“Who is it that can
tell me who I am?” 
William Shakespeare

Meeting new people is a refreshing, energizing experience for me. I’ve always been outgoing, even at a very young age. Some might recall the title bestowed upon me by my elderly neighbor, Sam Young, when I was about ten years old: The Ambassador of 38th Avenue. It’s the title of one of my books. I’ve never been shy about introducing myself to people — that is, until I reached the age when, as a single young man, I was meeting women. For some reason, any self-confidence I had at that time abandoned me in those situations.

It is a strange thing that some of us need others to help us understand who we are. While I was unusually social for my age in my elementary school years, my self-confidence among my peers was non-existent. I’m at a loss to explain why. I could relate quite effectively with older kids, younger kids, and adults, but there seemed to be some kind of barrier preventing me from making healthy connections with kids my own age.

When I got into high school, things were different. It seemed easy for me to relate to my peers. It was one particular teacher, however, who saw something in me that I did not see in myself. Though it was totally undeserved, he invited me to join him, and one of my classmates, to spend the summer working in Jamaica. I met someone there who, three years later, offered me (and the student I was with in Jamaica) a full-time teaching job in a respected Catholic high school in the Bahamas. When I returned to the United States, I was offered a position teaching two classes per day at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San José while I completed my undergraduate studies at Santa Clara University.

While working my first local full-time teaching job, at Saint Christopher School here in San José, my principal urged me to pursue a Master’s degree in school administration, telling me that I had excellent leadership skills, of which I was unaware at the time. During my years in the Master’s program at the University of San Francisco, I needed a job to finance my way through the second year of the program. When I walked into Kennedy Business Machines in San José to get my typewriter fixed so that I could update my résumé, I was unexpectedly offered a position as Operations Manager for the company. The owner, who I had met while teaching at Saint Christopher School, had recognized something in me I had not recognized in myself. He told me that I had excellent organizational skills, which was exactly what the job required.  

It was only through the observations of others that I came to recognize some of the strengths with which I had been blessed. 

Of course, the response of one of my elementary school teachers, when she learned that I was a teacher, was to burst out laughing. She simply could not imagine me managing a classroom full of students, much less having anything of value to teach them. This is precisely what Africa Brooke is referring to in the quote above. 

People who know me today, and did not have the opportunity to know me when I was younger, might be surprised to hear that I had a quick temper. I lacked patience in certain situations. In fact, I removed myself from coaching due to my inability to respond appropriately to questionable officiating. Even as a parent watching my kids play sports, I was a less-than-ideal role model for my kids and the community when I over-reacted to situations on the court or field. I’m not proud of this past, but it is a part of who I am. 

For those who do remember those days, they might be shocked to realize that today, I am calm, content, peaceful, and an excellent mediator in conflict situations. It would be nice if those individuals could lose all recollections of the confrontational person I once allowed myself to be. 

Irish writer Oscar Wilde reminds us of something we should always remember: “All saints have a past, and all sinners have a future.”