Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Shel Silverstein

I came home from this Christmas experience thinking about how I could use what I had learned in my work as a therapist. Part of being a good therapist is continually taking stock of your own life, and how your own state of mind impacts the people who trust you to counsel them about their lives. I thought about how my life had changed since I had officially become a therapist, and how I had lost touch with some of my old friends as I was surrounded with a new group of people. I had been feeling very “grown up” as I made this transition to a new life, and thought that this would also be a gateway to a new state of mind free from the substitute pattern. Then following story explains how I made sense of dealing with this transition, and lessons I learned about the choices I made about how I was going to spend the rest of the time that I had been given.

My mom was a teacher when I was little, and so books were a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The poem at the beginning of this vignette was my favorite poem growing up, and when I was a kid I used to literally search and search for the place where the sidewalk ends.

I never found it growing up, but I did have to analyze my 20 favorite poems when I was first in college, and I chose this as one of them. To me it was about trying to find that childlike sense of wonder in your heart, even as the responsibilities of life begin to creep in as you get older. And I had gotten older, and life didn’t seem as simple as it did when I was a kid. Shortly after that I just kind of forgot about the poem altogether.

Life takes funny turns sometimes though, and cut to many years later I was living in Chicago and had improbably become an avid bike rider. On one particular evening I had found a trail that seemed like it was leading to a beautiful view of the city. I had gone careening down the path, and then, looking up, saw nothing but Lake Michigan and the Chicago Skyline behind it. I slammed on my brakes and nearly went into the water, getting pretty scratched up in the process. And then, strangely, this poem popped back into my head again. This was it!! This was, quite literally, the place where the sidewalk ends.

As I dusted myself off I began to laugh. I was in such a hurry that I had almost died, but here before me lay an incredible gift. I had found it, finally after years of forgetting about it, and I vowed to give this moment its due. I visit this spot a couple of times a week now, usually right around dusk as the sun sets on Chicago and the lights of the city begin to shine.

I think about a lot of things in these moments. Usually it begins with taking a kind of inventory. What are you doing? I often think to myself. Are you a therapist? A writer? A comedian? An imposter? A Buffoon? Some strange hybrid of all of these things? Usually though a quiet kind of calm comes over me, and I sit and enjoy the city from a distance. I think of all of the things I’ve done here, all the adventures, all the people, and I begin to settle down. When I’m particularly stressed I take out a copy of this poem and read it, and think about those last couple of lines, and usually I find my answer to whatever particular worry is on my mind.

The answer is right there. See the world like a child sees the world, and suddenly everything doesn’t seem so bad. That’s how I want to live my life. How I do live my life most of the time. Sometimes the undertow of various pressures threatens to drag me under with it, and in these moments I have to remember to stay true to myself. I will not be a grownup because someone tells me to be. It hasn’t worked for me, and really I’m not sure it works for anybody.

Oscar Wilde said “The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. The body is born young and grows old. That is the tragedy of life. That describes it so well for me. Sometimes I look in the mirror and wonder how the hell this happened. I feel younger than I have ever felt, but clearly that’s not what everyone sees. It has really been my experience that one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to judge anyone simply on their chronological age, as this is just not a good barometer of the size of a person’s spirit. Some of the oldest people I know are 25 or so, and some of the youngest are in their 70’s. Age is a dangerous fixation we have in our culture and it is one that never fails to irritate me.

So for me, as I get ready to enter a new phase of my life, I try to remember that really it doesn’t matter what I am. My only real goal is to continue to emphasize how I’m going to choose to live, and I will hope it will always be with the eyes of a child. It took me many years to find the place where the sidewalk ends, and it is a lesson I am not ready to relinquish so easily.