and why is everybody talking about him?

My name is Joe Sohm (pronounced like the electrical unit "ohm" ). Over a lifetime, I suspect I've corrected its spelling, pronunciation or both thousands of times. Every flight reservation and restaurant seating is an opportunity to deface my name. Secretly, I wished my name was Smith. In fact, I recall in my high-school homeroom in Webster Groves, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis), I was alphabetically seated in front of "Smith." When you said "hey Smith," four rows of Smiths turned their head (there were 23 "Smith's" in my class). Think how much time over 75 years I would save by not having to spell or pronounce my name to every person I met. Unfortunately, this was not my destiny.

It got worse during my twenties and thirties, but first a little background. During the late 1970's and early 1980's I made my living touring a multi-projector slide show to colleges, universities and planetariums across America. I had created a "space-age" show called "Imagination" featuring the electronic music of Isao Tomita and the narration of William Shatner. I had a good year when I got 20 bookings. Although this would not be my path to wealth, I developed an early sense of "being one's own boss." All future possibilities for being a "wage-slave" for someone else's vision" were shattered. My favorite "fringe benefit" was the free round-trip airline ticket that came with each booking. After my presentation, I headed for the nearest scenic area to explore my uncharted territories.

After presenting my show, I had the opportunity to speak to students about "America's future" and "multi-media" communications (a decade before the computer industry co-opted the term). Sometimes I would be booked with a "laser show," other times with an environmentalist (a Cousteau Society speaker) and one time with Dr. J. Alan Hynek, the UFO-ologist who coined the term "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." It was a great way to create a life-adventure and get paid for it.

At one particular seminar at the University of Idaho, I arrived a day early so I could hear various speakers talk on a subject that would ultimately consume me - America's Future. It was while standing in line for registration that something seemingly stupid happened that in retrospect would transform my life. The person filling out my conference "name card" asked me how to spell my name. For the 18,783rd time I spelled my name slowly: "J-O-E S-O-H-M." Perhaps she was audio-dyslexic because she got the letters correct but in the wrong order. She beautifully inscribed my name-card in large clear black type: J-O-E S-H-M-O. I was more interested in who else was speaking so I didn't pay much attention. I pinned on the tag to my lapel and didn't look at it again.

Over the next two days, I noticed various people staring at me and chuckling. I looked in a mirror and checked my now receding hairline and zipper and both were in place. What were they laughing at? Over lunch someone said, "hey Joe Shmo what do you know?" Like a bad allergy that never completely goes away, my name-phobia was acting up. Now they're calling me "Joe Shmo?!"

While eating lunch I took off my jacket and I saw the culprit - my name-card. I, too, chuckled and thought to myself - this is ridiculous. So ridiculous I continued wearing the name-tag. Later that day when it was my turn to speak, I was introduced as a man who is known by virtually every American - a man with uncommon insight about the common man. Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome JOE SHMO.

Over the ensuing years, the Joe Shmo incident came and passed. My humorous encounter with my destiny went unrecognized by Joe Sohm. I continued my life journey in many seemingly unrelated directions and creative expressions. A unifying vision for my life remained undiscovered.

The synchronicities and adventures of Joe Shmo will be continued in Joe Shmo's America - now under creative construction.

Joe Shmo's story is two parallel stories of a search for identity. One is the story of my intellectual quest to uncover America's higher purpose or national destiny. Spanning 15 years, I traveled to America's sacred spots and repeatedly asked, "Who are we?" If each nation on Earth has a special gift, what is America's?

Along the way, a more personal story emerged? What is my purpose? If each person on Earth has a special gift, what is mine? One question was macro, the other micro, but over the years they merged. In pursuing "America's purpose," I discovered my own. And as these two questions intertwined, it became evident that my search for purpose was leading me to a deeper understanding of our country.

Before America, people from around the world were largely trapped by the circumstances they were born into. Whether wealth or poverty, family position or lack of it, you were who you were born. Your position in life departed only incrementally from the hand you were dealt at birth. Prior to America, the future offered no refuge for the soul who wanted to break from his past. If you were to ask, "what is my purpose?" - you would be laughed at out loud. The very question was irrelevant and pondered by only an elite few.

After America, individuals were freed from the random circumstances of birth. The Age of Enlightenment provided a new context that questioned the Godly authority and sovereignty that kings and queens held over their subjects. With the Declaration of Independence, the individual was released and the idea of a future better than today was born. The American Dream was alive, and finally, it was okay to ask, "what is my purpose?"

As each citizen discovers his or her purpose, the nation's purpose is thus fulfilled. America's greatness is collectively realized as its citizens realize their god-given creative potential. If our citizenry is locked in meaningless work and petty pursuits, our nation is marching in place waiting for the creative release of its citizenry. Sadly, after more than two centuries, the majority of Americans are only now beginning to wake up and ask the right questions: Who am I? What is my calling? What is it that I want to do that will make a difference in the world?

Although Joe Shmo's story is about my search for America's and my own destiny, it bares witness to how each of us can find our own purpose. It is about how and when we recognize our calling in life and take steps to realizing it. It's about how we get the courage to drop our current secure off-purpose life and begin a new on-purpose destiny. We see when we commit ourselves in body, mind and spirit to our inner passion - doors open and magic happens. We don't starve and we learn to be paid well for our gift.

In reading Joe Shmo's America, hopefully it will stimulate a search for your life's meaning - awaken who you really are - and prove, that when you find it and you commit to it, rewards will come your way just as they did for me. It's about uncovering the mystery of "me" - just as I have tried to find the "mystery" of America. But the only way to do it is to go there, be there and give yourself over to an idea larger than you. In doing this, I have learned that indeed I am Joe Shmo - the eyes and words of the common man. Joe Sohm was someone I used to be before I uncovered my purpose.

The syncronicities and adventures of Joe Shmo will be continued in Joe Shmo's America - now under creative construction.

"THE NEW AMERICAN" . . . A NEW SPECIES?

In December of 1985, I decided to "turn myself over to an idea bigger than myself." I suspended my work pursuits, uprooted my life and began my search for American Destiny. Fortunately, I began my quest during a historically fertile period:

In Thomas Paine's words, "The Time Had Found ME (us).

I put my belongings in storage so I could better afford to travel the United States. While traveling and shooting, I immersed myself in the writings of the Founding Fathers and other historians looking for a "hook" to hang my point-of-view.

In earning my degree to teach American History in secondary schools, I felt disconnected from the traditional means of telling America's story with it's reliance on dates, battle statistics and dis-spirited events. American History, the way I was taught it, was stripped of context and emotion. I felt America's story was more than clichés about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree or dry Civil War statistics about how many died under this general's leadership. To me, the Revolution was less a war and more an evolutionary event where all mankind moved up one step. It epitomized a Paradigm shift.

I knew this in my heart but I was intellectually suffocating from the thousands of books that had been written about the American Revolution. I was missing a context to frame my thoughts. I was searching for America in all the wrong places. I began doubting my mission. America is one of the most photographed and most written about nations in history. What made me think that "Joe Shmo" had something new to offer?

At my lowest point, a window opened. I was in a New York bookstore on the upper West Side staring without focus at hundreds of books on American history. I was confused, overwhelmed and approaching Joe Shmo's Waterloo. My eyes began focusing on a single book. I opened it. On page one, a question was posed to me that changed my artistic and intellectual path:

The question was asked in 1782 by a French-American farmer, Hector St. Jon de Crevecoeur. Although I grew up in St. Louis near a suburban town called "Crevecoeur" (meaning broken heart), I had no idea who Crevecoeur was. Crevecoeur postulated:

Crevecoeur considered "the American" a radical new species, a radical departure from "the European." He sensed destiny within "this new man" . . . a powerful role in the evolution of human affairs. Over the ensuing two centuries, Crevecoeur's prediction would be proven correct.

I slammed the book shut. Goose bumps overwhelmed my body. In this one simple question I saw volumes. Crevecoeur's question suggested that "the New American" was like a single living person.

This was a powerful metaphor, a tool to better understand where we came from . . . and as Crevecoeur anticipated, where we are going. Historians from Spengler to Toynbee had often likened nations to people, but few had viewed the birth of the American as the birth of a new species.

Like E=MC2, I viewed the "New American" as an equation that required testing and hopefully, proving. Was it an intellectual device that could contain "the American story?" I pondered, was the American story less a story of nationhood and more a story of parenthood?! If so, I felt we could better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our national character.

Big questions came to mind. If "the New American" is a new species, then how old are we? What's our birthday? Who's our mother? Who's our father? More importantly, Do we have a national "destiny?" What is America's purpose?

On a more personal level, I was beginning to see the relationship in the questions I was asking of America for myself. My intellectual and spiritual journey had officially begun!