To Learn, to Love, to Live

by David J. Strumfels

Illustration by Dell Harris

It was well past midnight by the time Bill Malone got home from his twelve-hour shift at the Jiffy Mart. Exhausted, he dragged himself into his compartment, hoping for nothing more than his usual warm shower and mug of cocoa before collapsing into bed. He knew, of course, that Janet would be long asleep; her job at the arboretum was no less taxing than his own, and she had been putting in extra hours so they could afford his classes and study materials.

But Janet was not asleep. To the contrary: she practically grabbed him before the door was closed, and pulled him over to the pad before he could make any protest. Once there, there were no words: she simply turned him toward the pad and let him read the contents.

His exhaustion was instantly forgotten. “All right! We re in! We made it!”

He scrolled through the letter again and again, hardly able to believe the words. Graduate school! At last! Finally, he was on his way to a real job. A real career. Hell, a real life.

It was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And not just to him, of course: he felt Janet’s hand on his shoulders, her smile on the back of his head, her warmth in his soul. Reaching back, he took her hand and squeezed it tightly, almost too tightly. “This makes it all worth while,” he said, close to trembling. “All the years of hard work. They’ve finally paid off.”

“The hard years,” Janet reminded him with a return squeeze of equal intensity, “are just beginning.”

He could only nod his head at that. It was true of course; it was still a long, difficult road to where they wanted to be, one filled with more than its share of potholes, icy roads and dead ends. This might be the most exciting moment of their lives, but Bill knew it was preceding many very difficult ones. Bill had a feeling there would come a day when his shifts at the Jiffy Mart would sound like a wonderful dream he’d once had.

“But we’ll get through them all right,” she said, reading his mind as usual. “You’ll see.”

The first day of school only reinforced that feeling. The classroom was filled with people much like himself: ambitious, grimly-determined faces which had gone through just as much as he had to get here, and were as determined to not be among the two-thirds who didn’t make the cut. Professor Eisenhart’s first lecture didn’t help either: “The first thing you’re going to get through your heads is this isn’t Greenpeace or some other feel-good club where you pay your dues and pat yourself on the back. When I’m finished with you—those of you still left—you’re going to know Mother Earth and how she works better than a doctor knows her patient. And if you think you’re ecology-minded now, believe me: you’re the Marquis de Sade fancying himself a lover of women. So if any of you are doubting your commitment… now is the time to step aside before you put in a lot of time and hard work for nothing. There are no faint hearted types in this field, believe me.”

When he told Janet, however, she didn’t flinch, or look the slightest bit concerned. “Bill Malone, if there’s one thing nobody can doubt about you, it’s your commitment,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Bill grinned at her confidence in him, not to mention the gigantic hug and kiss that accompanied it. But that didn’t make his studies any easier. By mid-term he was already beginning to wonder what was so bad about being a grunt at the Jiffy Mart anyway. At least it was a steady job with a steady income, not to mention a minimum of headaches. A life like that—-but then he thought of the child they hoped to have some day: that child deserved a better life, whether he wanted it or not. Besides, giving up now would be an act he’d never live down. He couldn’t do it, not after all he’d been through.

The decision turned out to be the correct one. Amazingly, he not only passed that first final but—of the correctly predicted one-third of the original class remaining—got the highest mark. Eisenhart gave him a wink as he passed out the scores: “I’ve told the rest of the faculty not to cut you any slack, Malone,” he said. Janet, naturally, was ecstatic, and they celebrated with a filet of soy steak and the best organic wine they could afford. “I told you,” she said afterward, when the lights were low and the music soft. “I told you you could do it.”

Things didn’t get any easier after that, however. Bill learned more than he would have thought possible to stuff into his head: chemistry, geology, meteorology, climatology, hydrology, biology, zoology, botany, toxicology, herpetology, ichthyology, ornithology, entomology, mycology… merely keeping all the names straight was a strain, much less all he had to know about them. And those, he discovered, were just the fundamental sciences he had to be grounded in before he could hope to master the skills he would need. But his professors were not sympathetic to his groans: “We tried ignorance,” one finally made it plain, “and it doesn’t work.”

Fortunately, Janet was always there to keep his spirits up when it seemed like he could hardly keep the world under his feet another moment. “You can make it,” she would say while rubbing his shoulders and back, sore from so many hours hunched over the pad, “You know you can make it. All you have to do is stay at it and you’ll get there.”

“If I do, it’ll be because of you,” he would thank her, and return to his studies with a vengeance. She never said anything to that, of course: it was too obviously true for her to deny. Without her, he would never have made it this far, and they both knew it.

The second year got heavily into philosophy and environmental ethics. Again, it was nothing like his undergraduate courses, where he’d been required to do little more than mouth the professor’s personal biases: he was expected to do real thinking here. Animal rights, for example: while Bill couldn’t agree with all of Dr. Heron s postulates on the metaphysical basis of rights, he discovered for himself why it was criminal to regard any competing species as “pests,” and to ruthlessly exterminate them, regardless of its effects on the human population. Then there was the hypothesis, or concept was perhaps the better term, of Gaia, the notion that the entire planet was in fact a single living organism, with its own body and mind, and rights. They spent an entire semester on that, and the planetary consequences of technological development. For the first time, Bill wondered if it was getting to be too much even for Janet; she seemed increasingly distracted when he got into those discussions. Finally she confessed she just couldn’t follow him anymore: “You’ve graduated to a higher plane of consciousness, I’m afraid, one that I can’t reach.”

The big test came in the third and fourth years. Both of them had been expecting him to start his field work for some time, of course. But Janet couldn’t give up her job at the arboretum to join Bill in the rain forests of New Guinea, or the frozen wastes of Antarctica. Or the deserts of Mexico with his Native American spiritual guide. Those eighteen months were the toughest in his life. But there was no doubting the value of his experiences; you could learn an enormous amount about the Earth in classrooms but until you lived with her, intimately and continuously, you didn’t really have the kind of relationship you needed if you were to work with her without exploitation.

The same lack of intimacy, however, pressed even Janet’s patience to its limit. More and more Bill could sense the frustration and resentment inside her, the increasing anger at the long separations, and her loneliness. It was made worse by her growing inability to understand what he was learning, however hard he tried explaining it to her.

Still, he knew eventually the trials would be over, these hard moments behind them and their future happy and confident again. Or at least, he thought he knew. But when the time came that she burst out with the accusation that he loved Gaia more than he loved her—how could she not see that both were one and the same, that each reinforced the other?—that was the first time he finally permitted himself to wonder if they would one day go their separate ways.

It was also the last time he ever thought about quitting the program.

It was the culmination of his studies, however, that finally strained their marriage to the breaking point. “Don’t you realize how dangerous that is?” Janet screamed at him when he told her about the astronaut training. “You could get killed! Why do you have to do this? Why?”

“It’s important that I do this,” was his answer. “Try to understand: you can’t really comprehend something until you step away from it and study it as a whole; and you can’t grasp your connectedness to it until you try to detach yourself from it,” He started to say more, than sighed at the absurdity of even trying to make her understand what was so obvious to him anymore. He shook his head: there was a time when they shared so much; now—

The simple fact was, he was not the same Bill Malone she’d married. All of a sudden that was clear in a way it had not been before; clear as an unpolluted night sky, blazing with stars. These last few years had transformed him, in ways and to an extent he could not even have imagined in advance. More important, that she could not imagine now. The simple fact was she could no longer understand. Or even communicate. She didn’t possess the knowledge, or wisdom, to do so.

He could not bring himself to give up yet, however. “Do you want me to go back to the Jiffy Mart?” he finally offered, wondering what he would do if she said yes. But she did not say it; “I suppose not. Anyway, it’s too late to start over.” Her eyes settled upon his. “All right, Mr. Malone: go to the Moon and the stars if that’s what you have to do. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Hearing that made him feel better. It was good to know that she hadn’t given up yet either.

He didn’t go that far. But six months in orbit, studying the global effects of pollutants on the ozone layer, while spending four hours in meditation each day before the blue-green Goddess of all life, transformed Bill in a way that even contact with an alien civilization couldn’t have. And in some very specific ways. “I’ve been thinking a great deal,” he revealed one of them to Janet when he got back. “I know the law allows us to have our one child, but…”

The divorce proceedings were begun the next day. Bill exhaled the tensions of the last couple of years; in retrospect he’d seen it coming for so long now that to finally have it happen was more denouement than climax. He was even able to find some humor in the situation: at least he wouldn’t have to worry about cheating on his spouse when he became a Big Businessperson, or whatever he would be eventually.

Assuming he ever had time for that part of life again. Or interest.

He went to see Professor Eisenhart immediately after the graduation ceremonies. His old prof still had the grimness, the same steel in his manners, but he greeted Bill warmly. “I’ve been expecting you for some time, my boy. How does it feel to be finally among the elite?”

“It’s hard to believe I was ever anything else,” Bill admitted. “That I spent so much of my life in ignorance—and worse, thought I was enlightened the whole time.”

“Now you understand what I meant with that remark about the Marquis de Sade,” Eisenhart laughed. They laughed together. He did indeed understand.

“Now get out there, Bill Malone, and don’t cut ’em any slack.”

Bill grinned. He was ready, and knew it.

It was a few hours later, while packing his stuff from his and Janet’s compartment, that he came across the letter. His first reaction was surprise that he’d never bothered to trash it, even after four years. Of course he realized that it must have had special significance when he’d first read it, but that was practically a lifetime ago…

The best thing that ever happened to you. And not just to you: Janet’s hands are on your shoulders, her smile on the back of your head, her warmth in your soul. Reaching back, you take her hand and squeeze it tightly, almost too tightly.

He wasn’t sure how the tears started, or how long he’d been crying. Or, once he realized it, how long Janet had been standing behind him, watching his convulsions. Perhaps hours.

“Where did we screw up?” he asked without turning. “How did it end up like this? How?”

How? Don’t ask how. It just happens, that’s all. People go their paths; sometimes they’re different paths, even if they start at the same place. That’s life.

“Don’t be so defeatist,” she said, reading his mind again. “Sometimes, people just get lost. Or get left behind on the trail for a while. But if you give them enough time…”

This time he did turn. She sat down, and placed a hand on his arm. “Read the letter again,” she instructed him, with a soft smile on her face. “More carefully.”

“Wha—?” But he did so, though how a four-year-old letter—he read it again, this time more carefully. Then again. And again. Then he was scrolling through it over and over, unable to believe its contents, his hands and heart trembling. And something wild inside him, fighting to break out.

This was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“It came for me just this morning,” she explained. “I was going to tell you. I—I’m going to need a lot of help to get through the next four years. Especially if everything you told me about Professor Eisenhart is true. But I’m sure I can make it. I know I can.”

He was crying again, but this time it was from joy. “I know you can, too. I’ve always known it. You have absolutely nothing to worry about. We’ll get through it all right, you’ll see.”

He made many other confident statements as well. But it was the gigantic hug and kiss that communicated his feelings better than anything.

Getting his first position proved easier than Bill had expected. Of course he had a wealth of assignments to pick from, but since they were all going to be ground-floor opportunities it made sense to take the one he was already most familiar with. It was pure serendipity that the management opening at the Jiffy Mart developed at the same time he received his degree.

The suit and tie were uncomfortable, but Bill knew he would get accustomed to them. Nor did he ever complain, even inwardly, about the long hours; running a business, even a small business, in an environmentally sound manner was in itself more than reward for the time and energy. As Janet was learning herself, to serve Gaia was an honor, not a burden.

He did wish they had more time together. What precious little time they did have was almost entirely devoted to her studies. Sometimes it got so bad he found himself wishing she would go back to her job at the arboretum, and leave loving the Earth to him. But only half wishing—she couldn’t give up now, not after all they’d been through. Besides, he knew that once Janet completed the path he’d been down, their relationship would be that much the richer for it. Yes, it was well worth the struggle, however hard it became and however long it lasted.

For after all, in the end that was the whole point of it, wasn’t it? To learn how to love all living things without sacrificing your own life or its loves. To be one and one with the whole. To interconnect while still feeling your own heart beat. To live life to its greatest and smallest.

If so, then he had passed the final with flying colors.

Content

To Learn, to Love, to Live
by David J. Strumfels