Paid in Full
by Ogden W. Rogers, Ph.D., LCSW, ACSW, author of Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work
“You're gonna have to serve somebody.”
-Bob Dylan
The other day, my wife told me that the credit union had sent a note informing us that the mortgage to our house had been paid off. In a previous generation, this would have been a cause for celebration. The enormous loan that hangs over a family’s head for so long has finally been paid. In my adult life, we’ve bought and sold three houses, each one costing what seemed like fortunes more than the previous.
I can well remember those terrible tedious meetings with title officers and mortgage lenders, signing what seemed like reams of paper filled with small print that I knew I wasn’t reading. Initialing here, dating there, signing here, and here, and here, and then also here. At the time, there was a sense of it all being real and unreal. And without clear evidence, there grew inside me a deep sense of foreboding.
I have never liked financial debt, but for much of my life I have been unable to avoid it. I grew up with a Yankee sensibility that if I couldn’t pay cash on the barrel head for something, then I wasn’t meant to have it. My first “credit card” was an American Express that had to be paid off the following month. My kids have always teased me about being cheap and a penny pincher. My wife has learned that she needs to work months upon me to raise consideration about buying a new car. I’m proud of driving everything I ever owned for 20 years or more.
Later that evening, I looked about the walls of the living room to see if somehow their full ownership changed their appearance. Nothing seemed new or out of the ordinary. A few, perhaps, could stand a fresh coat of paint. Ironically, a number of them stared back pointing out that in my ownership of bedrooms, my wife and I had decided that we have too many of them, our children now adults and gone to other cities with rooms of their own. Ironically, I have taken to looking at all the books in my office and my home and know that I have too many of them. I will never read most of them ever again and must devise some sort of plan to lose my attachment to them. Ironically, too, I have paid off my loan in the same year as I heard my President, a man who in his business dealings has been bankrupt multiple times, proclaim how much he liked debt. “I’m the king of debt,” he said. “I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me. I negotiate it down to half.” And the President’s friend Paul Manafort said “only suckers stay out of debt.” I, therefore, must be a sucker.
So for the first time in my life, I’m not in the pocket of somebody who I owe just because they had more money than I did at the time I needed to borrow. I would pay them the interest, a payment I’ve always resented, as I saw it just as a payment to the wealthy for just being wealthy. For the first time, I tried to think to myself, I have paid off all my debts.
As I gazed upon the walls, it came to me that I didn’t pay for these walls all by myself. I had to have paychecks to keep the roof over our heads and pay off the principal and interest. I am stepping down after some 24 years of being chair of the Social Work Program at UWRF, and stepping up to play Associate Dean for a few more years. If it hadn’t been for the years and years of students who joined me in the exploration of this profession, it would never have happened. In my years and years of practice, if it hadn’t been for the agencies for whom I worked, who took a risk on me to join in their services, I wouldn’t have had those paychecks either.
It quickly followed that it wasn’t just about paychecks. If it hadn’t been for the hundreds of clients and families, I wouldn’t have learned all the things I tried to pass on to others. If it hadn’t been for the colleagues who mentored me, or supervised me, or picked me up on those times when I stumbled, I would not have been able to do the good works I tried to do in the world. If it hadn’t been for the teachers who guided me, the patients who enlightened me, the authors who wrote the stories I read that inspired me, the mountaintop summers, and lovers, that opened me, the boy scout buddies who made me laugh, the parents who got me through childhood. The thousand and one things, of my life, have all been on loan.
The clients I have met have loaned me their trust. They have loaned me their struggles, their fears, their angers, their suffering, their strength, their courage, the very story of their lives. My walls are not just made from dollars and cents; they are paid with sweat and blood of people who entered into my life, who invited me into theirs. Indeed, the walls are not just the walls of my house. They are the architecture of my life, and the brick and mortar and plaster and paint have all come on loan from those who lent me their suffering.
It can only be the privilege of life to help bear the burdens of each other. To mourn losses and celebrate triumphs. To build or tear down or remodel, one’s wealth is meaningless unless it moves in transaction. It is the false adage of a lonely person to “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” I now understand that everything is always in some sort of mortgage, even when the debt is paid off. It is in the lending and giving that we are alive. We are the currency in what we pay to be. The debt is not something to be avoided, but something to be shared. The debt is what we owe to each other.
Ogden W. Rogers, Ph.D., LCSW, ACSW, is the author of Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Social Work at The University of Wisconsin-River Falls. He has been a clinician, consultant, educator, and storyteller. Dr. Rogers began his social work career in community and adult psychiatry in both inpatient and outpatient settings. He’s worked in emergency and critical-care medicine, disaster mental health, and mental health program delivery and evaluation in both public and private auspices. In more recent years, he’s been actively involved with the American Red Cross International Services Division concerning human rights in armed conflict. When asked about how he got involved with making a career in social work, he smiled and said, “That reminds me of a story....” For more of Ogden Rogers' stories, read his book, Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work.