l Bruce Salem's Bio Page

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Bio Page for Bruce B. Salem

Welcome to my Bio page. I thought that I would approach this by setting the story as a set of themes in my life so far. A picture of who I am should emerge with some coherence.

Don't take anything for granted

I never had that illusion of immortality and invincibility that many people have until middle age when death and limitations suddenly and shockingly reach their awareness. I never took my presence on this world for granted and never just assumed that tomorrow would come. If truth be told I shouldn't have made it, or it was a long shot that I would have survived the traumas of my arrival, born at six months and weighing in at a mere two pounds, and being born at a time when most babies my size didn't survive, or if they did had multiple serious impairments. I was damaged by the efforts to save me, but I got off light even as compared to people my own age who were more seriously afflicted. I lost one eye and have impaired vision in the other one. My Dad used to say half jokingly that I "was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other one" and he was right. I also got moderate Spastic Diplega, walk with a limp and have the other mannerisms of a person with Cerebral Palsy.

You are not just what you do for a living.

Ever notice how often an introduction involves the question "What do you do?" People probably used to ask about your religion and made assumptions based on what dialect you spoke, how you dressed, or your last name. Kinship and clan is replaced by job description. Now, I have a career and degrees, but I was pleasantly surprised recently when someone asked me "What is your passion?" I felt blessed enough to be able to tell her about my life-long passion for serious music, which is what my web site is about. I know that she got to know much about me from the way my eyes lit up and the conversation got animated. This passion is not the way I have made a living in the past.

I am resisting the temptation to write an autobiography here, and especially just to give a chronology. Also, writing a resume or curriculum vitae doesn't do justice. If I just wanted to sell myself, I'd write a business website with a business plan. What I have done for a career is less important than a self portrait. It might include somewhere what I have done in the past or, more importantly, what I dream of.

Letting Go

I am approaching Sixty, by a couple of years, and taking stock of myself I would say that I have alot of life yet to live and alot that I want to accomplish. Most people go through some kind of course correction at about this time of their life due to the combination of social expectations changing and internal changes of body and mind.

In some ways life becomes simpler.

Many of the things that seemed important decades ago and stayed important for some time lose their appeal.

One begins to feel loss and to have to deal with it.

For some people this loss is tangible, divorce or death of loved ones or friends, loss of one's parents, career change. It takes courage to have faith in the adage that in change comes new opportunity and to not lose hope.

I am convinced that cynicism is an easy way out, the path of defeat and laziness. Anger, too, is not enough. It is largely a waste of time and an excuse for not being in control of one self. Even if the world is am awful place, one has only oneself to hold to account for not making the best of it. Having children also compels one to consider what one's actions say about them and their prospects. One takes courage from loving them.

It is letting go of the attachments of the past that is the most important part. People seem to arrive at this stage, if at all, past middle age, but some are lucky or wise to make the realization earlier that much of what you cling to in the past and caused you to get angry about losing is just not really worth it at all. Anger is such a waste of time. People don't really either know much about you or really care. So, fears about what they think about you don't really matter. Not being in charge of yourself because you are afraid of being judged is just a waste. What is the worst thing that an happen? Some person who doesn't really love you is going to leave, which they would have done anyway, or you might get fired or laid off. So what? This is not the end of the world. If you pay attention to who you are and what you want you will find people who love you as you are and you will seek and get to do what you love to do. All you have to do is ask and not care what everybody else does, you are unique enough to find the niche just for you and the people who support you in what you are now.