It's A Wonderful Leaf

In the office today we had some people who will be speaking at one of our bigger clients' meeting in March. The purpose was for them to rehearse their speeches and receive critique from my boss and from the association brass, and my purpose was to record them and give them a DVD of their rehearsal performance.

One of the guys who practiced today is an old veteran of the insurance business as well as an old veteran of speaking in front of large groups of people. These older guys usually know how to pack a punch for their audience of peers, but occasionally someone will reach out with a fairly universal message, and the old fart today really got to me.

As a wrap-up to his speech he told the true story of two young men who were insurance agents in his office a few years back, in a particularly bad month for him, personally as well as professionally.

He touted his open-door policy and commented that his door was never closed unless someone came in to see him and closed it himself. On this one particular day a young agent he identified as Jeff came in and closed the door. He told the boss that he didn't want him to be upset, that Jeff would be just fine. Then Jeff went on to tell his boss that he had been dealing with some liver problems, and the doctors had just found a small cancer there. He was to undergo all the batteries of tests and treatments, and he was confident that he would pull through. He continued to work, seeing his clients and writing insurance applications, and maintaining a positive attitude despite the huge question mark that he faced every day.

A few days later another agent, Bob, came into the boss's office. He closed the door and sat down. And then he broke down into tears and sobbing so severe that the boss couldn't decipher what the man was saying. Finally Bob calmed down enough to tell the boss that he had been diagnosed as HIV positive. He could barely compose himself at all, and within a few days turned all of his clients over to other agents, went on disability, and basically gave up.

Jeff lived two more years after his diagnosis. He lived every day of those two years to their fullest, going out to sporting events, taking his family out and enjoying everything life had to give him, but he eventually succumbed to his liver cancer.

Bob, on the other hand, wallowed in self-pity, stopped shaving or grooming, stopped caring for himself or about himself, and went into a downward spiral and became a desperate wreck.

This old general agent drove home a point about Jeff. He lived. He didn't merely exist; he lived until he died. He daily faced down the thing that was killing him, and he extracted as much joy out of every day that he could and experienced every wrinkle of every event until there were no more wrinkles to experience. And when he died, family and friends gathered to celebrate the wonderful life he had made for himself.

Bob, on the other hand, is dead. But he didn't die. He gave up on himself over a situation that is no longer necessarily a death sentence. He's alive, but he's not living.

Test Driving a New Life
I wrote recently of how I set myself up for a random meeting with a woman I had never met before, offering up a spare ticket I had to a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert. Though it seems nothing has or will come of that meeting with a very intelligent, vibrant, interesting woman, I walked away from the experience feeling invigorated.

I won't go so far as to say that I've been wallowing in self-pity for the last year, but I have spent quite a few evenings going alone to movies and spending quiet evenings home alone watching TV or DVDs or writing. But I have been dead for the past year or so since moving out of the house. Hell, looking all the way back, my ex-wife and I have been dead for the last four or five years. During that afternoon out, sitting next to that beautiful woman for a couple hours, talking over dinner in a conversation that, it turns out, apparently bored her to tears, I felt alive!

Since the concert I have wanted to experience that feeling again. I've never been that great at dating, certainly never been a serial dater, but that little, whimsical idea to put the spare ticket up for grabs on CraigsList was the spark that lit a flame under me. Over the past week I have been on Meetup.com joining local groups that indulge some of my interests: meetups for Sushi, Wine, Writing, Dating, Secular Singles, Over-40 Singles, Over-30 Singles, Desperate To Get Laid Singles…whatever! Just last night I went out for sushi at a place out here in the northwest suburbs and met with a very welcoming and friendly group of mostly regulars to the meetup, but there were a couple other newbies aside from myself. I joined the Chicago Karaoke Underground Meetup, and signed up for their New Year's Eve party. I don't know quite what to expect, but I already paid for it, so now I have to go!

I hadn't thought much about my recent pastime, other than the excited feeling of anticipation I experienced when thinking about upcoming events. But that old, veteran general agent, who has written several books and is apparently quite wealthy, sort of kicked me in the head this morning. He made me realize everything I've said up there: I've been dead, just waiting for each day to go by, looking forward to bedtime, waking up to dread the coming day. But I've been quietly taking baby steps to turn it around, and now I'm on the threshold of a wonderful new life….

Okay, I wanted to make an analogy to my favorite film, It's A Wonderful Life, here, but it would certainly seem a reach, and a rather cheesy one, at that. But there's a great scene near the end of that film where George Bailey finally gets it and realizes that things ain't so bad, after all, and begs to have his life back just as it was when he had decided he had enough. I guess, in a way, I have been in a negative spiral, and everything I've done in the past to pull out of it has left me feeling worse. But I'm tired of feeling that way, and have been taking those baby steps to get out there and just meet people! And that old insurance guy this morning kicked me in the brain and told me I'm doing the right thing. I want to live again!


(If you've never seen this movie, I mean, really. watched. this. movie…SOBER I highly recommend you sit down in a nice, dark, quiet room and watch it all the way through. It's not what you think.)