Rediscovered piece (from 2006): I didn’t win the Vanity Fair essay contest, but here’s what I sent in

When I was 17, my head was in the right place: in the clouds.

In between classes, homework, chores and hanging out with friends, I would take every chance I could to let my mind wander. That downtime was frustratingly brief and invariably rare, but I seized it. I daydreamed furiously until the grating alarm clock of real life pulled me from the floating world.

I still visit that place quite often, but not as much as I’d like to, not as much as I once did. When I do, though, the place feels abandoned, neglected.

You don’t find very many young people with their heads in the clouds these days. Instead, their ears are glued to cell phones, their thumbs to video game controllers and their eyes to computer displays.

What’s on the minds of America’s youth? I’d say too much, yet too little.

In the universe of the mind where daydreams are vast, unexplored space, electronic media is anti-matter. It crackles along as vacuous white noise, consuming stars of possibility. It is ubiquitous, painless and instant.

It’s eating away at the daydream time – and fertile minds – of today’s youth. They have too much empty information and entertainment at their fingertips and spend too little time thinking beyond a barrage of text messages and rapid-fire images.

Virtuosity used to refer to rare mastery of artistic pursuits such as music. Today, it’s just as likely to reference the electronic ether of the Internet and all things “virtual.” Millions of people – youth and older folks alike – are leading half-lives trapped in the aptly named Web. They come here for convenience or entertainment, and end up staying too long, sometimes confusing, changing or sacrificing their identities during their sojourn.

Adolescence is perplexing enough without the ability to change at a whim behind the shield that the Internet offers.

Then there are the video game virtuosi that step off the school bus, walk through their doors and are transported smack-dab into the middle of a virtual city’s mean streets – fast cars, easy drugs, big guns and all. Their great struggle is against digitized gangsters. Their master symphony is “A-B-A-B-Fire” on a game controller.

Today’s youth form the first wholly instant-gratification generation – and it shows. There’s so much to do, but so little to show for it at the end of each day.

Two words define nearly every day of my summers as a child: “go outside.” My parents insisted on getting me out of the house to wander and explore both my surroundings and my fertile mind. There weren’t always other kids to play with, but I always found something to do. Hollowed-out stumps became spaceships. Streams gurgling down drainage ditches were rivers coursing off to lands far away. Rocks and other found objects became treasures of unimaginable worth.

Sometimes I’d just lay on my back in the grass and daydream.

While I was growing up, I did have video games and television to pass some time. I wasted hours watching the same Godzilla movies over and over. My friends joined me for three-minute matches of plinkety-plink battle tanks on my Atari. By and large, though, these things weren’t all consuming. Rectangles shooting tiny squares at other rectangles held only so much appeal. Our cable television had about seventeen channels, five of which were airing Bonanza re-runs at any given time.

If I sat in front of the television for too long and started looking glazy, I’d inevitably hear two words from my mom: “go outside.”

Youth in other parts of the world are heeding this advice – taking time to wander, explore and daydream – and it shows.

In my job as a writer for an international humanitarian organization, I have the opportunity to travel to some of the world’s most under-developed places and speak to children and young adults. They’re fascinated to hear about the world I come from and what I’ve seen, and are equally eager too share their own experiences and thoughts with me. They’re never shy about asking questions, however simple.

After coming back from some of these trips, I’ve sometimes spoken at schools or in front of youth groups. Invariably, there’s silence. It’s very rare that anyone asks a question. They usually sit, staring, an unsettling glazy look on their faces.

What’s the difference between American youth and young people in other countries? I’d say it comes down to what’s on their minds. In the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, a village might have one television set powered by a fussy car battery. Children have to find other things to do.

They have time to think, to daydream. They have the magical opportunity to visit the floating world and spend some time there. They come back with ideas – and are eager to return there whenever possible.

I believe that a quiet mind, given time to daydream, will dawdle in wonderful places and discover amazing things. They’ll roam the same hallowed grounds where poets and scientists and musicians and other great men and women drew inspiration.

There’s too much on the mind of America’s youth today. There are too many distractions. They must learn to unplug, quiet their minds and daydream. When they do, they’ll carry fantastic things back for all of us.

As I type this, my 11-month-old son, Asa, is sitting on the floor and holding a plastic toy cell phone to his ear. “Ba-ba,” he tells no one in particular. “BA-BA!” It sounds serious, like a stock deal or a Mafia hit.

In 17 years or so, if I catch him doing this same thing, this is what I’ll say to him:

“Son, is your head in the clouds? No? Well, put down that phone and get up there!”

All that in four blocks

I believe we’re wired for curiosity and built for discovery. And I also believe that it doesn’t take very long to connect and get to know at least a bit about somebody.

I was walking through downtown Atlanta, on my way to work, when a man stopped me to ask directions. He was standing in front of campus map for Georgia State University, leaning very close to the sign and studying the details with precision. As I passed by, we made eye contact, and he shuffled into my path.

“Excuse me, sir,” he started, “I’m trying to find 75 Piedmont Avenue. Do you know it?”

It sounded familiar. After all, we were standing on Piedmont, and I went this way every weekday. But 75? I couldn’t immediately place it, so I had to file through my mental images. It took a few seconds to figure it out.

“Yes, definitely, it’s just about four blocks away,” I said. “That’s where I get a breakfast sandwich some mornings.”

(As soon as I pulled up the mental image of 75 Piedmont Avenue, it evoked a ham, egg and cheese croissant. When that happened, I had to say it out loud.)

“Very good, sir, thank you,” he responded.

“I’m going that direction, so I’ll take you there right now if you’d like,” I said.

“Yes sir,” he replied, and off we went.

Within a few steps, I found out that he was a computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin. I told him that I was a writer for CARE. He revealed that he’d studied at Georgia State, and was coming back to visit some former colleagues. I asked him how long he’d lived here before moving up north: six years. He told me a story about how, his first day teaching classes at Wisconsin, he mistakenly wore a Nebraska Cornhuskers shirt instead of Wisconsin Badgers apparel.

“My students badgered me for some time after that,” he laughed.

He asked me where I went to school. Kansas, I told him.

“I’ve been to Kansas City,” he said. “Pretty town.”

“I grew up there,” I replied. “Where are you from, originally?”

“London,” he said. “But my parents are from Bangalore, in India.”

“I’ve been to India a couple of times,” I told him. “The first time, I flew into Chennai.”

“Big, crazy city,” he responded.

“Chaotic,” I said. “So many people. I was there for work, but got to see some temples in Tamil Nadu.”

“Did you go to Mahabalipuram?” he asked.

“Yes, unforgettable” I said. That’s the Shore Temple I’ve written about here.

“And the Brihadeeswarar Temple in Thanjavur?” he inquired.

“Yes, amazing – and big” I answered. That was the place where I took one long, excruciating step. “Have you ever been to Darjeeling?”

“No,” he replied. “But I have wanted to.”

“It’s one of my favorite places in the world,” I confessed. “Very peaceful.”

“Then I must go there,” he said.

“For now, here is your destination,” I pointed out. “This is 75 Piedmont Avenue.”

“I will take my leave now,” he responded. “Thank you for your help, sir, and for a pleasant conversation.”

I shook his hand, wished him well and said goodbye. With that, he went into the building and I continued another block to my office. Even though it had been less than 10 minutes and probably a few hundred steps, it felt like we’d covered much more time and distance.

There’s nothing quite like learning more about another person, especially in unforeseen circumstances. It’s especially remarkable when you discover things in common.

Sometimes, the world feels much smaller when you walk.

A world of blue

Seven and 37, all the years between and everything thereafter. In so many ways, autism has both colored and shaped my world for most of my life.

Today is World Autism Awareness Day. All around the world, people are using blue in significant ways – lighting their houses, wearing it, changing their social media presence – to commemorate how their lives have been touched by autism, which now affects one in 50 children.

When choosing a blue shirt this morning, I got to thinking about the color and what it means to me – particularly in regard to autism. I’d say that, much of my life, it’s been a deep, sad shade of blue. After all, my brother Danny Joe was diagnosed with severe (non-verbal) autism when he was two years old and I was seven. To say that discovery changed most everything about my family is an understatement; almost every decision, whether great or small, during my childhood seemed to hinge on Danny’s autism in some way.

As an older sibling – as well as a 43-year-old man looking back on it all – it’s hard not to feel some degree of resentment. But then I recall day-to-day life with Danny from my early memories until the time I departed for college: I just tried to be the best brother I could be. There was certainly that deep blue sadness during the many hours I couldn’t connect with him. But there’s also the bright blue happiness of mornings eating cereal and watching cartoons, afternoons running around in the backyard and nights glancing over and watching my little brother drift off so peacefully to sleep.

The years that run from my high school graduation to somewhere in my mid-30s – a span of time that also saw Danny move from my parents’ house to a state hospital in southeastern Kansas – were tinged with a bluish hue of melancholy. I thought about my brother every day, of course, and often talked about him with others. Instead of everyday sadness, though, there were questions. There were mysteries. And then, as I moved from Kansas to Togo and on to Georgia, there was also distance and perspective.

I got married. My wife Kellie and I restored a century-old house. We moved to Oregon. And we welcomed our son Asa in 2004. In all those things, our blue changed to limitless sky.

Then, as Asa grew older, we started noticing differences in his behavior and mannerisms from other children his age. He flapped his hands. Repeated passages from books instead of engaging in conversation. Disappeared into an activity until, with some effort, we were able to interrupt. And so we took him to a developmental psychologist when we was three and a half years old.

While Asa sat on the floor of the office, pushing a toy truck with chubby little hands, the psychologist gave us his diagnosis: autism.

My blue returned to sorrow. It deepened to depression. It sometimes heated to searing anger – directly mainly at God. But, in a relatively short time, those things subsided, replaced by the concerns and worries that most fathers have.

Blue sky and hills outside Orem, Utah. Photo: Roger Burks

We started Asa in schools that didn’t work out. We kept trying. My wife found an amazing occupational therapist and we started using the DIR/Floortime approach to connect with Asa through engaging play. We moved from Oregon to Utah to enroll him in a school that uses Floortime in the classroom.

And everything changed for our family. I remember, one day, opening an email from my wife – attached was a photo of Asa picking up a classmate and hugging her. He had such a smile on his face – and so did she – and his expression was so open and engaged. That felt like such a turning point, a moment when the blue changed back to possibility.

Today, Asa is eight. He’s a second grader in a typical classroom at a remarkable school. He is a voracious reader, an inquisitive mathematician, a natural scientist and a very creative writer. His swimming coach told us last week that the backstroke is his racing style. He says blessings for dying bugs, leaves sweet little notes for his lucky parents and plays “Happy Birthday” for classmates on his soprano recorder.

For much of my life, autism has felt like a big blue spotlight – always there. But I don’t think of it that way any more. Today, when I put on a blue t-shirt and changed my Facebook profile, I did so with acknowledgement and affection for my brother, as well as appreciation and pride in my son.

This year – and for all the years that follow – the hue I choose is one of discovery and opportunities as deep and brilliant as my son’s eyes are blue.

The agony of (someone else’s) defeat

Invariably, every year around this time, March Madness turns to temporary sadness. My favorite sports team, the Kansas Jayhawks, get suddenly bounced from the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament – just as they were last night against the Michigan Wolverines.

The remaining hours of the day after each loss are grey and full of what ifs. What if he would have made that free throw? What if that player would have gotten the last shot instead of that other player? It’s unproductive and agonizing, but it keeps on happening minute after minute, year after year.

And, through that after-buzzer obsession and hand-wringing, the squads that defeated your team take on particular and unforgettable villainy. I’ll always dislike Northern Iowa and Virginia Commonwealth. I can’t stand Carmelo Anthony’s easy smile or Anthony Davis’s unibrow.

As a die-hard college basketball fan, I should be overjoyed that my team has made the NCAA tournament every year for almost a quarter-century. I should be ecstatic that, this year, they won their ninth consecutive Big 12 regular season title and took the conference tournament trophy home as well. And gosh, hell, I should be pleased as punch that I’m an alumnus from a university with one of the winning-est college basketball programs of all time, with a tradition reaching back to Dr. James Naismith, who invented the game in the first place.

But no. Every time my Jayhawks are ousted, it’s a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day whose traces linger far longer than they should. And I think that feeling starts with one simple word I used in that last sentence: “my.”

As sports fans, our emotions and loyalty are inextricably forged to the teams we follow. At places like the University of Kansas – where Allen Fieldhouse’s history and Gregorian-like Rock Chalk Chant render each game a near-religious experience – we unite with our team through challenges and triumphs. It’s cathartic and a way to transcend ourselves, placing our fortunes (and our happiness) in the hands of whoever has the ball.

But, after the game ends (or perhaps even before it begins), we need to separate ourselves from those we’re cheering on. We’re not part of the team, although our fandom and faith might help them elevate their game. And, when all is said and done, these are men in their late teens and early twenties on an extraordinarily large and public stage. Can you imagine the mistakes you made at that age laid bare for all America to see?

So, yes, the Kansas Jayhawks lost last night. It sucks. I thought they could have won it all. But you know what? There was nothing I could do. I am still disappointed. I am also still very proud to be a Jayhawk.

And besides, there are things I had to do in the wake of a Kansas loss. I sent my mother flowers for her birthday. I played with my son in our backyard on the first bonafide beautiful-weather day of Spring. I made chicken curry. I helped color Easter eggs. I’m watching a movie and drinking beer with my lovely wife.

What happened last night is just a game. What’s going on today is much, much more than that.

Circles, roots and 43

On the day before I turn 43 years old, a dance performance at my son’s school got me thinking about how life circles around. I believe we visit our pasts while on the axis to our futures, both of which interlock with other peoples’ paths in frequent and surprising ways.

We may spring off to faraway places, but we keep coming back to the place we learned those first steps.

That thought arose while I was watching my eight-year-old son smile as he danced Allemande left and right with his classmates to a traditional jig. Appalachian music has always raised my spirits but today, as my foot was tapping, those spirits were soaring with pride in him, what he’s done and who he’s becoming.

When my son’s class was finished with their part, the next group came up and danced the Virginia Reel. And, well, that music and those movements took me in circles all the way back to fourth grade.

There I was in overalls, a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, holding both of Alice Thomas’s hands right before it was our turn to chasse down the line of classmates. She wore a simple white shirt with a lace collar and a pioneer woman’s dress. We were celebrating Kansas Day at my school, Welborn Elementary. A newpaper reporter snapped our picture. I was nervous as heck. She was smiling at me. I cracked a grin off we went. She laughed, and I’ll always remember exactly how those couple minutes sounded and felt.

That moment was when first felt my roots, I guess. It’s when I looked around and saw past (the traditional costumes) and present (my classmates) and sensed the magic of place. It’s when I fell in love with Kansas and, more broadly, with the Midwest.

And when I say the Midwest, I have a distinct idea of its boundaries. It’s nothing east of the broad Mississippi River or west of the tall Rocky Mountains. Between those points, it goes all the way north to Canada but its southernmost boundary is where Oklahoma ends. It’s the true heart of America, but a place where we usually keep our feelings deep within.

In the Midwest, people can honestly say they’re laughing (or crying) on the inside with no sense of irony. We’re stoic and often quiet, but thoughtful. Kindness is given, accepted and acknowledged quietly.

I believe that, in most of the Midwest – even in its cities – change is primarily a moral and societal issue. It comes slow. For the most part, even individual expression is done as a group. I recall groups of friends (many of whom I’m still lucky to have) partly according to personal timelines of creative growth, discovery and rebellion.

Memories, imagery and lessons from my childhood in Kansas have followed me nearly everywhere I’ve gone – even to remote villages like Agora, Uganda. Photo: Roger Burks/Mercy Corps

As is often the case, that deliberate (and difficult) break with hometown is what it takes to reveal and realize not only who you are, but who you could be. Some people travel to either coast, to the desert or the mountains for that journey; I threw myself out into the world after college, going all the way to West Africa for two years of Peace Corps service. And, honestly, it wasn’t only the toughest job [I ever loved], but also one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Because, there among the lagoons, palm forests and villages of southern Togo, I met the woman who would (after three proposals) agree to be my wife. To paraphrase something my father once said, I am a Kansas boy who traveled to Togo to meet a girl from Georgia, then we got married in Florida and honeymooned in Costa Rica.

Six years after our wedding, we welcomed our son, Asa. Nothing changes you like being a husband and a father – you can travel to the most exotic and isolated parts of the world, but nothing tests your mettle like wanting to do your best and be your best for the people you love most.

And that brings me back to the basement of my son’s school, sitting next to my lovely wife, watching Asa doing familiar dance steps in his very own way. It made me think of more places and more friends than I thought would be possible in the space of a few moments. Of course, still being distinctly Midwestern (as I always will be), I kept it inside.

Until now. Because, as I turn 43 and look forward to whatever comes next, my prevailing thought is quite simply “This Kansas boy is lucky.”

Replacing astronaut dreams

I can tell you the year I decided to be a writer – what’s more, I’ll tell you the person who helped inspire that irreversible decision.

It came around the time I realized I likely wasn’t going to be an astronaut, which was sixth grade. I was having trouble with Pi.

In sixth grade, when I was 11 years old, I hit the wall in math. Or maybe I should say I got hit with Pi. Either way, it was a reckoning that shook my confidence more than anything in school ever had. For some reason – however our math teacher, the kind and very smart Mr. Markman, tried to explain it – I just couldn’t get Pi. Did he mean a piece of pie as a visual example? Did he mean a pie chart? I felt impossible to reconcile that word – Pi – with a number that starts off 3.14. And when he started using Pi to figure the area of a circle and the volume of a cylinder, and I was completely lost.

Crestview Elementary School in Merriam, Kansas

(Intermission: a couple decades later, I saw a lesson like this in a Montessori class, and Pi suddenly made perfect sense. It’s often important to know the concrete before you delve all the way into the abstract.)

So I’d say, yeah, that’s where my struggles and my dread of math began. I’d declared my ambition to become an astronaut years earlier. I was definitely a child of the era, born at the U.S. Air Force Academy just a few months after men first walked on the moon. All my male friends, it seemed, wanted to be policemen, truck drivers or astronauts. It had never changed for me, not since I learned all nine planets and certainly not after I saw “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” I knew that becoming an astronaut was never an easy road: folks told me, every step of the way, that astronauts had to be super math geniuses. It was because of my struggles with math that I heavy-heartedly resigned from the space program.

But redemption and a new direction was just across the hall from math class. Because, in that room at Crestview Elementary School, I had English class with Mrs. Haraughty.

Over the course of that school year, we did a lot of writing, including a research paper. I wrote mine about medieval knights and got so caught up in the research that it was like going on an adventure. And adventure was certainly on my mind those days, since “Raiders of the Lost Ark” had come out over the summer.

Mrs. Haraughty was related to famous World War II correspondent and pioneer embedded journalist Ernie Pyle. She talked about him quite a lot. The idea that a writer could go into danger like that and communicate such personal peril for all the world to read and experience has always stayed with me.

And then there was our keystone assignment: the creation of a student newspaper from scratch. Of course, this was 1981, and there was no such thing as desktop publishing. It was all notebooks and pencils, scissors, paste and mimeograph. It was also my first chance at doing an interview. I was assigned to the paper’s sports section, and my topic was tennis.

So, one Saturday morning, I went to a neighborhood park where there was a tennis court and found a kid a bit older than me hitting a ball around with his dad. Through the fence, I introduced myself and asked if I could have a few minutes of his time. He told me his name was Grant, and sure. And it was during the interview that I realized that part of the magic of journalism is in finding commonalities: Grant had gone to Crestview and knew Mrs. Haraughty.

I still have that paper with purple mimeograph ink; much more than that, though, I have the confidence and direction that Mrs. Haraughty helped me find. She was a tough teacher and expected you to work to your ability. She was the kind of teacher who made you always want to do better.

I still try to do better. Last Sunday, I was at a coffee shop, desperately trying to finish a book I’ve been working on for a while. Predictably, my inner critic started in, telling me the story really wasn’t that good. I was temporarily dazed, just like being Pi-eyed back in the sixth grade. But then I thought of four people – my two grandmothers, Mrs. Haraughty and a high school English teacher named Ms. Jeter – who helped me find my passion, follow my bliss and raise my voice.

And you know what? That night, I got a friend request on Facebook – from a Mrs. Norma Haraughty. Three decades later.

Some explore the space beyond us as astronauts. Others explore the space around us, between us – and within us – as writers.

Against versus for

One of my colleagues, also a writer, has a particular mission where we work: ridding the organization of terms that sound “warlike.” That means no more “combating hunger” and no more “fighting poverty.” And while that’s not a battle I’d choose, I do understand her point.

I believe we use the word “against” too much. Search the Internet, and you’ll find no shortage of organizations with some variation of “People” Against “Something.” What they’re against is usually something bad, like drunk driving or human trafficking. Many if not most are worthy causes, but I can’t help imagining thousands of groups – some big, some small – mobilized and fighting.

courtesy of rasterweb.net

On issues that are so obviously evil, destructive or harmful, there are likely no counteractive groups – no “People” Against Against “Something.” But, where politics, moral issues or certain social challenges are concerned, there are groups diametrically opposed and working to thwart each other. And so we have groups that are not just against obstacles or wrongs, but also groups against one another.

That divides society – and I think that’s precisely one of our biggest struggles, especially here in the United States. And of course debate can (and usually does) strengthen a group of people, but perpetual (and overly contentious) debate eventually splinters or fractures communities.

So what about “for”? Well, if you do a similar Internet search to find instances of “People” For “Something,” you’ll find plenty of groups – but somehow much less conviction, much less inspiration and much less passion. You’ll see things like “Americans for Prosperity” and “Americans for Democratic Action.” You’ll discover amorphous concepts. You’ll come across groups with complicated messaging. You can imagine they’d have boring, rambling meetings.

And I guess that’s the thing: being against something raises more ire (and likely more money). When you’re against something, your goal is typically the elimination of that thing. It’s a tangible goal. Being against something implies that you’re in a fight and, let’s face it, all of us rise to the challenge and thrive in the heat of the fray sometimes.

However, is there a cost? If we’re all fighting against something, what are we fighting for? Perhaps it comes down to this complex world we live in, maybe it’s a result of competing ideologies and priorities. But I have to believe that, if there could be more “for” (for education, for health, for peace) and less “against,” we’d be more united in finding solutions and achieving goals for a better world.