Life Beyond Measure

by Sidney Poitier

  My natural tendencies toward impulsive actions, however, didn’t vanish during my late teens or early adulthood, as flirtations with other kinds of risks arose. Those forms of dancing close to the flames, as I’ve referred to them, were part and parcel of the excitement that came from the day-to-day way of living in New York City. And all these many years later, yes, I do indeed still take risks: those that I feel are worth taking.

  Nor is my life altogether devoid of compulsions. Here is a list of those that remain: a compulsion to read more, and better understand the world around me; to keep an eye on the dualities inside me and try to center myself at the point of balance between as many pairs of opposites as I might; to experience all that I can. And, most of all, to learn all that there is to learn that might make of me a better person—with better insights and a deeper understanding of myself and of my fellow human beings. Such has been a preoccupation of mine, a life goal, perhaps the principal one, as far back as I can remember.

  What kind of compulsion, you might ask, draws me toward such internal wanderings—as to the nature of bravery versus cowardice, and as to the nature of human nature? Some of this drive comes to all of us when we reach the age when we become living time machines, seeing the lines of our lives stretching back and forward. Apparently, it can be a common affliction. Moreover, there are some instinctual qualities at work too numerous and certainly too difficult for me to comprehend, though I suspect there might be the presence of intangible forces from the distant past lingering still in the primal memory passed on to us, through the bloodline, from ancestors long gone—telling us who they were and how they came to be. The one unerring compulsion that I never try to rein in is the one to learn, to understand, to decipher complicated things and circumstances.

  Once again I return to the richness of mysteries everywhere, Ayele. There are probably more than we can imagine, safely hidden away in distant corners of our primal memories—like lost civilizations buried under the bottom of the seas, in other places we cannot imagine, where mysteries are awaiting the arrival of the curious travelers.

  One of the greatest discoveries of my expeditions is that stronger than the compulsion to dance close to the flame has been the urge in me to be a person whose life differentiated itself from that of a thief—a person who wanted always to be a better person.

  You may have questions here, Ayele. A better person than what? A better person who constantly is in search of enhancing that part of him that counts to him, not to any other authority. This was made certain as far back as when I arrived in Florida and the world there didn’t see anything but another black boy. In New York City, I lived in an area of all black people, and they saw me as just another one of them in the context of their lives. All along the way, there were signs that said, “You aren’t who you think you are,” blaring out to add, “Can you not see that you are not important? Don’t you know you’re barking up the wrong tree?”

  All of the measures I took at that point to reverse the condition of my circumstances—the struggle to improve—I have attributed to compulsion rather than to what some may see as bravery. Apparently, it is not uncommon for people to see bravery in the acts of others but take a lesser view of their own heroism. Many have saved lives in dangerous situations without regard for their own safety, only to reveal afterward that their only thought was to simply help someone in trouble.

  This tells us that there must be a very thin line between bravery and cowardice. Since bravery stands as the true opposite of cowardice, and the latter may be easier to describe, let me offer my take on its essence. Cowardice is a moment when fear paralyzes one with the imminent threat of having something come down upon them with devastating force. It might be damage to one’s view of oneself, damage to one’s reputation, damage to one’s most treasured plans, damage to one’s legacy.

  The weight of cowardice as it stands before an individual is always alarming, because it is one force rather than a combination of forces. It threatens to have a combination of devastating effects, and that makes it all the more frightening.

  Fear holds everybody to it. You turn a corner on an evening going home and run into fifteen guys, and they throw you up against a wall. If they want your money, or if they want to teach you a lesson, or intimidate you—any number of things—and you’re forced to give up your command over choices in your life, the only one you have left is cowardice. And cowardice says: “Listen, make a deal with these guys for the least harm.” Once you make that decision, you surrender yourself to whatever the abuse is going to be.

  Now, the challenge of cowardice comes in many other ways. Sometimes it comes slowly across a protracted period of time. And we fight against it as best we can. When you have to face something with no option to avoid it except to surrender in the face of that fear—it may be fear for your life, fear of losing your job, whatever the fear—once you surrender to that fear, you’re damaged. Surrender means, “I give up myself to your sacrifice.”

  Some people can make that adjustment, as long as they are not fatally harmed. Their reputation may be damaged, but they’re able to live with that. They’re upset with themselves, dehumanized, but they’re at least only a damaged piece of goods rather than dead meat, or left powerless or whatever it is. They’d rather accept it and try to rebuild, at least being alive to fight another day.

  But cowardice is debilitating; it saps your strength, it weakens you, sometimes to the point where it is difficult to recover. But, again, you may have been facing life or death, or loss of friendships, or your reputation, or your family’s circumstances, or your economic disposition. Whenever you are faced with those questions, cowardice can ameliorate the situation; cowardice can give you enough breathing room to survive long enough to correct some of it, so you look it in the face and say, “OK, I’m yours.”

  In adults, the economic and social circumstances of our lives are the places where cowardice usually has the advantage. If you are in a predicament, and you’re dealing with a person who has the say over whether your job takes a turn for the better or for the worse, that can be a circumstance where the question of cowardice might arise.

  If it is a question of your political persuasion, the question of cowardice might arise if the need in that circumstance is such that you are obliged to swallow your own politics and let it be known, dishonestly, that you are OK with a political position or activity that you actually think is reprehensible.

  There was a point in my career that I remember uncomfortably when the conditions of my employment were possibly contingent on my signing a patriotic loyalty oath specifically renouncing Paul Robeson. He was my hero and my friend, a man to whom is owed a debt of infinite gratitude by every person of color who has ever worked in any facet of the entertainment industry. When I think of the few people in whose presence I was starstruck—Robeson stands out above all. But because of his activism in civil rights and his possible association with left-leaning causes during the Cold War, he was under investigation by our government. Though in the final analysis I wasn’t required to sign the oath, I agonized over what to do in the interim. I could not and would not sign it, but whether those reactions were brave or cowardly came down to my deciding which master in my own conscience I was going to serve.

  Every American person—black, white, brown, or yellow—who aspires to a good, moral, and ethical life is vulnerable in the face of those who threaten them and can do them and their loved ones harm. And there you go when cowardice has you in its sights. Very few of us, including me, are going to say, “All right, this is me, you understand, and I ain’t going to take any…” On the other hand, there are times when all it takes to vanquish the bullying forces is that which we, including me, are capable of doing by having the courage to say, “No, this is a line that can’t be crossed,” or to speak out against wrongs, at our own expense, and to say, “This is unacceptable. This will not stand.”

  There are various scenarios in which the moment comes to choose between bravery and c
owardice, young Ayele, and sometimes we must pause to summon courage if it is not instantly present. Often we succeed, yet sometimes we fail. After all, we are only human.

  fourteenth letter

  CLOSE CALLS

  In preceding letters to you, dearest Ayele, I have written at length of what I know about facing fears and demons, about compulsions, and the narrow border separating bravery and cowardice. Those conclusions have come from actual incidents in my life that I recall again for you now—numerous close calls I have had with disaster. Some could have killed me; others could have left me damaged physically or emotionally, or could have otherwise altered the course of my life.

  One of the earliest such life-and-death encounters occurred while I was still a kid on Cat Island, curious and too adventurous for my own good. You may have heard about this escapade from other sources, but I feel it is worthwhile to repeat it here as a cautionary tale for you and your peers, lest curiosity ever get the better of you. This was the time when my impulsive exploration of the salt-pond tunnel nearly ended in my drowning. The one-hundred-foot-long, six-foot-deep, two-foot-wide tunnel, running from the sea to a pond where the water was collected to later evaporate into salt for the island’s inhabitants, was just too enticing for me to ignore. But the day I crawled into that long tunnel, with only a handmade gate holding the ocean at bay, could have been my last had I been able to open the gate from inside, as in my frightened state I foolishly tried to do. Water would have rushed in at fifty miles an hour, and I would have been trapped in the flood. The energies of the universe were with me that day when my efforts to push open the gate failed and I managed to extract myself from the tunnel.

  Some time after, when my family left the island, Nassau presented its own dangers, two of which I engaged in freely and of my own accord. As to the first, there was a giant warehouse more than five stories tall that held cargo arriving in the Bahamas from the United States and other places. The building was wider than it was long, and the dock in front of it ran several feet out above the sea.

  A small group of young boys engaged in thrilling leaps off the top of the building into the water on days when the building was closed. The danger of it soon swept me up. The trick was to stand at the rear of the roof of the building, then race forward as fast as possible, leaping mightily out and forward just as you neared the front edge—at enough of a distance to safely clear the dock below. To fail would have resulted in serious bodily harm, at the least. Luckily, the few of us lunatic enough to try it never failed.

  While those episodes had their serious physical danger, another offered a peril of its own. Having seen my first movie in Nassau, I acquired a taste for them, as had my friend Yorrick Rolle—my partner in the enterprise we developed to earn money for movie tickets by selling the peanuts we bought and roasted. When our proceeds still weren’t enough to cover the tickets, we conspired to devise another way of getting into the theater.

  I had noted a window that opened from the inside of the theater for ventilation purposes. It was a small window, and high enough that the theater manager could not imagine anyone climbing in. It was also a spot where passersby during the day would be hard-pressed to notice us sneaking in—unless they were up on a hill and could see us from that vantage point. So the way we worked it was, I would get up on Yorrick’s shoulders and climb inside. Once there, I could stand inside, lean the top part of my body back outside the window, and pull Yorrick up and help him get through the window.

  After we were both inside, we crawled under a floor-length curtain that hung in front of an opening near the screen that led backstage. Our next move was to slither along the floor through the first few rows of seats, and if there were vacant seats about the fourth or fifth row up, we would listen carefully, then suddenly pop up and sit as if we had been there all the time. We did this often, with much success.

  One day we snuck inside early, slithering into place so that we were sitting there before the movie started while people with tickets—honest people—came in and found seats. Suddenly, Yorrick and I each felt an urgent tap on the shoulder. We looked up, and standing there was a huge man, Mr. Baron Smith, the theater manager. “Get up,” he ordered us, adding, “come with me.”

  I knew Mr. Smith, and my father knew Mr. Smith, and Yorrick and I knew we were in big trouble. Reform school was our next stop.

  We meekly followed Mr. Smith into his office. He sat us down and said, “You know what you’re doing.”

  We said, “Yes, sir.”

  He said, “You know what’s going to happen to you.” Then he said directly to me, “I know Reggie. What do you think your father is going to say about you doing such a thing?”

  I couldn’t defend myself, and he then turned to Yorrick, whose father he didn’t know, and said, “What’s your name?”

  Yorrick told him, and together we tried to offer some kind of explanation, but mostly promised that we wouldn’t do it anymore.

  So Mr. Smith said to me, “I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to tell your father. I’m going to let you go, but if you ever, ever do this again, I’m not going to tell your father; I’m going to call the police.” Then he grabbed us up, led us to the front door, and shoved us out.

  Outside, we must have run for about a mile. In those days, even small criminal infractions by young boys often meant long stays in reform school (as Yorrick later found out when he was arrested alone one day with a stolen bicycle).

  There was another occasion that could have resulted in my spending years locked away. It occurred when I was fourteen and walking along an almost deserted Nassau street. An obviously older kid came riding by on a bicycle, going in the opposite direction. He was wearing biker gear and thus appeared to be from a family of means. When he drew near me and veered in my direction, I thought he was about to turn a corner behind me. Instead, he lashed out and punched me full in the face. When I recovered from my astonishment, I took off after him as he headed full speed toward Bay Street and the heart of the city. Angry, I searched as hard as I could, but I found no evidence of him or his bicycle.

  What was the danger here? He was white and I was black, and if I had found him, I would have tried to beat the daylights out of him, regardless of any witnesses. In colonial Nassau, with its disciplinary control over black people, my arrest and conviction would have been virtually assured. That day when I was unable to find him was a definite case of winning by losing.

  Then there was my encounter with Cardod, a big guy—and an acquaintance, though not someone I considered a good friend. With a reputation for being unpredictable and having unusual behavioral patterns, he had never done anything to rouse my concern. Since we were usually out swimming or hanging with the same group, I saw no reason to be on my guard around him.

  Then, one day after swimming, I was on the dock alone when Cardod showed up. We began talking, and suddenly he took a strange turn. I was amazed at the radical shift in his expression, and even more stunned at what happened next. He was carrying a piece of board almost four feet long, and all of a sudden, without warning, he hauled off and whacked me with it on the left arm. It was a very hard blow, and I was quite close to paralyzed by it.

  Knowing his reputation for unusual behavior, I was petrified and didn’t know how to react. I could tell that he felt he had done what he wanted to do, and that was to intimidate me. Whatever the words were that were coming out of his mouth, they implied that he felt justified in hitting me. Meanwhile, two things were on my mind. One was that he was in some sort of unbalanced mental state, and the other was that I was in immediate danger, because if he whacked me again he could do great damage; that board was quite a weapon.

  My thoughts ran the gamut: I am offended, yes. What am I going to do about it? What can I do about it? Is my arm in such a shape that I won’t be able to fight him? Should I jump him, and then what happens if he whacks me again? This was a point where the issue of bravery and cowardice came into play, and I was caught between the two. />
  But I soon realized that I was injured, he was armed, and there was little I could do other than go into a neutral state—a subject I’ll return to later on. It was enough to diffuse the situation. Afterward I would see Cardod around Nassau from time to time, and he acted as if absolutely nothing had happened. Yet every time I saw him, I felt enormous apprehension because of his unpredictability. It was a fear, a fear of violence being done against me and of having an even closer call with him. That feeling served to protect me from further harm, thankfully.

  Cut to: Miami, Florida. I’m fifteen years old, out by myself at night, and being accosted by a swarm of cops. I’d heard a lot about this before arriving in Florida but wasn’t afraid; I had already been shaped as a person by then. Even before leaving Nassau, I knew that I had a huge resentment to being maltreated. I was always a reasonable person, but I do think I have a volatile thing inside me—an explosive potential when provoked that I try to keep out of harm’s way. In America, I knew to be watchful of that, and whenever it threatened to flare, I somehow managed to get control of it.

  So though I was apprehensive, I was also angry when the cops decided to have some fun intimidating me—a young black boy alone on the streets at night, caught on the wrong side of town. They forced me to walk fifty blocks back into the black neighborhood. I knew that in Miami in the early 1940s they could have shot me, as they threatened to do, without consequence. But the fear of that did not quench the rage within me. Had I not suppressed it, I could have been just another black kid found dead of a gunshot in an alley, with little—if any—investigation afterward.