I was smart enough to get into college, but too messed up to get through college, and I was thrown out of two different schools because I never attended class.

I don’t understand why nobody spotted my distress, I guess I was good at hiding it,  but the good news for me is that I finally found a place of learning that would accept me, understand me and that I loved and where I worked very hard studying.

It was the University of Me. I speak their language there, and they speak mine. For the first time in my life, I am a good student, I can’t wait to get to class. My teacher is strange but so interesting. And he reads me like a book.

He knows just how to push my buttons in a good way. So there it is, I finally found a school that will accept me and like me.

As a parent, I thought my greatest task was to help my daughter believe that she could be self-reliant, that she could take care of herself, that she was competent and strong. That she could live in the world.

This, to me, is one of the parent’s seminal roles, and in my generation, it so often fell to the father. I rarely, if ever spoke to my father in life, he taught me nothing I could use, and I became one of those awkward men who either teach themselves how to live in the world or never learn.

I am self-educated now, I my education has come from 30 years of therapy, panic, medication, success, failure, obsessions, anxiety, depressions, loss of perspective, awful mistakes and hubris,  and from the greatest teacher of all – life.

My classroom was the Hero Journey, the great adventure for those who chose to accept it – of descent and return, leaving the ordinary world behind and setting out to discover what your purpose is in life, and whether you can heal yourself from life’s wounds.

“The whole idea,” writes Joseph Campbell in Pathways To Bliss, “is that you’ve got to bring out again that which you went to recover, the unrealized, unutilized potential in yourself.”

I went in broken and came out somewhat whole. The brokenness is never completely repaired, but there is a lot of healing. The idea of being whole comes into focus if not the reality. Sometimes I can see it through the mist.

On the hero journey, you either come back or  you don’t. It’s as simple as that.  Most people don’t want to try, I learned that early on. If you go, your life is changed forever.

I take classes in The University Of Me all the time, every day, as crazy people learn to do if they wish to be whole. Life is a classroom for people like me, the Dyslexia adds another delicious twist.

On the hero journey, you find out that if you make one little hook into society – one book, one blog – you will soon be able to climb your way back and deliver your message.

And then the real journey begins. I was a poor student, but I am not a bad teacher, especially when I am the pupil.  I seem able to learn then. I have learned how to talk to me and get my attention.

I am learning all the time, from talks, e-mails, friends, messages, dogs, books, donkeys, photos, blog posts,  Maria and my own relentless determination to know who I am and to never, ever lie to myself, the essence of salvation.

What I am learning is how to live in the world in a gracious, productive and meaningful way. Some people hate me for stumbling all the time, but ifyou don’t fall, you can never learn how to get up, and that is one of the biggest lessons of all.

The people who deny me my faults and mistakes, are not my friends, they are not healthy for me to be around. And I drive them off when I see them.

I am happy and lucky to be able to deliver my message, it has brought me happiness and strength. And much love. And new and good friends.

I have no secrets now, there is nothing about me that I wish to hide. I am learning how to live in truth.

I think I’ll take some more courses in the University Of Me this winter. They get me there. I have missed a class.