The Foreign Service Journal, January 2005

38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5 F O C U S Oddly, my two years in Washington enjoy a more prominent place among my books than one might expect, perhaps because as a native Californian I felt “abroad, at home” there, and keenly aware of its unique offerings. Take David McCullough’s volume of essays, Brave Companions , a book I bought in 1999 after a friend from San Francisco sent me a copy of the wonderful piece in it titled: “Washington on the Potomac.” That essay alone is enough to remind one that the nation’s capital has gotten a bad rap. It certainly rein- forced my own fledgling view that Washington, the geo- graphical and historical place, has been confused with Washington, the legendary seat of government bureau- cracy and power and corruption, and that the cloud of (mostly undeserved) negative association has extended to where it manifestly doesn’t belong. I have few regrets about the paths chosen, even when the inevitable wonderings about what might have been domi- nate my waking reveries. At these moments I think of a passage in one of William James’ essays in his book Human Immortality and Other Essays on Popular Philosophy , which I always seek out at some point during the ritual. In it, James recounts what happens when former possibilities cease to exist as a consequence of a key decision at a fork in the path of life. “Little by little,” he writes, “the habits, the knowledges, which once lay so near, cease to be reckoned even among possibilities ... and the old alter- native ego, once so vivid, fades into something less sub- stantial than a dream.” In more ways than one, this Foreign Service life enables one to keep the dream alive, including every two or three years when I unpack my books from their boxes.  My life in the Foreign Service has also found a place on my bookshelves.