one would recognize at speeds no one would remark on that thrilled me more than any record with which I’ve ever been associated. I virtually adopted Jimmy Pond (no conflict there with his real father – Bill wasn’t competitive!). Or maybe he adopted me. For sure, he taught me that the potential within you is what matters, and living up to it. And for that you need to enter the race. You can’t sit-out life and fulfill anything. You have one shot. Wasting it just has to be the cardinal sin of all time. Jimmy Pond entered the race on his own terms. No one ever feared him for his speed. But he launched for the stars and left nothing in the tank and came away with a galaxy of quiet respect.

Yet Jimmy Pond threatened no one. I don’t think he ever thought about defeating others. He thought about winning for himself. He wasn’t a philosopher. He was known for his spoonerisms and misstatements. “The chlorophyll’s hurtin’ mah eyes, Sully,” when he meant chlorine, or “It was pitch white” – if there was a pitch black, there had to be a pitch white. One time, when I asked him what nationality he was, he scratched his head and came up with, “I’m All-American.” But his fearlessness in reaching for the stars was profound. There was simply no other way for him to live. He taught me to trust doing that. At a time when I used to quit writing every other week, or prostitute myself with a market that I really didn’t belong with, he taught me to trust my own fate by always reaching for perfection. In fact, not reaching for perfection is the only mistake I can make if I want to keep passion and meaning alive in my life.

Before that, I thought there were only two responses to competition: go head-to-head or never get in the game. If you don’t get in the game, you can’t lose, right? Alas. You can lose your very soul that way. Skipping life, skipping your one statement of who you are, all your aspects and dreams – not losing? There is no greater loss than that. No greater affront to any God you might believe endowed you with potential or your purpose in being on Earth. Selling yourself short is simply playing a shell game with the opinions of others, and – more importantly – your own self-esteem. It isn’t enough to say that if you are never trumped, you might be the best. Nothing will make you more insecure than knowing you won’t let yourself be tested. Better to trust your dreams and reap the benefit of your desires than to suffer the suffocating consequences of your fears. With his incredible self-honesty worn on his sleeve, and his refusal to settle for less than fulfillment, Jimmy Pond showed me how to do that.

The only competition that matters is between you and your dreams.

And that’s how I look at writing. It doesn’t seem to me like a competitive thing. It’s a beauty contest where the eye of the beholder is everything. Different strokes for different folks. I know what my dreams are, what is uniquely perfect for me. There is no substitute for that, no compromise. To remain loyal to that, even if it has to remain a dream, is what makes me what I am. There is an audience for each of us, just as there is a soulmate. There is no defeat, no failure, if you stay on the road toward that. You might get lost for years, take some hideously wrong turns, but the only way to lose is to give up. The true trail will never disappear as long as you dare to dream. In speeches, I often call myself an “expert on failure,” but I like to add that no one should take that as an endearing confession, because I’m very arrogant about failure. I’m proud of it. It’s taught me everything I know, and each failure seems to lead to a more important success. Last month I wrote: “Soon after we become adults, most of us seem to anchor on a plateau inside ourselves where life doesn’t expand, and there we resign our futures to the slow ravages of time. It’s as if we get tired of looking for fulfillment and just grab up whatever is in our lives at the moment, declaring, ‘I’m there.’” To me, that’s failure.

Okay. Maybe I’m being too harsh. I’m talking to myself, to the Jimmy Ponds, to the idealists, to the dreamers (to writers, who by definition are dreamers), to romantic idealists – who are the most needful people of all. If you are perfectly happy in the passive mold of modern life, you don’t need anything I have to say. But if there is even a single white feather left in your plumage, you can still fly with it. And never doubt the shining destination. I don’t think anyone has held out any longer than I have for idealistic dreams, and the rewards are not simply just over the horizon. They happen along the way. I’ve denied myself every tangible compromise to what I want and need, and the ironies are soul-crushing at times, but I’ve also glimpsed with utterly vital certainty that my personal Holy Grail is possible. Entirely possible. That simple confirmation may not seem like much, but it validates everything in my life.

Your uniqueness indemnifies you against competition.

I hate competition. I love competition. Both true. There is a time and a place for everything, and a season. And a goal. The goal makes all the difference. I won’t compete for personal popularity (it isn’t a single prize or a zero sum game), political correctness (sellout), or true love (it is a single prize). You can win control, lip service, or physical possession of any of those things and still only be fooled into thinking you’ve reached the goal. I will compete for fun (usually something symbolic) or for human excellence that can be measured quantitatively. The only things that can be measured quantitatively about writing are sales and advances. And admittedly, there are moments when the red rage of competition for such recognitions overwhelms me with the unfairness of life. It’s easy to see how dwelling on that can lead to the envy, cattiness, and resentment that Janet Berliner describes in her essay. May those worthless stabs by the worst parts of me be infrequent in my life. To have the testimonials of success without the true substance of what I am would be far worse. I do not want to hang in the world’s closet, valued for some superficial part of me. I want to age well. Hell, I don’t want to age at all. Jimmy Pond has given me a perspective through which to own myself and control my destiny.

Can you have it all? Of course. I’m just saying that recognition and acceptance are secondary to being true to yourself. The tail shouldn’t wag the dog. Next time you see your muse, ask, “what’s my motivation?” If the list is topped by the appearances of things rather than personal fulfillment, close your eyes and dream again. The amazing thing is that, when you are true to yourself, very often the respect and adulation you feared missing come to you. And if that doesn’t happen in quantity, it only makes the quality sweeter.

Speaking of quantity versus quality, Mark Manrique’s scurrilous doctored photos of me in the newsletter have caused some confusion and curiosity apparently about what I look like. Have put up some new photos of me on my website www.thomassullivanauthor.com au natural to answer that. Thanks for reading. Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued. If you’d like to see more of my writing, please check out the free sample chapter from my latest novel, THE WATER WOLF, also on the website. And if you’d like to receive the free monthly newsletter, ask to be added to the list at: mn333mn@earthlink.net Older newsletters will now be archived on the website, but unfortunately we can only include new photos with the e-mailed version.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/