Courageously Myself

Frankly, I wasn’t sure what mine was. Self-doubt? Anger? For years, I’d been coming up against a wall in my acting career, achieving milestone successes, but nothing major, nothing lasting. As we approached the new year, 2024, SGI-USA members were ramping up toward the March Youth Peace Festivals. As a district men’s leader, I’d set ambitious goals for myself: to bring 10 youth and also, to show proof by having a major breakthrough in my career. As soon as I voiced both of these, however, something in me froze. Where my career was concerned, was it really realistic to break through in a few months? As for the young men in the region that I supported as a vice men’s leader, I was older now—would they want to hear from me? To the second question, the demoralizing answer I got, early on, was no. At least from one young man in particular.

“Morning! What are we chanting about today?”

“Girls, you know. This girl, that girl. You know how it is.”

“I’m gay,” I reminded him. “But man, Sensei has some wonderful things to say about finding the best partner… ”

“Yeah, yeah, read it. Listen… ”

This is how all our visits seemed to go. If I got a word in, it was shrugged off, scoffed at and turned into a sermon.

Frustrated with myself as much as anyone, I called his men’s leader. “How do I connect with this guy?” 

“He has a heart,” he assured me. “You’ll see it, if you take the time.” 

As I brought myself to chant for his happiness, I realized that he was stirring up deep feelings, ones that brought me back to my childhood neighborhood of South Los Angeles, where my mother, raising me and my siblings on her own, pushed me toward the upstanding men of our Christian community, who spoke from wisdom bred of hardship.

“Man up,” they began. “The world is not your friend. Deepen your voice. Stand like this. Don’t walk like that. People will punk you if you don’t show them you’re tough!”

The sermons from the men never stuck, but the beatings from the children did. After a group of boys from church took it upon themselves to teach me a lesson, I came home in tears to my mother, who warned me that if I cried, everyone would think I was gay. “Stop embarrassing me,” she said.

Slowly, I’d managed to deepen my voice, to walk “like a man,” to hide who I was. I became a pretender—a good one, and wore the mask of the man people wanted to see. I wore it for years, until a friend saw past it, to the pain it hid, and asked me, when I was 22, if I’d chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with her. Many hands had built the walls that kept me safe, but it took just one to open a window to an accepting world beyond.

As I chanted for the young man who rejected my every word, I realized he had something to teach me. He, too, had been through a lot; and he, too, had put up walls he didn’t need. He protected himself in a different way than I had, but we were, in fact, trying to accomplish the same thing. I had a tendency to people-please, while he tended to hurt people before they could hurt him. I began to chant for his happiness—no strategizing, no criticizing. I simply went, chanted, listened and left. And while I sensed something beginning to change in him, it was in me that I noticed undeniable changes—one in particular: I began chanting for my mother’s happiness. Stop embarrassing me, she’d said. But beneath the scorn, I heard now another, deeper feeling—fear. 

This is my one evil, I realized. Fear. Fundamentally, I feared being myself. 

Change was afoot in the district. Our March Youth Peace Festivals brought out the youth in force—over 40 in all—for food, chanting, dialogue and dance. On its heels, I was hired without interview by an audiobook company, the work for which still hasn’t let up. Change was afoot in my family as well, which hadn’t gathered in years. In May, my mother called to say she missed her family and wanted to see us together. Having chanted tirelessly for her happiness over the course of the year, the prospect was not frightening, but exciting. I put my young men’s division training to work and leaped into action, calling up the whole family to organize a lunch at my late grandma’s favorite diner, to celebrate her life as we hadn’t yet managed as a family. The event was so healing and such a success that we decided to make it monthly. 

A few months ago, the young man I mentioned earlier encountered a difficulty that brought him to the Gohonzon in a truly serious way for the first time in his life. For the first time in mine, he was the one who reached out. For the first time, we talked—really talked—and he was open to putting Sensei’s guidance into action. The openness was not reserved for me alone—I watched as he began to share Buddhism with others, to invite others to chant, to offer support to friends. I watched him strike out beyond his own walls, on an incredible new path, open and strong. 

My mother, who had never once met a partner of mine, did this month at my niece’s birthday party. “All that we owe ourselves,” I told my boyfriend, Michael, on the way there, “and everyone at this party, is that we be ourselves.” Parking at the curb, we chanted three times together, then stepped out and into the throng. Introducing Michael to my mother, he put out his hand, which she batted away. “I’m a hugger,” she said and embraced him. In the eyes of my family shone respect—for having shown up courageously, joyfully, as the person I am. It was nothing less, I felt, than the respect I felt at last, deeply for my own life, reflected back at me.

November 1, 2024, World Tribune, p. 5