“The moment of death is every moment.”

There had been a time when getting tenure had been the most important thing in the world to me.  For an academic, it is a matter of professional life or death.  I had loved my years at the university.  Surrounded by the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder valley is a little piece of heaven.  But teaching philosophy was no longer my calling.  It was time to move on.

That does not mean that giving up tenure was an easy decision to make.  Nor should it have been.  Congressional staff have no job security at all.  They routinely lose their jobs because the congressman dies or retires or runs for another office.  Or it can be more dramatic.  One congressman who had given no hint of dissatisfaction came into his office one day and simply fired everybody, effective immediately.

So the risk was real, but the risk of not making the change was real also.  Time is the most important asset you have in life.  T. S. Eliot tells us, “The moment of death is every moment.”  The moment of death is an epitaph defining the meaning of one’s life and, if Eliot is right, so is every moment.  There is an urgency to life.  If there is something important to you to do, you should do it now.

So I thought, what is the worst case scenario?  I could always work for my father, who had a business selling advertising specialties—items like pens and calendars with ads for small businesses to give to their customers.  I did not think I would be happy doing that, but it would put food on the table.  So I sent in my letter of resignation.  A week later the letter was returned.  I had “forgotten” to sign it.  As I left the university, the Denver Post ran a feature about my job change.  I told them that giving up tenure was “like jumping out of an airplane with an untested parachute.”