David McElroy

This is the first of a three-part series about where I’m going with my life and work.

When I was around 10 years old, I got interested in drawing. Although my parents had divorced and my father had custody, I still saw my mother at times. She was delighted with my newfound interest in art.

My father didn’t think much of the idea, but my mother got a full-time artist — one of her old college friends — to come to our house in Anniston, Ala., and talk with me about how I could develop my skills. Nothing came of that and I barely thought of it for years.

I’ve been thinking lately that this was one of the first skirmishes in an inner war — one that has been both intellectual and spiritual — that’s gone on inside me ever since I was a child. My parents represented very different approaches to intellect and life and philosophy.

Neither approach is wrong or evil. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Part of me is ruled by one and another part is ruled by the other. They’re both essential parts of me.

But for most of my life, I’ve followed my father’s rational and factual approach. It was about making direct arguments and seeing the world in concrete and practical terms. My mother’s approach was more artistic and abstract. Even mystical. It was about intuition and following what felt right.

It’s easier to make it in the world if you’re able to live by my father’s rules. But I’m slowly concluding that this pragmatic approach will never work for me. I’ve admitted this before. Several times. But I keep getting scared of the alternative.

I’m terrified to say this, but I fear that I’ll never have any peace until I follow my mother’s more intuitive and abstract path — right over the artistic cliff into the world of creation.

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I’m the hero of my own movie or television show. Each one of us is the protagonist of the novel of his own life.

In the narrative of my life, you might be the antagonist. Or maybe you’re the comic buffoon. Or the love interest. Or maybe you don’t exist in the narrative which plays out in my head.

From a very early age, I consciously chose characters who embodied the strengths I wanted to see in myself. More than anything, these were the things I wanted other people to see in me.

I wanted to be Capt. James T. Kirk, commander of the starship Enterprise. I wanted to be the hero who was admired for my many achievements. I wanted to be a leader among men. I wanted women to admire me. I wanted to be loved and adored.

In the last few days, I’ve been re-reading John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer-winning novel of southern literature, “A Confederacy of Dunces.” As I’m approaching the end of the book, I had a distressing thought.

What if I’m more like the tragicomic antihero of this book than I’ll ever be like Capt. Kirk? What if I’m a lazy and delusional man whose own failings make his life miserable?

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My life has become a long quest to resolve a crisis of faith.

It’s not just about religion or theology, though. It’s about all of life. I didn’t even recognize what was going on when it started. At one point, everything made sense. I had a coherent worldview. That’s what I thought anyway — until the foundations of my life broke down, one by one.

When I was young, everything made sense to me. I had what seemed to be a coherent “theory of everything.” I knew The Truth, not because I had found something, but simply because I had grown up being taught exactly how things ought to be.

My understanding of The Truth wasn’t just about theology or God or anything so narrow. I had an integrated set of beliefs about reality. About everything. They all fit together — like the parts of a beautiful building.

My “theory of everything” was a work of great art which had been designed with mathematical precision — by an architect who was also a great engineer.

The central pillar of that structure of beliefs was my father. Even though I now understand that my family was deeply dysfunctional, I believed that everything my father taught me was right and good. I got angry with him at times and I pushed back in small ways, but I was ultimately too afraid to rebel against this god-like father who ruled my life.

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