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Interview with Ezell AgnewGoodwill Ambassador
Washtenaw C.C., Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 2, 2001
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I
first laid eyes on Ezell Agnew a couple of years ago when I was
teaching part-time at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann
Arbor. I used to come out of the Student Center Building
after my classes were over, heading for the parking lot, and he would
be there, puttering around the shrubbery or driving around in his red
truck, waving to all the students, and exclaiming in his high-pitched
voice, “Amen! Amen! How are you? How
are you doing? Wonderful weather, isn’t it? Lord,
what a beautiful day!” It didn’t matter if the sky was
gloomy and overcast, the wind chill was below zero, or that no one paid
attention to him. He kept waving and chirping,
“Amen! Amen!” I couldn’t understand how anyone
could be so cheerful. I thought the man must be crazy.
I was down on my luck, out of
work, and in debt. I had just come from another fruitless
job inquiry, it was another cheerless gray day. I had every
reason to be depressed. As I walked to the parking lot,
there was Ezell, his left hand stuck out of the window of his truck and
waving at everyone and no one. This time, I
stopped. He was wearing custom fitted overalls with the
words “Goodwill Ambassador” stitched into the right
breast. I greeted him, grasping his gloved hand, and peered
into his eyes. They were narrow and squinty, yet they
sparkled with the luminosity of stars. I felt a twinge of
envy and self-consciousness that he could be so happy. He
asked me what I was doing, and I told him I had been inquiring about a
job, and was about to go home.
“Already?” he asked. “It’s just the middle of the day!”
“Well, I’m going home for
lunch, and I’ll look some more in the afternoon,” I
lied. The truth was, I couldn’t stomach any more job hunting
that day. For the moment, at any rate, I was much more
interested in talking to him. I asked if we could get
together, and he told me sure, as long as I set it up with his
boss. I promptly did so.
A few days later, I met him
in the lunchroom of the Plant Operations building. He was
full of questions about my line of work, where my office was, and so
forth. I explained to him again that I was looking for a
job, and that the prospect of full-time work was bleak.
 “Really?”
he made an incredulous face. “A nice handsome man like you
can’t get a job?” He could hardly believe
it. When I tried to turn the conversation toward him, he
shifted uneasily in his chair. “It’s seven minutes
afternoon,” he said, apropos of nothing. I could tell that
referring to the time was his way of telling me that he didn’t want to
talk about himself. “I always look at the time when someone
wants to go into my details,” he added.
“Well in that case, I’ve got
some things that I wrote down,” I said, pulling out a sheet of
paper. “Maybe we can just discuss some of
them. They’re reminders of certain principles I’m trying to
practice. The first one is: Love the situation you’re in.”
“Well,” he said, responding
eagerly to the change in my approach, “love is something that people
will not and cannot understand. Love is more than
talking. It’s action and doing what is called
for. Like when you met me and we started talking, that
brought you more understanding of what I stand for. You felt
that love in so many ways you didn’t even understand it.”
“I think I know what you’re
saying,” I replied. “I saw you two or three years ago, when
I was teaching here, but I never said anything to you,
then. The other day, however, I saw you
again. This time, I though, ‘He looks so
happy. There’s got to be something to it. This
time, I’m not going to go my way. I’m going to stop and talk
to him.’ If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that
love is action. In my case, that action consisted of
stopping to talk to you.”
“That’s it. When
an individual stops to talk to you, you find out where that person
stands. A person that’s intentioned with the right kind of
love is there to help you. When you have that love, you’re
going to share that love.”
“So when you stop and talk to a person, you start to find out about that person.”
“That’s right.”
“Two years ago, when I saw
you smiling and waving, I didn’t know what you were about because I
didn’t talk to you. You could have been crazy, for all I
knew..”
“Thank you,” he
replied. “You know, many people view love as crazy because
they don’t understand it. When you have it, no one can take
it from you. They may try to get ahead of you, or put
boundaries on you, but that love is still going to be stronger than
ever. What you have to do is get the right
motive. That’s always been in my life, during all of my
thirty-five years of service at Washtenaw Community
College. I’ve tried to help, to encourage, and to do my very
best. I thank the Lord for the power he gave to
me. I’m not educated like lots of people are, but I always
tell people, ‘It’s not what you have. It’s what you do by
what you have.’ There’s a lot of educated fools.”
“I’ve got all sorts of degrees, but they haven’t gotten me anywhere,” I confessed.
“OK. You know
why? It’s because you dwell on what you
have. You’ve got to dwell on what you don’t
have. All those degrees that you have, you look back at them
and try to hold onto them. But if you hold onto what you
don’t have, it’ll eventually come your way.”
“I’ve got another thing I’ve written here,” I replied, “and it says
exactly the same thing that you just said: Be grateful not only for
what you have, but also for what you don’t have.”
“That is the answer right there.”
“That’s a very revolutionary idea, Ezell.”
“Thank you.”
“I’d say that most people don’t think that way, though”
 “Because
they dwell on what they have, and not on what they don’t
have. That’s the reason why many people today don’t have
respect for anyone but themselves. Because they feel that
they are better than you or me.”
“In other words, everyone is thinking: ‘I am what I have.’“
“Right,” Ezell
proclaimed. “And that’s the worst thing that anyone can
meditate on.”
“I think you’re
right. All these degrees are like a kind of
brainwashing. They make people think that they have this, or
they are that. You get a degree next to your name and you go
around saying, ‘I am so and so. There’s the
degree. That’s me!’”
“That’s it,” Ezell nodded his
head. “That’s me, and I’m better than you
are! Look at what I got on the wall. Look at that
doctor degree! That’s where the sadness comes in, my
brother.”
“Like you said, the sadness
comes when people dwell on what they have, and what we don’t have is
about a million times greater than what we have, because what are is
such a tiny portion of what we can be,” I suggested.
“We have something, but it’s
more than you can even explain. We have something when we
know how to respect and be respected. That’s what education
can’t understand. You have to think on that. If I
got all this here and don’t respect you, I’m nothing, but I am somebody
when I respect you. I can’t dwell on what I
have. I’ve got to meditate on what I don’t
have. When I meditate on what I don’t have, I can’t even
explain it sometimes, myself. When my sister or my brother
comes up to me, asking for advice, then I don’t speak just to be
speaking. I try to speak by the power of
God. That’s something that you or I can’t
understand.”
“So what we have is only what
we understand about ourselves. What we don’t have is
everything that we don’t understand.”
“You got
it. People don’t understand this man here,” he said,
referring to himself. “How can he speak the way he speaks,
and I got all this on the wall, and he don’t have nothing on the
wall? How is it that he can speak so well?”
“It’s because you’re a lot more than your education.”
“That’s right. A
man can only give so much, but through the spirit of God, he can give
it all. That’s why it’s not what you have. It’s
what you don’t have. That’s why people don’t understand this
man here, and they never will.”
“My understanding tells me
that you’re a man, just like me. How are you in any way less
than I am? It’s impossible. All men are created
equal, right?”
“Every man is created equal
by the power of God. But in the eyes of education, I’m not
equal, because I don’t have what that other person has.”
“That’s right,” I
admitted. “That’s why what I read said to be grateful NOT
ONLY for what you have, but ALSO for what you don’t have. No
matter who we are, what we don’t have is so much more than what we
have. It makes more sense to be grateful for
that. Why dwell on what you’ve achieved, or what you are
right now. Look ahead, to what you can be.”
“Mmmhmm. Read another one for me,” Ezell requested.
I glanced at my
list. “This one says: “When one door closes, another door
opens.”
“Surely,” Ezell nodded his
head. “When one door closes in your mind, there’s another
door that’s gonna open if you’re able to wait on it. It may
not come when you want it, but it’ll come just at the right time.”
“That’s what I’m going
through right now. Some doors have shut on
me. Right now, a new door hasn’t opened yet. I
see what you’re saying, though. It first has to open in your
mind.”
 “That’s
it. If you can’t be yourself, you’ll never know what future
lies before you. You have to come to the knowledge of what
God has given you, and when you have, no man can take that
away. Don’t be what you have. Be what you don’t
have. When you’re being what you don’t have, it may not be
what you went to school for, but sometimes it may be a lot better than
what you went to school for.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I
replied. “I’m thinking, if I stuck to the things I went to
school for, ten years down the road I might not like my life at all.”
“Right,” Ezell
agreed. “You might be in the psychiatric home right here
down the road, with all your degrees. It’s the mercy of God,
showing you through your tests and your trials that there was always a
blessing near. There’s always a blessing nearer than you
think.”
“Here’s another one,” I said,
looking again at my list: Don’t waste time trying to change reality.”
“That’s what I’m saying right
at this moment. Changing reality is changing your
self. You can try to change by trying to please other people
around you, but you won’t be able to do it to save your
neck. People may be smiling at your face, but they don’t
always understand you. You have to stand up and focus on
what you are. Forget about what you have, and focus on what
you don’t have.”
“OK. Here’s the
last one: Accept the world the way it is. Accept people as
they are. And accept yourself as you
are.”
“That’s a good
point. You’ve got to accept it all to make yourself what you
are. If you accept the world as it is, other people as they
are, and yourself as you are, then you ARE somebody. Focus
on being yourself. That’s what counts. When
you’re not focused on what you have, but focused on what you don’t
have, then your reality is coming on stronger. When it comes
your way, you’ll receive it. You can have the whole world,
and you’ve still got nothing, but if you focus on what you are, that’s
where your blessing is.”
I came away from this
conversation marveling at the profundity of Ezell’s attitude toward
life. His dictum, “Don’t dwell on what you have, but on what
you don’t have,” was reverberating in my mind, as was one his last
remarks, “Focus on what you are.” What a person HAD was
something quite different from what a person WAS. We were
conditioned to think that what we didn’t have was nothing, and what we
did have was everything, but actually, the opposite was
true. What we thought we had was nothing, and what we
thought we didn’t have was everything. What we really had
was being-ness.’ By focusing on this being-ness, Ezell was
able to see himself not as what he appeared to the world to be, but as
something much greater, and ultimately that was what he had become. |
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Date Submitted:
3/14/04 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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