THE STORY OF JOHNNY WHOOPER SWAN We go to school trusting our parents. We meet a teacher there who stands up front with a big desk, and a pointer. She or he trains us in an authoritative manner. We attach mentally to a life long need for authority in order to live lives successfully. Right so far? In my case, at the age of 25 I was ready to enter the practice of law where I hoped for success and a happy life finally. Very shortly, very shortly, I became anxious. There was a foreboding. I was made more uncomfortable with each experience. Law work is nothing like what I was told it would be. The system is corrupt. But I still cling to my expectation that career success is necessary to my happiness as a man. Each day my grasp of what the fuck success amounts to after all becomes more clouded, murkier. I hear songs on the airwaves and at concerts which describe my life as the life of a fool. What am I becoming? I want to rip off my business suit to run naked in the street with my hair on fire! But I am too afraid. In strange, weird (weird comes from a word meaning wise), fragmented steps I go about a journey of my own believing myself to be the first man to have failed in such a total way which journey works so as to break up my career, end a marriage, and start an entirely new way of relating with my two children whom I love deeply. Almost magically I meet a woman who is a career counselor who asserts a beautiful message that I am made to be joyful in my work everyday and at all levels. This understanding sets me on a completely new course. It is no longer a world of systems to me but an undivided one of unlimited beauty. It reminds me of a painting. A true masterpiece. I am drawn from within to learn the truth about my identity and nobody else can teach me that. From this point onward I will use thinking capacity for mastering mechanical processes and follow my heart, which includes my whole nature, which includes your whole nature and that of every human being for all the rest. I’ll go by the name Johnny Whooper Swan who does not explain itself to anyone. By my fruits shall I be known. Watch me soar!

Wednesday, July 18, 2018


Called By Name


Only a few days ago I made a new friend named Abbey. Her age is seven years. I remember Abbey when she was a baby but she cannot remember me from that earlier time. It so happened that she said to me on seeing me, “As soon as I heard your name I thought you were famous.” “Really?” I replied. Feeling a bit shaken by her proclamation of my fame I failed to ask her what she was told was my name. Next day, we were out for a walk to a store together and she brought up the subject again and again. I wondered what she meant. Then she said so brightly, “Johnny Whooperswan, I was sure you were very famous when I first heard your name.” She repeated my name several times in a hurry and each time it rang with joy from her young, little heart. I cannot say how marvelous it made me feel. Then she told me, “I am going to tell all my friends I met Johnny Whooperswan and he is very famous”, and laughed out loud.

Now she calls Johnny Whooperswan whenever she decides to call me. And the manner in which it flows from that child is music. And the best part, the reason I want to tell this story, is that I understand from the sounds in my ear when she does that Abbey does not mean by “famous” what definition is locked in my head of words. The very name to her has a real magic quality I feel when she says it. It is definitely related to music. And it makes me feel so very special. And it brings up in me a memory of a time when I myself was most strongly drawn to a sound that I could rely on to open up a door to a special place where something good lives. Somehow that search is innate to humans.

Then I heard, via Netflix, Joseph Campbell, an expert in myths from all around the Earth introduce one from India that ends up by telling that all people are in some way titled as special and we are countless in number and we arise from the belly of Vishnu with a bag of thunderbolts to serve awhile but whenever we get to feeling arrogant about it we become as one more tiny ant. In the midst of the wonder of my name spoken by Abbey with such definite purpose I like the myth very much indeed and accept its challenge for me. I been noticed. But I understand I am just an ordinary man living an ordinary life which happens to be miraculous!

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