"You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?" - Hakuin Ekaku.

Ten weeks from today, I will be retired from my full-time career in IT. As I look forward to that day, I find myself increasingly aware of the passing time, and I know that day will be here before I know it. I realized this week that I first began working in IT while I was a student at UC, Davis more than 40 years ago. I worked at the Shields Library doing various tasks that included helping with the work to implement their first computerized library management system from CLSI.

After working for ten years supporting IT for county government and then in a data center supporting savings and loans clients from Connecticut to Hawaii, I’m glad that I returned to working at a university for most of my career. I am also grateful that my work volunteering with SHARE continued when I moved from the private sector to education, and that I had the opportunity to do some of my most satisfying work, and find some of my dearest friends, there. I will retire with just over 28 years of service credit and I know I made the right choice to spend these years serving our students, faculty, staff, and administrators.

I’ve had opportunities over the years to leave the university to work in other enterprises, and I would probably have made more money if I’d taken one of those. I’m glad I chose to stay. It’s been clear to me for many years that there are things much more important than money, and that the most important things aren’t things at all. They are the relationships we share with one another, and ourselves, and the values that form the foundations of these relationships.

I am so very grateful to have spent most of my working life doing work that serves young, and not so young, people as they seek knowledge and experiences to prepare themselves to make a difference in the world we share. I’m glad to have formed strong relationships with my colleagues as we share this work, and endlessly grateful for the deep and lasting friendships that I’ve formed thanks to my career bringing me together with some very wonderful, and special, people. Most of all I am grateful that this work has allowed me to provide for my family while doing work that has made a difference.

In recent years, my days have often been filled with meetings, and I’ve had to learn that this was a significant part of the work I do. To remind myself that, rather than preventing me from doing important work, the meetings were one of the ways we do the important work of sharing our insights with one another and building the relationships that help us do what is right together.

In recent weeks, I find the meetings taking on a new character. I have already had my last meetings with some of the people and groups I work with, and many of the meetings in these next ten weeks will offer me those last opportunities to share in the work we do together. I find myself looking ahead and helping to find the best ways to pass the torch so that the work goes ahead well without me. I also find myself feeling and expressing my gratitude and appreciation.

I have been so fortunate in the people I have had the honor, and pleasure, to work with. In all these years at our university, there have been only a handful of people who I struggled to get along with, or whose motives did not seem to me to serve the best interests of our students and the institution. The number of these people is vanishingly small when compared with the vast, generous, majority who met each day with a genuine desire to make a difference, and to do what is right, for the students we have the privilege of serving. I have served among people of good character, who meet opportunity with energy and creativity, adversity with courage and determination, and each other with compassion and goodwill.

The Zen master Hakuin Ekaku, who created the koan I quote at the beginning of this essay, believed his question was effective in generating the great doubt necessary to those seeking enlightenment. For me, questions like this one have served for many years to help inspire the doubt that I have arrived at a final answer. To keep my mind, and heart, open to new insights from myself and others. Recently, I have found my own answer to this inherently unanswerable question. It is an answer, and not the answer, and I remain open to the great doubt and to new awareness.

The answer I have found reminds me that our separateness is an illusion. That the positions we take, and argue for, can appear to separate us while an open, and shared, exploration of the questions behind these positions can actually serve to bring us more clearly together in service of a stronger common understanding. That when we appear to be at odds with one another, we are facing an opportunity to grow in our understanding of each other and how we can best engage in the work ahead of us.

As I look forward to retirement, I know that it is people and our relationships that I will miss the most. I know that I will look back on what we have shared with a fond respect and admiration for my colleagues. That I will take steps to help find the next form of these relationships as my own journey continues in a new way. That I will rededicate myself to giving openly and fully in my relationships with my loved ones. I will be reminding myself that our separateness is an illusion and that the moments we share continue to enrich our lives always.

© 2017 James Michael. The text of this work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0