Bruce Cameron

Dec 23, 20130

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2009.

Before I went to college, I made a little money painting houses part-time. But after I became a college-educated man, I got serious about a career and began painting houses full-time.

I was contemplating this complete-circle process one hot day in southwest Kansas, a piece of real estate that completely disproves the theory of roundness as a property of the planet Earth. Show a resident of this flat place a pancake, and he’d ask, “What’s that incredibly round and mountainous thing you have there?”

There’s nothing to stop the wind in this part of the world: If a kid in Denver blows out his birthday candles, someone in Kansas will smell smoke. The hot, flat ironing board that is the land heats this wind, so that as I stood on my ladder, industriously applying a coat of Sears Outdoor White to the parched, weather-coarsened eaves of the house I’d been hired to paint, it felt as if someone were blow-drying my face.

A ladder in Kansas seemed a good place from which to view the future, because in every direction I could see nothing but a complete lack of direction. No trees blocked my path or my vision, no hills promised an arduous climb toward the peak of my efforts, the foliage cowered near the ground or was wind-blown completely flat like Donald Trump’s comb-over. No slate could be more blank, no piece of paper more devoid of resume. If something were coming, I’d see it from 100 miles away. But nothing was coming.

So there I was, a 22-year-old college man whose English major qualified him to apply paint to houses. I couldn’t wait to run into a popular girl from my high school.

Popular Girl: Bruce! I remember when you painted houses as a job in high school. What do you do now?

Me: I paint houses.

Popular Girl: Oh, I am so going to marry you!

Not that there’s anything wrong with painting houses — it certainly seems a more honorable profession than designing Synthetic Toxic Financial Derivative Death Bombs, or whatever are those things that the geniuses at our best banks came up with to generate huge bonuses for themselves as compensation for destroying the world economy. But I’d just spent a lot of time and my father’s money at a school of higher learning. The ladder of my career was supposed to be something other than the same one I’d leaned against the houses I painted in high school. Hadn’t I learned anything to make the world a better place?

President: The Earth will be destroyed if we can’t find someone who learned in college how to tap a keg!

Me: I can do it, sir!

Popular Girl: Oh, I am so marrying him!

To keep me company, I’d brought my parents’ two dogs with me — young black Labradors who’d never dreamed of a place like this, where the hot wind carried scents from half a continent away and where they could run unimpeded by fences or leashes or dog catchers. I could see them from my perch — two black rockets joyously crisscrossing the flatlands, their tongues a flash of pink.

From time to time, they’d get so far away they looked as if they were going to cut themselves on the edge of the horizon, and then their heads would snap around and they’d race back to make sure I was still there, panting and dancing at the foot of my ladder, their expressions saying, Isn’t this the best place ever?

Where I saw a depressing lack of opportunity, they saw nothing but free possibility. There was room to run, and they were making the most of it, finding delightful opportunities to explore and discover because nothing was stopping them. They could do whatever they wanted, so they were doing it.

I think about that day sometimes, whenever my plans go awry and the future seems drained of promise. The lesson from my dogs is simple: When times are tough, you can see yourself as having no place to go, or you can see yourself as completely free to explore opportunity, and be joyful at the prospect.

When possible, I try to live like the dogs.

(Bruce Cameron has a website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com.)