To Know is To Live

To Know is To Live

Written By: Joshua J. Wold

Five years ago, I found myself wandering through life with no direction, ambition, or even feeling. Just like most people, I was working hard for a living and helping to raise a young family. The only difference between most people and me was that I wasn’t sure who I was. For all my life, I knew that I didn’t fit the standard mold and I sincerely thought that I was destined to be a failure. I dropped out of high school at seventeen because I felt that I was being given busy work; I already knew what they were teaching, and I didn’t feel that I needed to prove it to them. It used to aggravate my teachers because I would ace their tests and still fail their class because I wouldn’t do the homework. Later in life, I found it almost impossible to get out of bed every morning. If it weren’t for the personal advice from a person whom I have never met, I am fairly confident that this composition would never have been written.

                I started working for the railroad in early 1999 about a month after I got married. At 19 years old with a new wife and the best paying job I had ever worked, I felt pretty good about myself. I got to operate huge pieces of machinery and I worked myself into the best shape I had ever been. But, just like everything in my life, I found a reason why I didn’t like it. The second I lost interest in it, which only took 10 months, I began showing up late and calling in sick quite frequently. Unsurprisingly, I was placed on suspension without pay for three weeks because of my poor attendance, and I am pretty sure that my attitude played a significant role in such a harsh penalty. Considering that my wife and I had our first child during my initial tour on the railroad, and he was only two months old, I had no other option than to quit and find another job.

                After bouncing around to a ton of different construction companies and warehouses, my old boss from the railroad called and offered me a job. He informed me that it was a new railroad and the record of my past employment went out with the old company. It paid more than the job that I had, so I decided to give it another shot. This time it took less than 6 months to put that bitter taste back in my mouth, but this time around, I had to make it work out for the sake of my family. I remember thinking that the burden of my incompetency should not weigh on them. After 2 years of breaking my back and being one with the elements, I slipped into a deep depression. I felt black as night and everything in my life took a back seat to the hell that was my life. You see, I believed that I would be stuck working there forever because I lacked something that may be taken for granted by some people. It’s something that cannot be taught or acquired; something that can’t be bought or sold.

                It was during this time in my life that my wife began her educational journey with the goal of becoming a nurse. Coincidentally, she was taking a psychology class and suggested that I go see a doctor about my depression. It took quite a bit of convincing on her part, but I finally saw things her way. Anxiety overwhelmed me while I sat in the examination room waiting to see my doctor. When he entered the room, I began to get a lump in my throat and I could feel my eyes flooding with tears. I found myself in that familiar place where I didn't want anyone to see my vulnerability. I resisted the temptation to break down and then proceeded to enlighten the doctor of my symptoms; like how I would go straight to sleep after work, how most of the time I never ate dinner, and that in my own mind, I linked the misery of my life to all of my prior failures. He decided to put me on medication to help me out of the darkness and he explained to me that while it would not remedy the root cause of my depression, it could help me in coping with day to day life. The medicine did exactly what he said it would. The only problem I had with it was that it stripped me of all feeling and emotion. Ultimately, I found that being medicated to the point of numbness was not the solution I'd hoped it could be. 

                After a few weeks of medicinal treatment, my wife recognized that my condition was not merely a chemical imbalance in my brain; rather, there was something in my life that needed deeper investigation. Fearful for my life, she decided to talk with her psychology instructor about my perilous situation. She explained to her instructor that I felt like a failure, that when I had an interest in something, my interest was only fleeting and that it was destined to be left undone and unaccomplished only to be replaced by something else that caught my attention. That I just didn’t understand why I was such a failure and couldn't be like everyone else. The instructor handed her a book and told her that this particular book played a major role in why she chose to go into psychology. She told her that maybe this book could shed some light on the darkness that had enveloped my life. My wife called me on her way home and told me that her instructor had given her a book for me to read and I figured that whatever it was, it was stupid psycho-babble and immediately closed off to the idea of reading it. When she arrived and stepped through the front door, she explained to me that the title may seem a little feminine, but to at least give it a shot. “Please Understand Me” read the title. The lump returned to my throat, and again, my eyes pooled with tears. I felt that this title could have been the thesis of my entire life.

                I found out that I am representative of less than five percent of the population of this planet, that I process information differently than most people, and that I must find my own way to do things. I found that I have an uncommon need to rationalize things and I quickly dismiss anything that I deem irrational. I had been given a guidebook to my thought process and a personalized instruction booklet on how I could succeed in life. But most of all, I had been freed from the prison of my own mind. Never again would I feel shameful for the decisions I make. I spent days pouring over this book and analyzing it from every direction that I could think of. I also found that this copy was only the first edition and that another book named “Please Understand Me II” was written and I quickly ran out to buy that one. I couldn’t get enough of what the book was doing to me. In a matter of two weeks I had experienced every emotion known to man, where just prior to the book, I had experienced only void. I had tasted tears of happiness and relief, felt confidence and ambition rush through my veins, and for the first time in my life, I knew who I was. From this point on, my life would never be the same.

                Perhaps if I could have been given this book to read and figure myself out when I was 15, I could have finished high school and taken my life in a different direction; however, I don’t think that it would have produced the same results. In fact, I am happy that I was able to experience those moments when I was down because I believe that they enhanced these massive effects of my revelations. And, from this point forward, it will be a life well worth living. Whether it was fate or coincidence that this book came to my possession, I will never know; however, what I do know is that my experience with it allowed me to do something that I thought I could never do. It allowed me to recognize what I was interested in and ultimately gave me the courage and confidence to quit a $50,000 a year job for a $26,000 a year job so that I could pursue an education.

                Years later, I still carry that book around with me; although, I rarely get it out to read it.  It stays with me to remind me of who I am and to remind me of where I once was. My gratitude in this situation lies with my wife for caring about me so much that she would do something so out of the ordinary by talking about her personal life with a relative stranger. Because of her love for me, I now have more determination and focus than I could have ever imagined. And now, as I struggle to make it through every day, it is a struggle I embrace. I now choose to make my life more complicated and difficult by, in most peoples' opinion, setting un-realistic goals; however, the knowledge of who I am and what I am capable of is limited only by hours in the day. What I know about me now can never be removed and I will continue to push myself to the limit until God Himself strikes me down.