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Why Listen to Your Inner Wisdom
© Burt Dubin
When you’re little, when the world is new, when you see everything for the first time, before you’ve been to school, before you even know how to read—or why—you have only your parents and your inner voice to guide you.
For me, there was only you, my inner voice.
When I was 4, and full of mischief, even more so of curiosity, my father decided I needed to be whipped into shape. As self-appointed top gun in our household, he took action.
He opened the slide-down cellar door facing the tiny back yard of our red brick row house in West Philadelphia. He held me firmly by my little hand as we descended to the cellar. In his other hand was a length of new clothesline.
He lifted me onto a straight backed chair so I could watch him work. He cut the clothesline into 9 lengths, bound them securely on one end. Then he kneeled down and looked me straight in the eye. Grim-faced, he tied tight knots in the other ends of each of the 9 lengths.
He took his time tying the knots, looking at me between knots.
Without knowing I was doing it, I tuned into you, my precious Inner Voice. You told me me —wordlessly —what to do.
So, I didn’t blink, refusing to show any emotion. Then he lifted me off the chair, took down my short pants and whipped my bare bottom. Every blow stung. I released no sound. Gritted my teeth.
My father was 29. I was 4—and I was “bad.” OK, I was the most curious 4 year old I ever knew. Into everything. Full of childish mischief.
For the next 4 years, this was the evening routine. He’d come home from work and he’d whip me. Hard. Very hard. Then even harder. There were over 1200 painful, tush-stinging whippings. I never made one sound. Not one.
Sometime during those years he wore out his implement. He made me watch him make another, this time double-knotted. My mother, a self-described doormat, kept out of the way. She did nothing to proscribe my father’s sadistic behavior.
These episodes yielded clear outcomes. I became incorrigible. Unalterably unmanageable. Fiercely independent. Going my own way. Thinking for myself.
- I became a gentle person.
- I developed a huge empathy for the human condition.
I could never, ever willingly hurt or harm another human being. Other possible negative outcomes never visited me—because I listened to you.
Before I was 4—at around 2 or 3—my curiosity knew no limits. I delighted in exploring the natural world, grasses, flowers, trees, dogs, cats. These were plentiful in Cobbs Creek Park, a short walk from my house. I spent endless hours there, looking into everything.
I tuned in to you. You told me that all the wisdom there was might be found in a blade of grass, any blade of grass—if I knew how to read it. More significantly, you told me to endlessly probe the 3 eternal questions:
- Where did I come from?
- Why am I here?
- Where am I going?
Thanks to you, I became convinced that we are here to learn and grow. We are accountable for our every word and act. There is a higher purpose in life. We are going somewhere. I was not yet 5, not yet in school—and I didn’t know how to read yet.
Though in a sordid home life, wearing exclusively hand-me-downs from my older cousins, maladjusted, with no hero figures and pitifully pathological “guidance” which I rejected, because I listened when you spoke to me, I began to live my young life based on the noble virtues.
At 7, I was literate. You led me to discover the West Philadelphia Branch Library. Of children’s books, there were 2 ceiling-to-floor bookshelves. The librarians would only let me take out 5 books at a time. That’s what I did. Every other day. Relentless and orderly even then—and utterly without discrimination at the time—I started at the left side of the highest shelf. I worked my way across and down. A hungry, insatiable bookworm, I devoured those books. Whatever the next book was, I read it.
Thanks to you, I got to love reading—and writers. They opened new worlds for me. More than that, I discovered that they would never hurt me. Writers were my only true friends. (As years passed, I expanded my horizons continually through reading. I developed an unending love affair with words, both written and spoken. Indeed, I became a wordsmith myself.)
When I was 8, our little house at 6050 Webster Street was repossessed. Unable to make the mortgage payments, evicted, my family moved to an even smaller house on Baton Rouge Avenue in Ventnor, New Jersey. It was in a neighborhood of little homes—and a stone’s throw from the back bay behind Absecon Island.
Somehow, I came into possession of a small boat. A sabot, it was 9 feet long, had a 15 foot mast, a mains’l, no jib, a centerboard, oarlocks and oars, a centerboard—and a rudder. I moored it to a sewer pipe, then about 2 feet out from the bulkhead that lined that part of the bay at the time.
In that boat, I listened to you some more. You taught me to sail. I learned to turn into the wind, to tack, and to head into where the wake would be when the twin-engined Chris-Craft boats came tearing through on the inland waterway from New England to Florida. (Not to do this meant getting swamped and having to swim back, towing my upset boat.)
The big thrill of my day was sailing south to the Dorset Avenue bridge linking Ventnor with Ventnor Heights. Tooting my little bicycle horn, I stopped all the traffic wanting to cross the bridge. The bridge keeper lowered the big arms, raised the bridge ever-so-slowly. Then I sailed through at a stately 1 mile an hour. I, a little kid, could stop the world! Then, of course, I’d turn around and repeat the performance. This made me feel important for the first time. I liked that feeling.
And—you taught me a precious lesson. No matter which way the wind might blow—and regardless of the direction of the tide at the moment—I could engage the prevailing wind and tide— and get anywhere I wanted to go on the bay. All by using my rudder and my sail.
Wow! This was cosmic wisdom, at least to me. I integrated it at once, used it a thousand times and more.
I could engage prevailing conditions, engage those conditions to get wherever I wanted to get in life. This proved to be another vital insight I was to use and later teach to others. Thank you, inner voice.
When I was 11, I got a job. I held this job for 2 summers and all day Saturdays the rest of the year. I worked for Meyer Rabin. He was the fruit and vegetable huckster. I helped him serve the local housewives. He would toot the horn of his doorless old Dodge panel truck as he entered a block in the Chelsea (upper-crust) neighborhood of Atlantic City. I would bag the produce and fruit he sold. The good part was what happened in-between...and it happened, I now know, thanks to you.
Picture this little kid in short pants, legs dangling, sitting on the back of the bouncing truck, eating all the delicious fruit he could get down, the peaches and plums, the pears and cherries—oh those black bings! That was me. And it was wonderful. I was busy learning. As I’d eat the choicest fruit, spitting out the seeds all over the street, I’d reflect: A peach pit would only bring forth a peach tree. Ditto a plum, a pear, and so forth.
You told me that in some primitive way every seed had consciousness. It knew what it was. And it knew its purpose. All it desired were the requisite conditions to fulfill its destiny—and it would do so or die trying. Each seed desired one thing. It had a mission. You told me that if a seed could do this, why not me. I was every bit as worthy—and I had more power than any seed. I had arms and legs, and a brain. I could think and feel and move. I could desire. I got some sense of the power of desire linked to focus. From that moment on I used this insight—and I teach it to others even today.
As a small child, I recognized that
I was in charge of my own life.
You can be in charge of your own life too.
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copyright © Burt Dubin
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in your newsletter or magazine with the following byline:
Burt Dubin works with people who want to be speakers
and with speakers who want to be masters.
www.BurtDubin.com 800-321-1225 928-753-7546
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