The best-laid schemes o'Mice an' MenSome thing in his brogue makes it difficult for folks to remember this quote accurately, though strangely no one ever struggles with Auld Lang Syne, another product of Burns' prolific and pilfering pen. Still, I should not be sidetracked by linguistic pursuits. I have a story to tell.
Gang aft agley
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy.
Burns, as many poets, being a disillusioned romantic, only tells half the truth. The bleak half. Men's schemes do often go "agley," but not always to man's detriment. We are fortunate, in fact, that our plans do not always work out, for man is a myopic, tendentious, and narrow beast whose dreams, born of the detritus and debris of a cluttered subconscious, are too insular to befit truly the majesty of opportunities available in this world. Ways, as Frost said, lead to other ways and we cannot return and I believe we are the better for it. We must move forward. That is the only way to travel. Regrets and other attempts to live in the past fail. Always. It is a fundamental law of the universe. Time flows onward.
We should therefore keep living life, because we never know where it will take us. Try not to fail, of course, but if, after failing, we pick ourselves up, bruised and bloody though we may be, even these failures may be stepping stones and not grave stones.
* * *
It had been a weekend of feverish preparations. I'd read two complete books and countless websites and articles to get ready. I had written three condensed reports. I had learned the proper protocol and consulted everyone I could. Still, sweaty and shaky, my mind in a haze, I was admitted to Her Royal Highness's presence.
The ups and downs of fate that had brought me to have an audience in the private chambers of a Saudi princess are a testament to the importance of not giving up. I have failed as often as I have succeeded and am ashamed to admit that I have let my failures too often weigh heavily upon me. Pride is damning. It was pride that kept me from admitting that I had failed at my attempts to graduate from Princeton all alone. It was a destructive selfishness that drew me in upon myself to the point that I could not see beyond my own misery. It was pride that put me in the position to fail in the first place, because I had said to myself: sink or swim I'll go it alone. Still, there is something to learn in our failures, for in them we can see revealed our weaknesses. A weakness hidden, especially from oneself, is a dangerous minefield. We require signposts to warn us of our own pitfalls.
Fate, fortunately, had something else in mind. It brought me to Maryland to the home of my brother. In the year and some months since then, I have learned more than in any comparable period of time save only my mission, a likewise difficult and sometimes painful experience. I got a job much to quickly for a college drop out by using (or abusing) contacts. A few emails to an old boss put me in touch with my current boss working at a medium-size non-profit in DC which specialized in the Arab World. It is a stressful job that requires me to leave my comfort zone on a daily basis, but in time, the absolute necessity of a paycheck kept bringing me back and I found my comfort zone expanding and some of my former confidence, broken by scholastic failures, returning. I am reminded of what Alma and Amulek taught the Zoramites: sometimes terrible circumstances force us to be humble and humble people are meek and meek people are open to learn. So, stressed as I was, I endured.
I have learned a great deal about office life and my circumstances force me to deal with the same people day after day, something I am typically loathe to do. I used to rotate cafeterias and restaurants at school lest any of the workers or fellow diners get to know me and start talking to me. This is not to imply that I am somehow gregarious now, but I have improved. I have learned one of the key lessons of life: I am not that special. My circumstances are not so unique that the laws of life and the world do not apply to me. It is pride that says: I do not need to abide by the rules of others. It is arrogance to assume that we can travel our idiosyncratic path and not follow the same "rules of the game" as others.
After nearly a year in this position I received a breathless phone call:
"Are you still interested in doing that project on King Faisal we talked about?" my coworker said as her slight Texan drawl sneaked through a few vowels.
"Sure," I said, "but this is a very time consuming assignment. I'm not sure I can do it and still work here and help get things ready for the Gala."
"No, that's fine. I understand. The Princess would like to meet with you."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The Princess would like to meet with you and hire you to research her father. Can you meet with her tomorrow?"
There was a moment of silence until I found the bottom of my jaw and finally responded with a yes. A moment later and a phone call from my boss repeated the above conversation and added that I was to devote the next ten hours to preparing.
I left off work early and walked to clear my thoughts. I called every family member I could reach and was buoyed by their boisterous yeses. I walked vaguely in the direction of my apartment, 20 miles away, following the roads under which ran the subway. DC is a strange city. It has both depth and superficiality all stacked one on top of the other. There is beautiful architecture that uplifts and exalts and the most base, perfunctory soviet-style concrete that does not even deserve to be called architecture all of which is intermingled and interpolated. I walked for miles and could not bring myself to enter the stifling tombs of the Metro underground. My thoughts fly more freely in the open air.
I thought about a lot of things. I was planning to return to school. I was planning to buy a better car. I had a kinds of things in the works. I had plans, dang it. Of course, I had had plans before. I had planned to graduate Princeton and get a nice quiet academic job. I had planned to work for the CIA. I had planned to travel the world. I had had plans. Yet, here I was, despite all those plans, walking down the streets of DC contemplating a job offer that had never crossed my radar.
I had been recommended to work for a princess of Saudi Arabia as a researcher to help find materials to found an archive dedicated to her father, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, was died in 1975. It was not, in my original understanding at this time, to be a very exciting job. Still, a princess is a princess and an invitation to a royal audience is to not be accepted or rejected lightly.
A strange thought occurred to me in my wanderings in and amongst the impressive array foreign embassies along Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues. I looked back over my past many years and then recalled something my boss, who is Mormon, said. She said that she thought God had placed me here for this job. That she and I met many years ago in passing at BYU, where I worked for a summer, just to get me to a place where I could work here and get hired by the Princess. Now, I believe in the scriptures, but there are things in them that I don't understand or concepts that I still struggle to accept. One of these has been the concept that God is operative in all aspects of our lives. On the surface I can accept it, but when I think about the thorny territory of human agency versus divine fiat, I struggle.
As I walked, I thought this just might be true. God had given me some scattered and completely random experiences that were beginning to come together. I had worked during my time at USU at the USU Special Collections and Archives where I processed and created new collections. I spent time assisting with book collections, photo collections, and even some limited time with the people who repair manuscripts and books, though I cannot claim any expertise. I had met Mona in passing only once, but both of us remembered the meeting and then we wind up in DC at the same time, me needing a job, and her needing to fill a job with someone with knowledge of the Arab World. At Princeton, though I did not graduate, I had worked in the map archives translating and cataloging maps of the Middle East and Europe. My gift for research and my penchant for calligraphy are what brought me to the attention of HRH Princess Haifa who asked me do some research. Though my initial efforts were at best abortive, I nevertheless must have made an impression.
So, here I am, about to meet with a princess for an amazing job opportunity. I, a little farm boy from Utah who isn't even sure his farm qualifies as a farm, full of doubt and prevarications, am about to go into the service of a world-famous princess to work on a project that will last for generations. I was admitted to her suite in DC with my boss and a coworker who also works for the Princess. I would say she is not what I expected, but I cannot honestly say what I expected a princess to look like. My only knowledge of princesses comes from tabloids about British royalty and Disney cartoons. She is a remarkable woman of grace, with graying curls and a Mona Lisa smile. I managed to introduce myself and fumblingly handed my report to her for her review. She introduced me to her two teenage sons who shortly excused themselves to visit stores in the area.
I had anticipated talking more and while I would normally have described myself as one nonplussed by celebrity and royalty - I did, after all, once meet Charles Grodin! Yet I was totally plussed. I spoke as clearly as I could and she complemented my research up to that point as my coworkers smiled at me and I turned beet red. It is not an easy thing to endure a compliment. We discussed details of my project and when I stumbled, my coworkers helpfully filled in the conversation.
It became clear to me that I had underestimated the project for which I was being tasked. I had expected a job that would take several months and involve culling newspaper archives and a few libraries, but Her Royal Highness quickly asked whether I would be able to visit every country His Majesty King Faisal had visited, and those countries which had relations with Saudi Arabia in order to acquire a thorough collection of all primary documents relating to his life.
I said yes. I said yes!! What was I thinking. Who agrees to that? I just said I was capable of creating an archive of the entire life of one of the most important political figures of the twentieth century. I am utterly insane. I am giving up school, a settled apartment, any chance of a long term relationship for the next year at least, all for a project I'm not sure I can do!!!
Her Royal Highness graciously thanked me and expressed her confidence saying she had finally met someone in whom she had confidence to do the work she needed done. The conversation turned to other matters, but I wanted out. My mind was whirring at the prospect of what I had just agreed to do, to become. Before we left, it was agreed that I would come to Riyadh in May for an exhibit on the life of King Faisal and there see the archives as they existed now in order to assess what needs to be gathered to complete the records.
I was then hit with the next in a line of many shocks that day: Prince Turki, brother of Princess Haifa and former Ambassador to the United States would like to meet with me. He, too, was impressed with the preliminary research sketches I had done and my plan for the archives. After a nervous lunch during which I managed to pronounce all Italian menu items as French and the French items as Italian, I was escorted to the suite of HRH Prince Turki there to discuss some more details. He had a dignified bearing and way of being silent that bore into my soul as I sat on the couch. We discussed much of what I had discussed with Princess Haifa, but this time I was all alone, save for the Prince's British secretary. We discussed his father, the King, and what he would like to see. He promised to have his people send me copies of all materials already gathered and then he asked me to draft an employment agreement, an agreement, not a contract, because, "Agreements are between friends and we are friends." It's the same legally, I suppose, but words are important in Arab culture in a way we utilitarian Americans struggle to grasp as we casually throw words around ignorant of their history and their impact.
The rest of the day and the days following have been amazingly normal. Normality seems miraculous when juxtaposed with the miraculous. So now I am preparing myself for a job that will take me to nearly every part of the world, from Texas to Paris, from Cairo to Moscow and, of course, here in Washington, DC. All this because I failed at college. Had I not dropped out, I would undoubtedly be in a comfy but staid tenure-track position having missed out on a great opportunity because I had never failed.
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