George Lockwood: A Life of Achievement

In a pivotal scene in the 1997 movie As Good As It Gets, Helen Hunt's character Carol insists that Jack Nicholson's character Melvin give her one compliment. He hesitates, hems and haws and stammers something nonsensical. Carol doesn't understand how it's a compliment.

Then Melvin blurts out: 'You make me want to be a better man'.

That scene has always stuck with me over the years and it is particularly relevant today as we mourn the loss of our cherished father, grandfather, husband, uncle and great friend to so many. Throughout his life, Dad made us all want to be better men and women. I would like to take a few minutes to tell you about Dad and why he deserves such praise.

Everyone here today knows something about the life of George Lockwood, from his early life on a dairy farm in a small town in upstate New York to his career heights in the world of journalism. What is perhaps lost or unknown is a simple fact: Dad made choices that always propelled him forward in life.

Though he knew disappointment like all of us, Dad possessed an indomitable spirit that was impervious to failure or wallowing in self pity.

His mother Evelyn encouraged him to pursue achievements beyond their little farm in Westerlo, New York, but she could not have known that he would end his days having travelled the world many times, received a Pulitzer Prize in his 30s, raised four independent children and inspired colleagues to be their very best for more than four decades in his chosen profession of journalism.

These days, the entire field seems beleaguered and unreliable. The newspapers are going the way of the dodo bird. The public is skeptical of the press - and rightfully so. With Dad at the helm of a news organisation, however, accuracy and objectivity always held sway.

I remember many occasions as a child listening to Dad talk about the importance of objectivity in journalism. Facts always mattered, and not just any facts, but the relevant facts that told an entire story. As an expert editor, Dad would strike even the most innocuous sounding word from a reporter's piece if it slanted the article in any way. He reminded me how the use of the passive voice could be a subtle way of showing bias.

How did this translate into his parenting style? Well, he was strict and demanding there, too. Audrey, Cary, Noah and I were expected to be respectful of our elders. He surely encouraged us to participate in family discussions and he always made sure we were present for the many Milwaukee Journal parties he and my mother hosted at our house over the years. The difference was, we were to act as adults, not as whiney brats. He expected us to speak in turn, allow others to express their opinions and accept that no two opinions were alike. Today I attribute my calm resolve to Dad's numerous lessons about the rules of good conversation.

Many outside observers note that Lockwoods wear their emotions just below the surface, never too overt nor repressed. The common trait we all share, to one degree or another, is patient resolve.

Audrey may pound her fists in righteous indignation over this or that bigoted politician, but in her most personal moments, she carefully listens and respects others' often wildly divergent views from her own.

Cary, on the other hand, is the cool cucumber in the family. For my entire life, I have watched him go about his business quietly, intently and with an unparalleled focus. And yet, don't you dare get on his bad side, because then the beast can emerge.

Noah is sometimes mischaracterised as belligerent. It is a word that I think makes him bristle to this day. Nevertheless, what I see in Noah is a passionate desire to be himself and to express himself without kowtowing to others.

And then there's me. In my early years, I lived in the shadow of three siblings, each with big and brash personalities of their own. I sought, quietly and resolutely, to carve out my own unique personality. I've spent nearly three decades as the world adventurer and lover of language. I've gone from my late teenage years and early 20s living in French speaking countries, to teaching English in post-Communist Slovakia to now a resident of Sydney, Australia.

You may wonder what these brief stories have to do with Dad. In a word: everything. All that we are and all that we do as his children are because he paved the way for us. When I was a kid, I would roll my eyes when Dad gave his 'roots and wings' speech at the dinner table. I mean, how many times did he have to tell the damn story before it sank in? I get it, Dad, you and Mom created a foundation for us so we could take flight as independent adults.

Today, I am grateful for the repetition. I think of it often when I must make tough decisions about the course of my life. More than five years ago when I was struggling a bit personally, I recalled Dad's words and they helped me make the biggest and best decision to date.

I recognise that it takes courage to uproot oneself at age 41, but do you know what Dad said when I told him I was moving to Sydney? 'When can your mother and I come visit?'

Over several decades, I have also come to know Dad's colleagues and friends. Without exception, they gush their admiration. My partner Steve was overjoyed he was able to spend time during Dad's last year getting to know him. Just months ago, during our Thanksgiving visit to St Joseph, Missouri, Steve pulled out his iPad to show Dad how comics had migrated to the new and exciting electronic platform.

Steve demonstrated how to tap, pinch and swipe the screen. It touched me to watch someone take such an interest in Dad, but I quickly understood why: Dad always took an active interest in others. This is what I most loved about Dad. He had a way of inspiring others to rise to every occasion.

As my family mourns the loss of our wonderful father, grandfather and husband, I am reminded of Aristotle's great-souled man, as described in his Ethics. He is the man of high integrity and values, who pursues his goals valiantly, but neither boasts nor shies from the recognition of his achievements. If ever there were an embodiment of these ideals, Dad surely possessed them. In his words and deeds, Dad lived by his principles. All of us celebrating his life today are living proof of his radiant light extending out to each and every one of us.

Finish!

On Facebook, I have not hidden my admiration for a new writer making news recently. Hugh Howey, author of a series of dystopian science fiction novellas called Wool, did the unthinkable in the publishing world: he not only turned down two seven-figure offers from big publishing houses, but in the deal he did sign, he managed to retain his eBook rights. That alone has caused me to start calling him Trailblazer Hugh.

Now, ordinarily, this would be fascinating news because it is precedent setting for writers all over the planet. What makes Hugh’s story rise to the heroic for me is one simple fact: he’s living his dream. He not only has written a compelling work of fiction which I highly recommend, but he’s done it on his own terms.

What’s more for me is it has kick started my motivation to resume writing my book, from which I took a long break. Writers who don’t write often have their excuses for not writing, and mine are no different: I moved house, I started a new job, I found a partner whom I love dearly, etc. Sure, these may be legitimate reasons for a time, but did any of those things stop me from writing? Did they take up so much head space that I was incapable of continuing? No and no. 

The simple fact remains that I just stopped. I wasn’t blocked or stymied or self conscious about my writing skill. I didn’t run out of ideas for my book. I didn’t even engage in the self flagellating that some writers do, i.e. I’m no good and no-one would want to read my drivel. Quite the contrary. I am brimming with ideas and have a story to tell that I think people will want to read. But dammit, I stopped writing it for at least 18 months. And now I’ve resumed. It feels great.

So what changed? Why now? I assure you, it has nothing to do with a New Year’s resolution. I’ve never made them and I’ve never reneged on them. 

What changed is Hugh Howey came into my life. Yeah, that sounds creepy, like I’m stalking him from halfway across the planet. I first encountered Howey on Amazon.com, sheerly by accident. His Wool books came up as a suggestion after I’d bought several of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, better known as Game of Thrones. I clicked on the link for the first Wool novella, read the synopsis and thought hmmm, that seems interesting. Then I saw that there were several novellas in the series collected into one Kindle omnibus edition, for the unbeatable price of $5.99 USD. I thought why not, six bucks is no big outlay for a book by an unknown author.

The rest is history. I raced through each story, anxious to find out what happened next. Since this isn’t a book review, I won’t reveal anything about the plot of Wool. Buy it yourself and find out what the hubbub is all about. 

After reading the first few novellas, I was curious to find out more about this Hugh Howey character, so I found his website: hughhowey.com. He posts there regularly about his most awesome life as a professional writer. Now that sounds a bit adolescent, I realise. What 30-something man has an ‘awesome’ life, especially in these days of recessionary America. Hugh does. If you watch his YouTube videos, you get a real sense of his delight over his current fortunes as a writer. He’s like a kid in a candy store. God bless him for it.

I’ve since become a Facebook friend of his and I follow his Twitter feeds. He genuinely enjoys his fans and responds to them personally. I avoid filling his wall with gushing words of fan-induced praise, knowing that his primary goal is his writing, which brings me back to my own writing and why I’ve begun again. It’s Hugh’s simple advice, encapsulated in one word: finish!

Yes, it’s all so easy. Finish. Get the draft done. Then fix it. It’s advice that writing instructors for centuries have been giving. It all seemed so abstract to me until Hugh said it, but because he said it and in such simple and friendly terms, it has motivated me to do it.

I will finish my book.

Ode to the Greek Spirit

To my readers: the following is a book review I wrote some years ago, but I find it as relevant (and as surprisingly well written) as when I originally published it.


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Who were the ancient Greeks and why do they still move us? Their society is as alien to us as their language. Yet Greece still beckons us more than two millennia since the fall of Athens. The pinnacle of Greek culture lasted a mere century, yet it has left its mark on all of western society. The great intellectual institutions, such as philosophy, science and literature, originated in Greece. Beyond these marvels, however, lies a value so fundamentally important - and enduring - that a basic understanding of the Greeks is as important today as ever.

In The Greek Way, author Edith Hamilton covers the height of Greek culture in the 5th century BC. She begins by contrasting the east and west - an approach that becomes clear as one reads along. The east, according to Hamilton, stood for faith and force, while Greece embodied the opposite values of reason and freedom. Early in the book, Hamilton writes: ‘In a world where the irrational had played the chief role, they (the Greeks) came forward as the protagonists of the mind’. Thus, the Greeks introduced to the world the idea that the universe was orderly, that man's senses were valid and, as a consequence, that man's proper purpose was to live his own life to the fullest. These are discoveries that many westerners take for granted today, but not Edith Hamilton. Throughout the book, she constantly reminds the reader of the awe and beauty of the Greek spirit.

An important corollary of the Greek view that the world is knowable was their belief in the supremacy of independence. Hamilton paints a vivid portrait of the major Greek writers, statesmen and philosophers, all of whom possessed just such an intransigent commitment to independence. She writes: ‘Authoritarianism and submissiveness were not the direction it (the Greeks' spirit) pointed to. A high-spirited people full of physical vigour do not obey easily…’ and further: ‘...each man must himself be a research worker in the truth if he were ever to attain to any share in it…’

5th century Athens was also the birthplace of political freedom. Though Hamilton does not provide a thorough analysis of this great development, she does offer hints throughout. In her chapter on the historian Herodotus, she explains his view of the Greeks during the war against the Persians: ‘A free democracy resisted a slave-supported tyranny’. ‘Mere numbers were powerless against the spirit of free men fighting to defend their freedom’. Why did Herodotus believe that free men were more powerful? Hamilton answers: ‘The basis of Athenian democracy was the conviction...that the average man can be depended upon to do his duty and to use good sense in doing it. Trust the individual was the avowed doctrine in Athens, and expressed or unexpressed it was common to Greece’.

The Greeks, contrary to popular myth, were not a particularly religious people. While it is true that they had their gods, it is important to note that they did not place great importance on mystical beliefs. Indeed, what gods they did revere were the opposite of the Christian doctrine that man was made ‘in God's image’. The Greek gods were made in the image of man. They were neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. Hamilton contrasts the Greek and eastern views of religion: ‘Before Greece, all religion was magical’. She further illustrates that mystical beliefs were based on fear of the unknown, whereas the Greeks ‘changed a world that was full of fear into a world full of beauty’.

A minor flaw in Hamilton's book is her overuse of examples, particularly in the chapters where she discusses the playwrights Aristophanes, Æschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Though she deftly contrasts the Greek way of writing with the eastern and modern approaches, the reader drowns in the minutiae. Hamilton was perhaps attempting to impress the reader with her depth of knowledge, but given the tone of the rest of the book, these examples disrupt her otherwise clear and concise writing.

The Greek Way is a joy to read. In it, Hamilton presents an integrated view of ancient Greece and the important legacy left for modern man. She successfully shows that the Greeks were rational, purposeful and happy people, intent on achieving their values in this world. If one could choose a single expression that characterises the essence of Greek values, it is man worship. The Greeks worshiped man for what he was and what he could be. In Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way, we see that spirit shine brightly down through the ages. 

Goodbye, Irascible Girl

Mollie Martinelli: 1982 - 2012

Today I got some sad news. Really sad news in fact. An old friend from Phoenix died suddenly at barely 30 years old.

I first met Mollie Martinelli at The Wild Card, a little club in Chandler, Arizona. The ‘Card’, as regulars came to know it, was the kind of place where anyone was welcome. Nobody cared about your background, rich or poor, employed or not. Nobody cared whether you were straight, gay or somewhere in between. All who frequented the Card considered it a comfortable home away from home where the drinks were strong, the menu better than most American bars provide and the shows and events always entertaining.

My ex-partner Randy and I became regulars there in 2005, around the time Mollie did. She sported a masculine look, festooned with tattoos and piercings that young people do today. I admit neither are my cup of tea and consequently when I first saw Mollie, I must confess I was put off by her look. But then I got to know her. Underneath the spiky hair, the tattoos and piercings lived a bubbly girl. While her anger sometimes shone through, the mood I remember most was positive and smiling. She was friendly and chatty to just about anyone she encountered at the Card. Over time she began to host karaoke nights and DJ’d for shows.

Over my remaining years in Arizona, I spent many many evenings at the Wild Card and therefore came to know Mollie well. She had loves and losses like the rest of us, but always seemed quick with a kind word. For as long as I knew her, she was studying in college while at the same time working and enjoying herself with friends. Whilst I did not know her intimately, she struck me as ambitious and driven to success. On the occasions I made the trek back to Phoenix from Sydney, Mollie would give me a big bear hug when I saw her again and ask about how my life was going in Australia. She genuinely was interested in what I had to say.

I cannot begin to imagine what her close friends and loved ones are going through now. It would be trite of me to offer the usual platitudes, so instead I am writing this short tribute to her.

Mollie, you were sometimes irascible and sometimes difficult, but what I admired in you was your spirit, your get up and go, your moxie and your devotion to your values. I think you even aspired to greatness and I would have loved to have seen you succeed in life beyond your wildest fantasies. As it stands, I will remember the fond times at the Wild Card, your wonderful wit and everything else that made you an original.

Rest in peace, my irascible one. I will miss you greatly.

The End of...

During a trip to Southern California more than a decade ago to visit some good friends of mine, I had the opportunity to visit the Computational Biology department at CalTech University. My friend Stephen had worked there for many years and his profession intrigued me greatly. Now, I am no scientist by trade or vocation, but I revere good scientists and the results of their exacting work: the application of science to create the incredible products we all enjoy and often take for granted.

On this particular day, Stephen explained to me what computational biology meant in terms I could grasp:

‘Do you see those blips on the screen moving closer together?’ he asked me. ‘Those blips represent genes’.

‘What is the purpose of the computer program?’

‘To track movement of genes, but also, it frees the scientists to engage in higher level thinking’.

‘So it’s like office automation in a way, right? Instead of having to perform tedious office tasks, secretaries can now focus on more interesting things’.

‘That’s exactly right! Scientists can focus their energies on solving even more complex problems because the computers are now performing the menial work of gene mapping’.

This exchange many years ago got me thinking about human progress, and more specifically how technology enables us to think better and to come up with ever more innovative products. What is technology but the rational mind applied to the creation of the tools we need to thrive and advance?

Not everyone loves technology the way I do, but everyone surely benefits from it. Nevertheless, over dinner conversation recently, a friend of my partner’s was discussing how he thought all the iPhones and iPads were great gadgets, but sooner or later they would eliminate work. His theory was that with our lives so completely automated, there would be no jobs left for people to do.

Does this viewpoint sound familiar? It isn’t a new one. For a century or more, one pundit after another has declared the end of work, the end of education, the end of reading, the end of relationships - all due to technological advances. After all, with everything done for us by machines, why bother making any effort to live productively at all?

The problem with this thinking is it limits the person who believes it from considering the infinite possibilities for working and living. Who could have imagined just 15 years ago that many of us would be enjoying our lives with fantastic, always connected computing devices that perform an ever more dizzying array of tasks. Thanks to the iPhone and smart phones in general, the charming expression ‘there’s an app for that’ has crept into our modern vernacular. We may use the phrase with irony, but we also love the ability to get things done quickly and with seemingly little effort. We have scientists and technologists to thank for this happy existence.

So what is the future of work? What kinds of productive endeavours will our children and grandchildren engage in decades from now? Who can say? We are only limited by our ability to think and by political systems that erode our freedoms, with the latter being the greatest threat we face today. The late, great economist, Julian Simon, titled one of his books The Ultimate Resource. He was not referring to the natural resources we convert to make the products we need to survive, but to man himself. Man is in fact the only resource whose protection we ought to cherish, for it is the reasoning mind that makes everything we enjoy possible.

Every day, I raise my glass in silent thanks to those men and women, who, through their active minds, make my very existence possible and my life worth living. The end of work? Not by a long shot.

The Signal That Motivates

‘Six meat pies for 10 dollars’, noted my partner while we were driving in Newcastle, New South Wales recently. He had read it on a sign and I replied that it was a great deal. This seemingly insignificant event got me thinking about why it seemed cheap. Nothing about meat pies as such would provide a clue (and especially not for those of you who live outside Australia), but something does provide the context for knowing how to declare whether something is cheap or expensive. That something is the price system.

Now, if you visit a pie shop in Australia, you will likely pay four or five dollars per pie. Therefore, six for 10 dollars is indeed inexpensive by comparison. None of this is interesting in isolation from the entire network of prices we live with every day. If you pause to consider how prices motivate a great number of your choices in life, it is instructive to think about how you would live if there were no prices.

A story from my year teaching English in Slovakia provides just such a backdrop for what happens when prices are eliminated from daily life. A Slovak friend discussed with me on a number of occasions how he would run a bread kiosk on the main street in Prešov. For starters, he would not charge the same prices as the other kiosks because none of them made any money. My friend had spent a certain amount of time in the US and therefore ‘knew’ how the capitalist system worked. He would charge at least twice what the other bread vendors did.

‘Would you sell the same bread?’ I asked.

‘Of course! Why would I trouble myself with different bread when I know what kind people like to buy’.

‘Then why would you charge so much more?’

‘Because I want to make money!’

‘But how will you persuade people your bread is worth twice the amount they can pay elsewhere?’

‘I don’t need to. They will know that my bread is better because it is more expensive’.

‘But if it is exactly the same bread, why would people buy yours? Wouldn’t people think you’re just ripping them off so you can make a quick buck?’

‘People are not smart enough to know this!’

This exchange brought home to me the idea that it is not an individual business that sets prices in isolation from all other businesses. Indeed, the price one charges for anything must reflect what people are willing to spend based on their values and incomes. Therefore, if a loaf of bread in Slovakia typically cost the equivalent of 50 cents, charging a dollar would not motivate a buyer to change vendors - or not for long.

I did not fault my friend for his faulty reasoning. After all, he had grown up in a socialist country where prices did not exist and thus he had never learnt their function. To him, a price was an arbitrary figure to be chosen at whim. Additionally, the habit of comparison shopping was only beginning to take hold.

I spent months discussing the western system to him, even though I myself was far from an expert on the subject. I based my knowledge not on theoretical study but on decades of living in freer countries. I knew what an average loaf of bread cost in various countries and I also knew that a more expensive loaf cost more because of better or specialised ingredients. And so it went for everything from cars to stereos to bicycles. I realised over time that prices are how people make the simplest decisions about how to conduct their lives. Will I go out for dinner Friday night with my friends to the hot new cafe in Sydney? I’d better check their menu online and decide if it’s worth the cost, versus staying home and cooking. Will I spend the weekend away with my partner or will we stay home and do something locally, instead? A check of hotel and restaurant prices will determine our choice to go away or not.

Now consider the resulting chaos if no price system existed, as I experienced in Slovakia. What if, instead of individual buyers and sellers setting prices constantly, we had elected officials decreeing what things ‘should’ cost, and not just for the things some of us think of as ‘free’, but everything. To those of us brought up in the semi-free nations of the western world, we would quickly find out what life was like under the Soviet bloc dictatorships. I found out myself what that system did to people on a daily basis. Since then, I have made myself the solemn promise that I would never take my freedom for granted again.

Since returning to the west nearly two decades ago, I’ve spent years learning about history and economics. From my studies, I have concluded that I revere prices in the same way I am devoted to my loved ones: they reflect the rational choices we all make to ensure our lives are better and happier.

The Banana Incident

As I trudged up the hill away from my dormitory in Prešov, Slovakia, I noticed something odd on the train tracks below the viaduct. There were unusual bits of some yellow substance strewn at random intervals all over the place. After a minute, I recognised them as banana peels. I thought to myself how bizarre a sight, especially since I hadn't seen bananas for sale once in the city since I’d arrived the previous September. Why now? And why so many banana peels? Had passengers thrown them out the windows of the trains as they passed through the city? I was at a loss to explain it.

Later in the day, after I’d finished teaching at the local high school, I went to the shops in town. I found that bananas had indeed come to Prešov, but how? Yes, the communist era had officially ended nearly four years before, but there were many remnants of the command economy still in place. Notably, the system of distribution of goods had not fully been privatised. Even though I had lived in the country for seven months, I still held to many of the notions about the free movement of goods and services most Americans take for granted. Hence my confusion over the bananas.

Within less than a day, all the bananas in Prešov had disappeared, despite their exorbitant price in every shop I visited. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had already begun to grasp the principle of supply and demand, even in a distorted market like Slovakia. When a scarce item came onto the market and especially one as obviously desirable as bananas, people bought them up regardless of price. And further, I noticed people buying them in quantities I had never seen before then. Instead of a bunch or two, as one would see in western supermarkets, I saw little old ladies with ten or more bunches stuffed into their baskets and satchels. Didn’t they know the bananas would spoil before they had a chance to eat them all?

Then I remembered what I’d seen on the train tracks. The little old ladies - and anyone else who had hoarded the bananas - ate them up with reckless abandon. In a country where ‘capitalist consumption’ was still looked upon with suspicion, there was an awful lot of consumption going on. In a country whose ruling ideology had forced people to live for the sake of their comrades, I witnessed what appeared to be more callous disregard than brotherly love.

I fully admit I knew little about economics or political philosophy at the time. When I left the United States to go teach English in Slovakia, I held the typical views of the majority of liberal arts university graduates, which is to say vaguely leftwing, but not educated. I entered the country with the notion that communism or socialism had been improperly applied. When I left the country the following year, full of observations of daily life in a former dictatorship, my basic politics hadn't changed much yet, but I had primed my mind with the seeds of how my worldview was to change over the coming decades.

Today, nearly 20 years after I left Slovakia, I still think about the ways my experiences have coloured who I’ve become in the intervening years. While most of my high school and university peers have held to the same ideas with which they were brought up, my views changed because I removed myself from my familiar surroundings. I had no choice but to observe in order to try to grasp the strange habits of the people in a country I called home for a time.

In the end, what I learnt was to exercise my ability to think independently, without regard for the popularity of my conclusions. In other words, I grew up.

Homesickness

Sometimes when I’m alone in the serenity of my beloved beach house, I get to thinking about the choices I’ve made in my life. With few exceptions, everything I have undertaken, whether successful or not, has brought me closer to the ideals I’ve sought for myself since childhood. In speaking about the unusual paths I’ve followed since finishing high school in 1984, I say: ‘Had I not gone to Belgium, I wouldn’t be in Sydney today’. Those who know me well understand my shorthand manner of expressing how I got from there to here.

Occasionally, in those solitary moments of reflection, I flick through the pages of my life and pause on those spikes of excitement that make me realise what I chose at that time was right for me. Those are the moments that I feel homesick.

To many, homesickness refers to that state of longing for the place one felt most comfortable and happy. Perhaps it’s one’s hometown one hasn’t visited in many years. Perhaps it’s the seaside village where one met one’s first love during the summer in between school years. Perhaps it’s even a person one loved most who always provided a sense of comfort that one could call home.

Homesickness also implies a sadness in the place one finds oneself now, where the friends aren’t as easy to come by or the city doesn’t provide the options one would like. For me, however, homesickness is not a lament or even a longing. It’s an affirmation that I have lived my life to the fullest so far. It’s also a recognition that the people and places I have left behind have marked me in immeasurable ways.

When I think of Milwaukee, the city of my birth, I feel homesick for the house I grew up in and the many good years I had there as a child. It’s the high school where I came of age and the old friends who still live there. It is also the place I knew I would leave someday, for even as a child, the city proved too provincial for my own ambitions.

As for Québec City, I feel homesick for the adventurous spirit I encountered in the people I knew there. I feel an honour in having mastered their unique brand of French - reviled by some but absolutely cherished by me. When I want a reminder of the young man I was as a university student, I put on a playlist of my favourite Québécois songs and again I am there, trudging through the snowy, sludgy streets of the city.

And then there’s Phoenix, that hot, dry and sprawling place where I found my first real love. He is still there, of course, soldiering on with his life just as I am in my current home. To me Randy is Phoenix, so all I need to do to feel that homesickness for my old desert paradise is to think of the great things we did together. Yes, it can even put a lump in my throat, but a lump of fondness, not regret.

Today, when people ask me if I miss home, I say yes, of course I do. Then I describe the exhilaration of flying back into Sydney and seeing the Opera House from above. All my new memories come rushing back to me and I smile to myself. I am home.

At 15, I Kicked a Dog

It is 2024 and I have all but clinched the nomination to become candidate for President of the United States. Suddenly, an old schoolmate from the 1980s emerges in the media with stories of me cruelly kicking a dog and apparently enjoying the sadistic act. This friend - barely an acquaintance of mine today - can vouch for the accuracy of his tale and assures the rapt-with-attention press that this character flaw makes me a dangerously bad candidate. My poll numbers drop for a time and the blogo- and twittersphere are ablaze with denunciations of my monstrousness. How could anyone trust a fellow with the highest office in the land if he abuses poor, defenceless pets?

Weeks later, a small news item appears, buried in the alternative press, clarifying the report of my cruelty: the schoolmate had dropped the leash on his pit bull, the pit bull charged after me, I kicked the dog in the one place it would stun the creature so I could avoid certain attack and I hightailed it home, reporting the incident to my mother, who then spoke with the schoolmate’s parents.

What does the above fictional story illustrate? Context matters. It also serves to highlight that acts committed by an adolescent do not often have a bearing on adult behaviour decades hence. Even if I had kicked the dog intentionally and revelled in the act, odds are I would have come to regret the act at some later point in the future and made amends with the schoolmate. Haven’t we all known people who as children were insufferable in some way only to become fine or even exemplary men and women as adults?

As we have entered another Presidential election season in America, these are the kinds of stories splashed all over the news as attempts by one side to discredit the other. The problem with this approach is it says nothing about a candidate’s actual views and policy positions. Whenever I hear about such things, my first reaction is: so what? I don’t care what a 60-year-old man did at age 15. I do care what he intends to do about the runaway spending in Washington and the increasing statism in general. I want to know what principles of government he advocates and how he plans to implement them.

Many years ago, I listened to a lecture countering the validity of showing starving children in faraway countries on TV. The essence of the lecture was that a picture is not an argument. The fact that some people are starving in Somalia, for example, says nothing about why that is so. It says nothing about why some countries stagnate for generations in grinding poverty whilst others progress rapidly and their citizens are able to lift themselves out of their miserable states and achieve great things.

And so it goes with contemporary smear campaigns during election season. A smear is not an argument. It is only a grown-up’s temper tantrum writ large. As such, I treat those tantrums for what they are: irrelevant ramblings of the irrational. If I want to know where a candidate stands on a panoply of issues, I go to the source. I don’t wait for the press to spoon feed me horror stories of dog kicking.

One of the great lessons my dad taught me was always to be sceptical of what the press presents as news. The more outlandish the story, the more likely it’s mudslinging. To my readers I suggest: do your due diligence and never let anyone else tell you how to judge a candidate. Oh, and in my fictional universe, I did clinch the nomination.

The Best Years of Our Lives

I only met Lily Ellis a few times. On each occasion that I saw her, she was engaging and warm. Though she barely knew me, she’d give me a kiss on the cheek and chat with me a bit before whatever event we were at got underway. Afterwards, she would give me a proper farewell and another kiss on the cheek. When I heard that she’d passed away, I was crestfallen. Though she was nearly 80 years old, she crackled with vibrancy. I did not know that she was ill, or that she was to undergo surgery this year.

When my partner told me of her death, I thought immediately of her daughter Mally, whom I had come to know through him. Mally had invited her mother to come live with her and her family in Australia just five years ago. Lily had spent most of her life in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa, finally deciding to leave the comforts of her home to venture out into foreign territory. Many people emigrate to other parts of the world in youth or middle age, but I found it particularly adventurous that an elderly lady would make the trek to a faraway country such as Australia.

Lily’s family chose their Rabbi to give her eulogy. He lovingly told the details of her life in Africa and Australia, her triumphs and tribulations, her loves and losses. One thing he said resonated with me in particular: before she passed, Lily described her time in Australia as the best years of her life. Just then I wished I had had the opportunity to know her better. Those of us who choose to become immigrants are a breed apart. Not only do we uproot ourselves, leaving behind everything familiar and comfortable, but we do it with aplomb. We are adventurous souls in search of a better life, fully aware we may not find it, but fearless enough to light out anyway.

In the debates about immigration in Australia and America, the one thing left out of the discussion is actual immigrants and what they bring to their new countries. In both Australia and America, immigrants are viewed as parasites at worst or unimportant at best.  ‘We don’t need more people’, is the common refrain. Due to decades of welfare statism and environmentalist propaganda, immigrants are no longer welcomed as those who will enrich the societies they move to, but rather native born locals view them with suspicion or, dare I say it, derision. It may be true that some immigrants are layabouts only seeking to live off of others, but I believe the vast majority are resourceful and hard working.

Think about it. To make the enormous effort to plan and then move to a new country, often without knowing much about the place he will call home, an immigrant must be more independent than the average person. When he arrives in the new country, he must begin the work of getting to know his way around, finding a place to live, meeting new friends, and the list goes on. The last thing on the mind of a new immigrant is how he can ‘game the system’ so he can sponge off of others. Even the dreaded ‘boat people’ (a term I find profoundly insulting to those who endure extreme hardship to find a better place to live) are far more virtuous than given credit.

I have a request for my readers. Next time you think about immigration, instead of lumping all these people into an amorphous collective, pause to consider the Lilys, the Jasons, the Mallys and all the actual people who risk life and livelihood to find a better place. A place they can call home, just as you do.

Words and Deeds: A Tribute to My Dad

‘If you don’t stop jumping on that bed, young man, I’m going to come over and swat you!’ exclaimed the young father, tired from a long day’s drive in middle America.

‘You do, you die!’ replied the three-year-old boy, as he continued to jump happily up and down on the rollaway bed in the hot motel room. A stunned silence descended over the room, followed by peals of laughter from the boy’s older siblings. Soon his harried parents joined the kids in their mirth, the long day’s drive and the temperature of the seedy motel room forgotten as unimportant details.

As it turns out, I, Jason Lockwood, was the young boy and the tired father was none other than George J. Lockwood, now 80 years young. This minor event in an anonymous motel room more than four decades ago highlights an immutable fact about Dad: he raised his children to be independent adults. Never mind that sometimes that independence manifested itself at inopportune moments, like bedtime after a gruelling drive across the fruited plains of my country of birth.

When I was seven years old, my little friend Christopher from two doors down and I decided it would be fun to set fire to a broom on a neighbours’ back porch. We thought we could contain the fire, but when the entire thing broke into a raging blaze, Christopher’s father took notice from next door and leapt the fence that separated the two properties. He dragged me home to report to Dad what I had done and you can bet there was hell to pay that muggy summer’s night. Dad gave me a spanking the likes of which I’d never experienced and grounded me for a full two weeks!

This second memory from my childhood serves to remind me that Dad was serious about raising his kids properly. He wanted us to understand the consequences of our actions. Therefore, if we misbehaved, the resulting punishment fit the deed. I roundly deserved the spanking and grounding, in other words.

Despite these lessons learnt the hard way, Dad was a fair man. Both he and my mother always ensured we sat down to a proper family dinner every night of the week. We ate what my mother cooked and we discussed the ideas of the day around the dinner table. Sometimes the ideas were serious and other times more light hearted, but Dad, sitting at the head of the table, served as unofficial moderator for the evening’s discussion, while Mom ensured that we spoke in turn. As a child of the 1970s and early 1980s, our discussions often ran to political events of the day. Civility was key, and we were all required to remain respectful of our parents’ and siblings’ viewpoints.

Dad enjoyed a lifelong career in journalism, working at the Milwaukee Journal from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. He was a conservative at a notoriously liberal news organisation, but despite his divergence with the editorial views of the newspaper, he thrived in his many roles over the years. He would frequently give me tours of the newsroom and the print floor with the big, noisy contraptions that spat out newspapers at lightning speed. He would always introduce me to a new employee, bring me to have a chat with the editor of the Journal, Dick Leonard, or show off the latest technology that would make producing the newspaper quicker and more efficient. To this day, I attribute my love for language and technology to those visits to Dad’s office.

Throughout my childhood, Dad repeated his “roots and wings” speech to us time and again. It consisted of explaining to us that he and Mom gave us a foundation of ideas and love and from which we would take flight as independent, well adjusted adults. The most important lesson from the speech, however, was that I must always think for myself. Only I was the master of my own mind and I should never surrender it to anyone for any reason. With Dad, facts mattered. Facts were king. Without facts, no argument could or should hold sway. In his career, he was a ruthless editor, excising any words from a news article containing inflammatory or biased language.

Soon after entering high school, I declared to both my parents that I wanted to study abroad on the AFS program. Dad, always the realist, insisted that I carefully consider what a big step this entailed. I would be required to live far away from home, attend a strange school and learn another language. It was not enough, in Dad’s eyes, to want something. I had to earn my way in the world, which left no room for passive star gazing. Rather, any goal, however immediate or long term, must be followed up with a plan of execution. Only then, according to Dad, would I meet success in any endeavour I undertook in life.

I did finally realise my dream of living overseas on a high school exchange program, but found that Dad was right: the goal required careful planning. It also meant that however laudable the desire, sometimes one’s plans did not always play out as expected. Another of Dad’s lessons to me was always to have a plan B - or even plan C, D, E or F!

As I entered adulthood, Dad’s lessons and advice became less frequent, but no less strident. After my first experience living overseas in Belgium at 18, I went on to study and later teach overseas, too. Dad always supported me in my decisions, with the ongoing proviso that I think carefully through each choice I made and only undertake a new adventure with the full knowledge that it was right for me. I cannot stress this last point enough. Dad never demanded that my siblings and I follow in his footsteps. We were to make our own choices, bearing in mind the enormous responsibility independence of thought and action required of us.

Upon my return from teaching English in Slovakia in 1993, I was at a loss for what I would do next with my life. Still in my 20s, I had not yet decided upon a career. I thought it made sense to return to university to study for a master’s degree. I considered history or economics as possible areas of study. I was certain Dad would approve. After all, education was held in the highest regard in my family. Also, Dad held a master’s in journalism himself.

I recall vividly the telephone conversation with Dad:

‘I have decided to study for a master’s degree’.

‘In what?’ Dad asked.

‘I was thinking history or maybe economics,’ I replied, somewhat surprised by his curt retort.

‘Where are you going to get the money to pay for this?’ Dad questioned, taking me utterly by surprise.

I stammered a reply I no longer recall, but Dad’s message was clear: don’t go back to study unless it was going to advance my actual career opportunities and only if the cost was within my reach.

I never got the master’s degree. Instead, I studied both subjects on my own, spending money on the books, but not the exorbitant university fees. Once again, Dad had provided his unique brand of parenting, even to his grown up son. His message was not that further education was wrong, but that it should be the right decision to make in the context of the rest of my life’s goals. I eventually took a beginning computer programming course for a few hundred dollars at a local college in Milwaukee. That one course moved me to pursue a career in software. 16 years later I am still in the field, happy for the dressing down Dad gave me in the summer of 1993. Without it, I might have made a costly error and gone into debt to boot.

At the age of 41, I announced to my family that I had accepted a permanent position with my company in Sydney. This time, instead of admonishing me, Dad asked: ‘When can your mother and I come visit?’ You could have knocked me over with a feather! Upon reflection, however, his reaction made complete sense. After many years of instilling in me firm roots, I had finally graduated to taking flight with my own wings. Dad could safely assume that my decision was rational, that my choice of uprooting myself once again would enhance my life and career. It has, in spades.

I realise as I write this paean to Dad that it is not so much about him as it as about my relationship to him. As I pause to consider Dad’s quiet heroism - as journalist, husband, father and friend to many over his eight glorious decades - I am almost moved to a silent prayer of reverence. I say almost because I am not literally religious, but prayer is the right word in this context because it conveys the kind of high regard the religious hold for the concept of a God.

Dad has certainly suffered setbacks and disappointments in his long life. Over the past decade, cancer, diabetes and heart attacks have nearly bested him. Dad is a slugger, though. He possesses an indomitable spirit that cuts through all disease and discomfort. To this day, I watch in awe as he and Mom continue on with their lives as if nothing can stop them. I know that no-one lives forever and Dad is no exception to that immutable law of the universe. But, and this is a big but, the spirit that is George Lockwood will live on. As he is still before us - still passionate and still feisty - I will continue to revel in his deep commitment to his values here on earth.

I salute you and I love you, Dad.

The Eyeglass in Reverse

Imagine for a moment a distant future where one's primary focus, when dealing with other people, is to see their virtues first and ignore whatever vices they may possess. In daily life, people spend their lives improving their minds, not as part of formal schooling, but as an on-going process of perfecting their skills. As a result, the majority of adults perform to the best of their abilities, be it in their chosen professions, their romantic lives or even the hobbies they pursue in their free time. Gone is the neurotic clinging to flaws or the sneering sarcasm prevalent in the olden days of the 20th and early 21st century cultures.

In this shining new Grecian age of the perfectibility of man, people curiously look upon the past as a barbarous relic. In those days of yesteryear, mediocrity and incompetence became a fine art. Clay feet were the norm, and the wider culture reflected this norm in its art: movies about drug addicts, musicals about squatters in Greenwich Village, paintings that depicted nothing save a jumble of spatters of paint on canvas. The men and women of today scratch their heads in confusion over the people who inhabited this previous world. What on earth motivated them to wallow in their simpering, empty, listless lives?

The people also recall that their recent ancestors lived on the brink of destruction, electing ever more dictatorial leaders who boastfully prided themselves on their ignorance of history and economics. Then, at a critical juncture, a new age of rationality began to take hold as people rejected the nostrums they heard everyday in the mass media. A once silent minority of men who valued their lives so much that they refused to give into the irrationality they saw around them set about forging for themselves a new future. The culture at large saw them as kooks and radicals, but they failed to see the one thing that set these men apart: they possessed an indomitable sprit. They refused to give up.

The above is a fable, of course. My goal in presenting it was not to wish for a utopia that doesn't exist, but to highlight how one's focus can determine the outcome of one's life. Over dinner some weeks ago, one of my housemate's friends dominated the conversation by insisting that she could discern other people's character flaws. She thus possessed the ability to figure out how messed up the people around her were, or so she claimed. I said little in reply, other than to point out that my method was to look first for virtues in others and only reject them if they proved unworthy of my attention.

I rarely have found reasons to reject people I deal with. Most everyone I have known over the course of my life has had some good traits and I have found their company valuable to me to one degree or another. I choose my associations carefully and if I sense that someone is lacking in virtue, I minimise my contact with them. Put simply, I don't have to become best friends with a barista. I only care that he makes an excellent coffee. And so it goes for all the people I choose to deal with, from co-workers, to friends, to romantic partners.

It is extraordinarily difficult to maintain my position, but as I have grown older, it has become easier. Habits begun as a young man are now second nature to me, but the world today can constantly challenge a positive outlook. I rarely find others willing to challenge cultural norms to the degree that I do, but they do exist. Those others who do exist prove to be the ray of sunlight I need to soldier on.

Over that dinner conversation, I struggled to come up with an expression to describe the disagreement with my flaw-obsessed interlocutor, but then it hit me: this person looks through the eyeglass in reverse. I find it describes the viewpoint perfectly: in looking through the wrong end of a telescope, objects appear smaller and distorted - flawed even. If, on the other hand, one looks through the right end, one's field of vision expands, enabling one to see with greater depth and clarity those objects ordinarily invisible to the naked eye. It's what I do every day.

Perhaps, instead of blindly accepting the popular wisdom of the day by looking through the wrong end of a telescope, you too can widen your field of vision by flipping it around for a change. Try it sometime. The results might surprise you.

Zombie Epistemology

I have been watching the TV show The Walking Dead since its first season last year and have been fascinated. I must admit to liking the horror genre. Even though I used to enjoy the gross-out factor when I was younger, these days what I enjoy in a good horror tale is not the gore, but its cautionary nature about what might be if we are not careful. Like the best Twilight Zone episodes, a good horror story is essentially a morality tale.

So what is the morality tale in The Walking Dead? It is fairly simple: use your mind or suffer the gruesome fate of becoming a literal zombie walking the earth for eternity -- or until a human picks you off. The story follows a ragtag group of survivors of the zombie apocalypse, each struggling to survive and find purpose in a dead world. Since no fictional story exists in isolation from the culture that makes it possible, I have pondered, while watching the show, if there are parallels in the real world that also serve as cautionary tales.

Over the past month or so, I have found my parallel: the Occupy Wall Street movement. How are protestors in New York and other cities like the undead zombies shuffling through the landscape on a fictional show? Observe, if you have watched the show, that one or two zombies are easily dealt with by the human characters, but a hoard of zombies becomes an immediate threat. In the Occupy protests, a few misguided youth seem benign enough, but a mob of them has quickly become violent -- to the point that they have closed down the entire port of Oakland, California and caused millions of dollars of damage to private property. In New York City, a 'safe tent' has been erected for women so they can avoid the sexual assaults that have become increasingly common as the protests have turned uglier.

The most telling aspect of the Occupy protests, however, is not the actions they take, but the ideas they put forth. What do the protestors stand for, if anything, and what do they propose as solutions to the things they're protesting? From my observation, the most common idea is anti-capitalism, but there are a laundry list of other demands, some more outlandish than others, such as the forgiveness of all debts. Presumably, an individual incurs debt because he has borrowed a sum for a specific purpose, such as buying a car or a house or to pay for university tuition. The demand for the forgiveness of all debts therefore has to mean that someone must pay for them, usually in the form of more taxes on those who haven't gone into debt. But what if those who are prudent with their money and work hard to achieve their goals object to yet another violation of their rights? None of the protestors seem to have thought out the consequences of their demands. How could they if their method of thinking is disconnected and inconsistent?

What the protestors possess, therefore, is a thinking method I have come to call zombie epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and how man acquires it. Because zombies no longer possess a rational faculty, the only thing they're capable of doing is mindlessly attacking humans and literally feeding off of them. What better way to describe roving gangs of dispossessed youth (though often from affluent families) making demands without thinking about the logical conclusion of those demands? Observe also that they are more than willing to use the products of capitalism whilst opposing the very system that makes their lives possible. They hate 'big oil' but wear Nikes, carry rucksacks made of synthetic materials, post Facebook and Twitter messages on their iPhones made of silicon, plastic and other materials. They hate Wall Street and financiers in general, but benefit from the investment capital that flows to companies like Apple and Nike.

There is one Occupy idea I have agreed with: the opposition of the bailouts that Washington doled out starting from the Bush administration and then increasing at an alarming rate at the helm of the Obama presidency. What I find curious is if the Occupy protestors oppose financial bailouts, why weren't they setting up camp in Washington? That is the real epicentre of the financial woes that Americans are suffering these days. The problem with protesting in Washington is it would clash with the central goal of the Occupy protests, which is not to reduce the size of the state, but to increase it. After all, demands for free stuff -- from health care to education to housing -- have to be paid for somehow and the only way to do it is to advocate an ever larger state.

As a general principle, I am suspicious of street protests for the simple reason that they rapidly devolve into chanting slogans with little intellectual content. As a longtime advocate of limited government and free markets, my form of activism is one that requires thinking, reading and writing. It is also one that requires setting long term goals, such as constructing a strategy for ending state involvement in medicine, education and other areas. In other words, it does people like me little good to bellow 'Hey hey, ho ho, government intervention has got to go!'

My antidote to the mindless shuffling of zombie protestors consists of rational thinking. It entails the advocacy of ideas that lead to the freeing of our minds and wallets from the clutches of bureaucrats in Washington, Ottawa and Canberra, among the few countries I have called home. Are the stakes high? Most assuredly. Is success possible? Absolutely! But first one must do the thing lacking in so many adults these days: think.

I Love Life. You Should, Too.

In both my professional and personal lives, I meet all kinds of people. Most of the time, I find those I meet honest, rational and good natured. Just as often, however, I meet people who are philosophically confused or, in some cases, downright negative about their lives. They conclude, upon paying attention to the news, that human nature is base, that man is prone to stupidity and self destruction. When I politely disagree with this position, as I often do, the response is predicable: I must be one of those blind optimists ignorant of the horrors of mankind. I disagree with this, too, but at that point in a conversation, there is little value in expounding on the glory that is man.

You see, for as long as I can remember, I have been a lover of life. Not just any life. My own life. My parents taught me always to question and always to seek out the best for myself. I have done that. I have criss-crossed the planet numerous times, learnt a second language fluently, worked in private enterprise for more than 20 years and uprooted myself more times than most people move house. Whenever I have reached a lull or felt a burn out coming on, I have set forth goals to change my life so I can continue moving forward. In my mind, there is no sitting still.

One would think with all my worldly ways that I would adopt a cynical attitude. After all, there are some real scoundrels walking the face of the planet, many of them elected to political offices in my country of birth as well as in Australia. There are rapists, murderers, genocidal dictators, and insane theocrats bent on human destruction.

And then there is man. Man the explorer. Man the inventor. Man the thinker. There are the glorious products of man all around us: lightning fast computers, cars that zip through the teeming streets of my favourite cities of the world, skyscrapers that still make me gasp in awe of the greatness man possesses and the list goes on and on and on. I walk down the streets of Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane or Wellington and smell the delightful coffees being prepared for eager patrons. Nowhere else on earth is coffee quite as revered as it is in Australia and New Zealand. It is my daily evidence that despite all the bad news, the most common occurrence today is life being lived -- and at a level our ancestors would envy.

Now, some of you might admonish me for insisting that you love life, too. Aren’t I imposing my views on you? Aren’t I committing the same sin I so frequently castigate others for, which is: telling people how to live?

Well, no. In fact, I don’t care if other people love life. It won’t stop me from loving mine any less. I will continue to ignore those lamenters and sad sacks. What I mean that you should love life is that I am inviting you to do it. I implore you to find values for which you are passionate and go after them. Quit worrying about global warming or other fashionable bugbears and find a job that excites you, a romantic partner who reveres you, a hobby that energises you. Be your own self improvement project and never let up.

I have a confession to make. I want you to love life for purely selfish reasons. The more you go after and the more you achieve, the more I want to know you and the more I want to be your friend. I have no use for cynics and crybabies. Passionate valuers will always be on my A list, so if you want to get in good with Jason, be the kind of man or woman who says yes to life and means it.

Now stop reading this article and get busy living.

Self Made

Many years ago I was having lunch with a friend at a casino in Las Vegas. Midway through the meal, I excused myself to go to the bathroom, first asking my friend where it was. He replied with a chuckle that I would have to go through the casino first. This struck me as odd and inconvenient. My friend explained to me that casinos are deliberately configured to entice people to gamble, and therefore the placement of the bathrooms was another way to get visitors to toss a coin or two into a slot machine on the way to the bathroom. The notion here was that people are subconsciously ‘conditioned’ to throw their money away, just as capitalists of all stripes use advertising to ‘programme’ people to buy their wares, whether or not the person needs them.

Something about this explanation didn’t sit well with me. Yes, I had heard my entire life that the vast majority of people were easily programmed automatons, pulled in one direction or another by forces beyond their control. In anthropology, the popular expression for this phenomenon is ‘nature vs nurture’, which refers to conflicting notions concerning the development of personality in man.

I stubbornly replied to my friend: ‘If this is so, then why don’t you or I so mindlessly toss coins into slot machines, like the rest of the rabble?’

Without blinking, he answered, ‘Because we’re thinkers and aren’t so easily swayed the way most people are’.

I didn’t pursue the conversation, opting to relieve myself instead. Still, it is a question that bothers me even today. Examples of this viewpoint are everywhere in Australian and American culture: people are fat because they’re conditioned to over-indulge in vast quantities of sugar and fat laden foods; or they mindlessly spend their money on the latest gadgets because Apple makes pretty looking boxes and advertises them like no-one else.

The nagging question, which I have since answered for myself, has been: how do we know people engage in this behaviour? If they’re conditioned, then it stands to reason that everything they do is either automatic or mindless. Free will is thus a myth.

Is it? Does it not also stand to reason that if all we are is unconscious impulses, then how is it some people are capable of independent thought? Does this not have implications about how our personalities are formed, too?

I argue that man is capable of rational and independent thinking and that some choose to exercise their minds, whilst others allow themselves to drift. They accept pre-formed ideas and conclusions without questioning because they have never learnt a proper thinking method.

In previous articles, I have addressed a host of issues and ideas that I have questioned for many years, without getting at the crux of why so many people today default on that responsibility. There is nothing particularly special about me as against most other educated adults, save one thing: I have always considered it my solemn responsibility to think - about everything. For example, I reject the notion of state run education, not because I’m some right wing Christian lunatic, but because the transmission of ideas and knowledge to young people is far too important to entrust to government. I did not arrive at this conclusion as some do. I spent years observing various school systems in North America and Europe, both as a student and a teacher, and read vociferously on the history of education. In short, I reached my conclusion on the value of a free market in schooling through a scrupulous process of thinking.

Another factor preventing independent thought is fear. Many people fear their own minds and the result is they don’t trust themselves. So they default on their responsibility to exercise their rational faculty and go along with the latest fad or fashion, or worse, they actively follow charismatic rulers who promise to shower them with free gifts. The grave error they commit in abdicating their minds is they eventually abdicate everything else, too.

From the youngest age, whether I was admiring my father in the newsroom as the managing editor of my hometown newspaper, looking up to a skyscraper in New York City and marvelling at man’s ability to build such a structure or even relishing the skill of a favourite novelist in devising a cracking good plot, I held to one constant viewpoint: the self made man is the ideal to emulate.

To be self made does not imply that one ignores or attempts to diminish others. On the contrary, a self made man seeks out others like him and says, in effect: ‘Let’s trade!’ In my life on three continents over the past 25 years, I have succeeded in finding other such men and women. Some were further along in their thinking, while others were beginning their quest for greatness. In every case, the joy in encountering a kindred spirit continues to give me objective proof that the future is a bright one.

Jason Lockwood: 24 August 1966 - 22 June 2008, 24 June 2008 - ??

This is my eulogy. This is the story of how I died but was reborn a different man - a man capable of greatness and hell bent on resuming its quest. No, I did not die in fact, but the day I stepped onto Australian soil on June 24, 2008, I bid goodbye to the man I was. It was a necessary step, and now I can write about how I thought I had died inside, only to discover that my life was greater - no, grander - and whatever setbacks I experienced were just that.

My death occurred on a scorching hot day in July of 2007. My partner of several years broke the news that though he loved me, he was no longer in love with me. I took the news stoically, calmly. It shocked but didn’t surprise me. I knew that we had drifted apart somewhat, but I misjudged how far. Some time before, he had suggested to me that we seek some counselling, and I didn’t disagree. I simply took it in and then continued on as I had before. I didn’t listen, and then on that summer day six or eight weeks later, it was over.

Simultaneously, I was assigned to an impossible project at work which frustrated and annoyed me. Days after my break-up, I lost control. I rang my boss and told her I needed to be put in a supporting role on the project. I could no longer deal with the developers on the customer side and I risked saying something inappropriate to them. My voice cracked as I explained this to my boss, and she quickly picked up on my state.

“Are you OK, Jason?” she asked.

“No, I’m not. I’m sorry, but I am going through some personal difficulties, and I just need to take a background role on this project. Can I do that?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m sorry. I am trying my best not to compromise this project. I know how important it is.”

“Don’t worry, Jason, just take the day off and take care of yourself. We’ll get it sorted out.”

I hung up the phone and stood in silent misery in my home office. Randy had heard the exchange from the other room and came into my office and hugged me close. He didn’t utter platitudes or phoney words of consolation. He just held me while I cried until I pulled myself together. I told him to go to work and that I would be OK. I just needed time to think.

At the time we were living in a two-bedroom unit in Scottsdale, Arizona that we’d bought together. We were both unhappy in the place and decided to move back to his place on the other side of town until we could sort things out financially. We’d put the unit up for sale or rent and proceed from there.

***

In the months after we moved back to Chandler, similar episodes would recur. I’d begun to retreat from my friends somewhat and welcomed the increasing business travel that my boss doled out to me. On any given Friday or Saturday night, Randy would return home from working at a local bar to find me in a terrible state once again. He’d begun to worry about me. I’d constructed a cocoon of a bedroom, living room and home office all in one small bedroom. I spent a lot of time there. I still went out, but I avoided talking to anyone about anything of substance. Being a rational adult, I did not descend into heavy drinking or other self destructive behaviour. I was simply sad, deeply sad. I was confused and spent hours, days and weeks trying to understand what I’d done wrong. I beat myself up. I thought myself unlovable. I thought the curse of independence had rendered me incapable of connecting.

Then, light. During a training engagement at my company’s home office in Carlsbad, California, an older gentleman from New Zealand attending the course approached me about working in Australia. He had been a long-time consultant for a business partner of ours. After observing my depth of knowledge he thought I would be perfect for a role down under. He took me to lunch and laid out the possibilities. I felt energised for the first time since summer of 2007.

I returned home and told Randy I might have an opportunity in Australia. He was overjoyed. We had spent a month long holiday in the country and had fallen in love with it. We had even discussed moving there together at one point, but after the break-up, that plan dissolved.

I then began to investigate the possibilities. I contacted a work colleague in Sydney and asked him if they needed anyone to assist their small team. They did, as it turned out. As account manager, he was desperately in need of a pre-sales engineer - or demo boy, as I sometimes call it. They could only get a US-based person down to Australia on rare occasions and then it was a struggle to bring that person up to speed on the deal. They really needed a full-time local pre-sales guy. I told him I was interested, and even though I had no real sales experience, I’d been a trainer and a consultant, so I had vast knowledge working with customers. He said he’d talk it over with his guys and get back to me.

Some time later, I had a phone interview with the guys in Sydney. It went well. They hired me. Steve, my soon-to-be boss, explained the challenges of being isolated from the rest of the company, but I didn’t mind that. I was moving to Australia and nothing was going to stop me!

For the months to follow, I played the visa preparation game with our HR department in Sydney. I had to get medical exams, fill out reams of paperwork, supply proof of education and birth. I was a man with purpose again.

***

In March of 2008, Randy announced to me that he was seeing someone new who lived in Los Angeles. I asked how they’d met and he replied with: “Do you remember that night with your sister and her friend Ron at that bar in LA last Thanksgiving?” I did remember and that’s where he’d met the new guy. I was thunderstruck. I hadn't attempted dating yet and couldn’t conceive that Randy might have already moved on. Once again, my immediate reaction was stoic and calm. And once again, my delayed reaction was devastation. I had only a few months left before leaving the United States and here I was a blubbering a mess. Why couldn’t I just get on with it?

***

Finally, my visa paperwork was submitted to Australian immigration. The HR department in Sydney informed me the approval was certain to occur, but could take up to eight weeks for it to go through. I sighed in relief. It was really happening. I was moving to Australia.

Three days later I received the e-mail from HR that my visa had been approved. Good God! I had four weeks to pack my life up, sell my car and leave my American life behind me permanently. My intention was not to move temporarily. Australia was to become my new home country.

***

Late June arrived quickly. I had decided to rent a car in Phoenix and drive to LA with all my belongings I hadn’t already shipped to Sydney. I needed the thinking time and I needed a last weekend of fun in southern California. I booked a room at an inexpensive motel on Santa Monica Boulevard and invited my friend David in San Diego to come up and my oldest and best friend Daniel from Montréal to fly down. Randy would come out Sunday morning - my departure date - and have one last day with me, my friends and my sister.

At dinner on Friday at a nice French bistro in West Hollywood, I felt a sudden sadness hit me again. I felt alone again. I excused myself from the dinner table and found my way to the men’s room in the back of the restaurant. I braced myself against the wall and collapsed onto the toilet seat, trembling with grief, but anger too. Almost a year had passed. I was about to embark on the grandest adventure of my life and here I was back in my home office in Scottsdale wracked with helplessness. I felt like a pathetic mess.

Minutes later I returned to the table. My friends were concerned. They could tell from my complexion I’d been crying, but I told them not to worry. I would be OK. I didn’t know if I would, but I didn’t want them spending the night consoling me instead of enjoying the occasion.

Sunday came. Randy arrived and met us all at a cafe in Pasadena. It felt odd seeing him, knowing I was leaving, but he would carry on with his life undisturbed. I didn’t resent him. Even though he had initiated the break-up, he had been there for me ever since. He never spoke ill of me to anyone. Who could be angry with someone of such kindness of character? I was more angry with myself for failing to live up to the relationship.

Mid-afternoon came and I had to go. My flight to Sydney wasn’t until after 10 pm, but I needed to return the rental car, check through my oversized luggage and get through customs. I didn’t want to be rushed. My friends left Randy and me alone to say goodbye to each other in the car park of a museum. He hugged me close, told me how much he loved me and that I would do great things in Australia. I turned around and walked toward the car without looking back.

***

It is now 2011 and Randy was right. In the three years since my death and rebirth, I have reinvented myself. I still work for the same firm and I have established a network of friends and business associates. Within a few years’ time I’ll be an Australian citizen. I have fulfilled the promise I made to myself years ago. I pushed through my grief slowly. I have moved on. I have even met someone whom I think is an even better match for me than Randy was.

In the end, I realise that I did nothing wrong. My relationship with Randy ran its course and that’s that. We’re as close as friends today as we were as partners in the past. Whilst the nature of the relationship changed, we still possess the comfortable ease with each other that we had almost from the time we met eight years ago. I’ve heard over the years that a first love stays with you forever and I think that’s true for me. I will never forget the wondrous four years together and I now cherish the memories we’ve had since then as friends.

My life in Australia is completely different from my life back in the US, and in some ways I am a different man. My passion for living is intact, however. So is my fierce independence and my single minded drive to achieve excellence. Those who care about me proudly boast of my exciting life in Sydney and all the exotic locales I get to visit as a matter of course. When I think back on the choices I’ve made since childhood, the Greek concept of eudaimonia returns to me. It is a concept that the word happiness cannot convey properly, for it means the deep, fulfilling life of achievement and the serenity that comes with it. This is the meaning of my life and, despite a crucial setback, it continues to be what drives me every day. As it turns out, my death was an exaggeration. It is my life that is most important.