Lee Geiger

Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore.

Dorothy Bryant

It’s a damp and colorless Sunday morning in Moraga, and I’m exactly where I’m programmed to be; cooling my heels in a cozy booth at the local greasy spoon waiting on a deliciously sloppy breakfast. A biblical rain pours from the sky, and I swear I just saw Noah’s Ark sail across the town’s cavernous sinkhole. Reality sets in that Moraga’s infrastructure nightmare will soon turn an embarrassing one-year-old, which begs the obvious question; what do you give a sinkhole for its birthday?

A yellow legal pad waits with the patience of Job to record my thoughts for an upcoming Prophet. The top of the page screams “WHAT I BELIEVE,” which must mean something important because I’ve underlined it three times. The rest of the sheet is eerily blank, just like it’s been for the last fifteen minutes. That’s not a surprise, though, since the only cohesive thought coursing through my brain concerns the absence of carbs in my stomach. I check my watch for the umpteenth time and shoot a cold stare towards the short-order cook, a hulking Latino who could bench press me ten times without breaking a sweat. He and the pretty cashier are kibitzing in Spanish like brother and sister, laughing at an inside joke I’ll never get.

Literary lightning suddenly strikes, and I grab my pen and furiously jot down my opening salvo–“Everybody has a story to tell.” One hour and a full tummy later, a dozen solid convictions, most of them painted with a political brush, are scribbled in front of me. Ecstatic over my progress, I sprint home to transcribe them onto my computer. I tune to the Golf Channel for some background noise and immediately a shag bag full of golf related musings slice their way onto my list. Later that morning, I turn around and scan my bookshelves, and before I can say “what’s for lunch,” another dozen or so ruminations ranging from parenting to presidents have muscled their way into the “What I Believe” conversation.

This self-examination process, once opened, pours out like ants to syrup. Whether bantering with my colleagues at work, surfing the ‘Net, sweating it up at the gym, sipping wine with The Pretty Blonde, sneaking out to Loards for ice cream, mindlessly watching “Law and Order” reruns, skyping with my sons, reading a book by Tom Friedman, or driving my 20-year old minivan to Safeway, more and more judgements, reflections, ponderings and introspections make their case for forming the foundation of my belief ecosystem. Truth be told, this might be the most engrossing task I’ve attempted in years.

The most important component of this exercise, however, is taking the time to WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. Post-it notes, napkins, envelopes, even the back of store receipts, have all become repositories for my non-stop train of thought. My aging memory bank misfires often nowadays, and principles that seem so vitally important to my very existence can vanish in a nanosecond when I’m busy shopping for light bulbs.

A task that was supposed to take hours has instead taken days, and what I’m left with is a scattered train wreck of almost 250 “beliefs” ranging from politics to sports to food to entertainment. I need to focus because, to me at least, believing in everything is the same as believing in nothing. I sharpen my pencil and got to work editing this ideological mess. My filters during this process are as follows;

1. Eliminate judgments that “don’t travel well.” By that I mean excluding statements such as “I believe in local government,” when in fact I might feel differently if I was forced to live somewhere not quite as pleasant as Moraga. Sinkholes notwithstanding.
2. Dismiss pronouncements based on recent behaviors, i.e. “Donald Trump is a (fill in the blank), “Liberal protests are (fill in the blank),” or the one major can of worms that irritates the bejesus out of me, “The San Francisco 49ers flat-out stink.”
3. Delete postulations that only a small sample set of my readers would understand or appreciate. The best example of this was “Bix is the best bar in San Francisco.” Which it is, of course.
4. Finally, eliminate beliefs that, on a strength-of-conviction scale from 1-10, didn’t register a rock solid one-point-Oh No!

The final result is “What I Believe.” Hands down, writing and editing this post is the single most cathartic experience of my adult life. Words cannot describe the level of contentment and satisfaction I receive from compiling such a list. Not only did I express to the world how I feel about a myriad of topics, without having to justify or defend them to a skeptical audience, but I discover more about who I am, what I’m made of, and which values and experiences have shaped the person I am today. The exercise is exciting, enlightening, and, most of all, more fun than a night out with George Clooney. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Next week’s post: “What I Believe- A Summary of Reader Reactions.”