In June of 1973, I left my home in Tampa, Florida, to go to DC and join the US Peace Corps in Ethiopia, East Africa. This story actually begins a few weeks earlier, when I had met one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen – I'll call her "Bess" (not her real name).
It's not like I was inexperienced. I'd been married and divorced and had been privileged to have known several wonderful and beautiful women – before, during and after my 1971 tour in Vietnam. After an intense, whirlwind relationship, Bess and I drove to Maryland and stayed with one of her relatives. There really is no way to describe to you how deeply involved we had become. Yet I had been planning to go to Africa for months and had set my mind to it.
I flew to Ethiopia and became a "trainee", which is a step below a full-fledged "volunteer". Three weeks into my training I decided that I was in love with Bess and had to be with her. When asked by the Peace Corps why I was leaving, I simply said, "I'm going home for personal reasons."
By Autumn of '73, Bess and I had gone our separate ways, and after a brief dark period I was brought back to my senses by none other than my mother, who was herself coping with the recent death of my father. I then tried to rejoin the Peace Corps and to return to Africa. The Desk Officer for Ethiopia in DC, Ed Marcus, told me that there had never been a volunteer, let alone a mere trainee, who was allowed back into the same country after terminating early. Never. Ed was, however, able to give me three other choices... I could go to Iran, Jamaica or the Philippines.
Marcus had given me three other country options, and no matter how determined I was to go back to Ethiopia, he was adamant that I could not return there, nor work in any other country in Africa. I had pretty much decided to go to the Philippines. Can you imagine my surprise when I received a phone call from Ed, who told me that the Peace Corps Director in Ethiopia, Dr. Jack Mills, had come to Washington for a meeting the next day. Mills would be returning to Ethiopia the next evening after the meeting. Ed told me that if I really wanted to go back to Ethiopia, I had to get to Washington as quickly as possible. He said he might be able to get me in to see Dr. Mills for a few minutes, but there were no guarantees.
I hopped on the earliest plane and landed in Washington at about 6:00 p.m., too late to get in to see Dr. Mills that evening. So I walked around the city and found myself sitting on a park bench between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. I was just sitting there, scratching my head. I knew exactly what I wanted – to go back to Ethiopia. But I had no idea what I was going to say to Dr. Mills. How would I convince this man to let me go back and work in Africa?
Then, as I sat there relaxed yet completely confused, one word entered my head with the force of an H bomb. There among the monuments to our forefathers, this one word began to pound and pound in my brain! It was a common word, very common. It had entered my head before, but never with this much strength and power. It was as if the forefathers were ghosts in my head and yelling out the word, like they were trying to provide me with the one thing that I could say to Dr. Mills that had any chance of convincing him. That one word banging away in my mind was "truth".
Tell him the truth – that's all I had to do. In my mind, I could picture Dr. Mills and myself alone in his office the next day. I could actually hear him ask me why I had left the previous year. What on Earth were the "personal reasons" that had kept me from staying in Ethiopia? There was no mistaking the absolute certainty and clarity I felt. I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that I would convince Jack Mills to let me return to Ethiopia! In a fraction of a second I had gone from confused and worried to certain and confident.
The next morning found me in the Peace Corps office, sitting next to Ed Marcus' desk. Dr. Mills was still in his meeting, so I waited. All of a sudden, Mills came crashing through the door. Obviously disappointed and very angry, he disappeared into his temporary private office and slammed the door. It was evident that things had not gone well at his meeting. Ed gave me a glance that pretty much meant, 'Sorry I wasted your time.' I urged him to knock on Mills' door. He went into Mills' office to ask if I could see him for a few minutes. When he walked back out, he told me, "Dr. Mills will give you five minutes and not one minute more."
I walked into Mills' office and sat down. His first question was just as I had heard in my head the evening before. "I have your file here, and all it says is that you left your training last year for 'personal reasons'. I just need to know exactly what your 'personal reasons' were that made you terminate early last year. Why did you leave?" At the bottom of my answer, at the very heart of it, was the truth.
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I told him about Bess, and how my love for her was the reason I had terminated early. I
told him about my mother and how she had hidden her depression from me after my father died
in early '73. And I mentioned to Mills that it had been my mother who had helped me out of
my own dark days after Bess and I broke up. And I told Mills how helping me had also
somehow helped my mother out of her own depression. While I had left Africa and the Peace Corps in
'73 for "all the wrong reasons", as it turned out, my return had given my mother enough
reason to bounce back herself and to overcome her own depression by turning her focus toward helping me.
Who knows what would have happened to my mother if I had not returned home in '73? It took a bit more than five minutes to answer Dr. Mills' question, but he kept listening. After I had finished, with a low, determined voice he said to me, "Ron, if I let you go back to Ethiopia, you have to promise me that you will not terminate early again. I have to know that you will stick to your commitment." I looked him directly in the eyes and promised him that I would not terminate early. Then he told me that I could return to Ethiopia!  |
"Do you know why Jack Mills is here?" I shook my head, no. "He's here for the express purpose of getting the Peace Corps pulled out of Ethiopia! The emperor Haile Selassie has been arrested and jailed, and there is so much violence! Jack's worried that his volunteers and staff might get hurt. But in this morning's meeting with the bosses, they turned him down, they would not let him pull out. It's just unbelievable that after all that, he would let you go back to Africa. Unbelievable! What did you say to him?"
I just smiled. I had convinced a man who had a reputation for seldom if ever changing his mind. All I had done was to answer his question and tell him the truth. I had responded with the ideas that had come to my mind the night before after the word "truth" had exploded inside my head.
Yet, where I had left off and could do no more, some power beyond my knowledge seemed to take over and turn around what had been impossible and make it plausible and doable. Yes, I didn't just lie around and wait for things to happen – that's just not how it works. It's not the least bit difficult. You just have do all that you yourself can do and then you must fully expect to somehow get what you want!
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Again, I truly hope that you have been able to imagine, to see exactly what I did to get what I want.
I won't go into any deep analysis, yet in my own humble mind I can pick out the essential
steps you take to get more, to get what you want.
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