Foreword
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Growing up, I experienced some deprivation that was faintly understood as a boy. Ours was an energetic but tacitly loving home that lacked the emotional maturity to show it. I’ve been spared tragedy and abuse but not disappointment and regret. My life has not been extraordinary, but it does include heroic episodes.
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I’ve been helped along the way by an assortment of people: family members, neighbors, community leaders, teachers, coaches, professors, and colleagues. We exist in a highly individualistic society that blurs reality and the perception many people have of their own self-sufficiency.
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As with driving a car in traffic, playing basketball, and various other encounters, life is a team sport.
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In approaching this ninth decade of life, I was inclined to tell my story as it unfolded over the ages. My intent has been to provide family as well as friends with this history, and perhaps adversaries, but not to ceremonially publish it. The process of writing has been more revealing and joyful than I could have imagined.
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I started writing this memoir, Time Trials, in late 2018. Daughter Shannon came up with the title that has a double meaning. Telling the story was interrupted in May 2019, when on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I was humbled with a severe heart attack. This was not surprising, however, given my disposition to go about activities with vigor. I had overdone it working in the yard until late afternoon. I went inside for water and was overcome with pain, dizziness, and nausea.
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The recovery was strong, I suspect because in many ways my cardiovascular system had been developed over the years to sustain stress.
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A couple months later, I returned to my computer and opened Time Trials again. I hesitate to call this labor or work, because my writing has been pure pleasure and play. During solitude times of the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020, writing has helped me to maintain serenity, energy, and peacefulness.
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I’m not one to write from an outline, as most of us were taught in a composition class. I have some chronology, events, and ideas in mind then allow the narrative to take me where it will. The result has been gratifying. Some chapters along the way have been surprising, and the consequences revealing.
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I begin with the early years of life through grade school, high school, then college. After this, adventures take on a voice of their own and digress into more topics on life, learning, and culture than I anticipated. The story could go on, but it concludes with two chapters that seemed fitting—the art of loving and death that could be called the art of dying.
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I’ve included various chapters, to be interchanged periodically, on the website www.richardvanscotter.com along with a link to the book. Son Philip is the webmaster for this venture. Designing websites is not his career, but I could not have enlisted a more resourceful artist.
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I hope you find my episodic tale engaging and encourage you to offer comments, if so inclined.
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My life began during an austere era. Still, it was a fortuitous time to be born. The Great Depression lingered, and World II was underway. It witnessed the United States riding the crest of economic prosperity and global dominance during my formative teenage years. My generation practically was guaranteed to prosper more than our parents. And most of us did.
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Ours was labeled the Silent Generation for good reason. We were self-indulgent, willfully ignorant, and naively complacent. Yet, we worked and played hard. It was a joyful time for many. “Happy Days”!
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As decades passed, our nation became increasingly profligate and decadent. This anxious affluence is cloaked with extreme wealth by the few, opulence of some, and desperate poverty for too many families. Our penchant for violence, an extensive gun culture, and military overreach is based on fear. Fear of losing what we perceive to be essential and indispensable. Most, if not all, of it isn’t.
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We are inclined to rationalize about “protecting our freedoms.” Freedom from “bad guys'' abroad, much of which is overblown. And freedom domestically from wearing masks and physical (social) distancing during a pandemic. This is no more an imposition than observing stop signs or wearing seat belts when driving a vehicle. Both are matters not just of personal safety but also respecting the public good.
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The United States is viewed by many across the world landscape as a benevolent, generous, liberal protector. Others see us as a dangerous, militaristic, belligerent behemoth. Both are right. Truth often is in the paradox.
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Our geographic and personal overreach has resulted in the illusion of greatness, global arrogance, and decline of the empire.
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As you will read, I “go with the flow,” and hope readers enjoy the journey. If it causes you to think more openly and deeply about your life and our challenged society that’s all to the good.
RVS
All truth passes through three phases.
First, it is ridiculed?
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as the truth.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
German Philosopher