I had a chance last week to put my own advice to the test, in a setting about as far away from business as one could get.
I have a friend from high school who is not in great shape. He is currently in a wheel chair, with mobility basically from his eyeballs up, and this is a marked improvement from how he was not long ago. He’s not in this situation through any accident; it was just one of those things that had been lurking since birth that one day decided, “I’m going to cause major bleeding in my host’s brain today.”
He and I were not particularly close, but we enjoyed each other’s company. When I heard he had slipped into a coma, a number of memories came back to me, including one from when we were eleven, before he and I were friends. The memory was of something he had done while running for class office, which probably had meant nothing to him but which had made a big impact on me. A blog was set up for him, and along with many, many others, I posted, sharing with him and others my memory and its meaning to me.
Now imagine my surprise when, halfway through a hotdog and fries with my daughter at the local hamburger joint, I saw him. He was in his wheelchair, being pushed by his tireless caregiver. I recognized him instantly. He was wearing headphones, but his eyes were working. He saw me.
What do I do? What would you do?
Before I wrote my book, I am certain of what I would have done: I would have looked away, pretending not to have recognized him, and I would have put all my attention towards my daughter. Later, I would have told my wife I had seen him but that I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him. “I don’t think he saw me, and our daughter needed my attention, anyway,” I probably would have said. It would have been plausible. I would have gone on, too. I would have told my wife–myself, really–that it had worked out for the best that way. How would he have felt, having an old friend see him in his condition, when he wasn’t ready? How would I have explained to our daughter about the paralysis and wheelchair? No, it was better this way.
And it would have been all a big lie, designed to help me feel better about some nagging feeling I wouldn’t have been able to articulate.
The nagging feeling would have been frustration, anger, and disappointmnet, all aimed at myself for having just acted out of fear. But my ego never would have let me see any of that negativity, and so it would have all remained unnamed.
This year, I’ve forced myself to come to grips with a lot of stupid things that I used to do. Maybe because of this process, I think I’m a little less willing to let my ego stop me from taking risks–in this case, from calling over an old friend and talking to him, regardless of my having absolutely no idea what to say or how to say it.
So I smiled and waved him over. I told him it was great to see him, which it was. I was genuinely glad for his company and told him as much. I reminded him of who I was (I always try to preempt awkward moments with old acquaintances by reintroducing myself) and then I introduced him to my daughter. I watched his eyes track from me to her and back on cue. I told him that he’s had a positive impact on a lot of people, including me. I watched his eyes and tried to read an expression. I had to imagine he was hearing that message a lot. I told him that in my case, I had a story to prove it, and I told him about the first thing that had popped into my mind when I had heard he slipped into a coma. I told him about how it had made a difference on my life and still meant something to me, more than 20 years later, and what a shame if I had never had the opportunity to share that with him. I think he laughed. Maybe he coughed. It felt like a laugh; his eyes seemed to dilate instead of shrink. I told him he’s looked better, and that I, as well as many other of his old friends–and here I named those I still stayed in contact with–looked forward to a day when we could hold more of a two-way conversation with him. I smiled and wished him well. He left.
After his departure I was hit by a small wake of uncertainty. The same uncertainty I would have used to justify ignoring him, had I done so.
I did my best to explain about wheelchairs and strokes to my 3-year-old daughter. When I got home, I wondered to my wife if I had said the right things. Had I made him feel better, or worse? My wife comforted me some, and then followed up with our daughter to undo some of the damage I had probably done with her.
Yet there was one thing I had no uncertainty about: for better or worse, I had lived in that moment. I hadn’t hesitated. Instead of thinking about the interaction I was about to have, I thought about the next one I was bound to have–the one where I could pretend not to see him (again), pretend I was seeing him for the first time, or say with a clean conscience, “Hey buddy, good to see you again! What’s new?” I had opted for that last option.
It was something we all wish we would do more often: make a bold move, take a risk despite having no clear idea about what comes next; speak our mind and sharing positive feelings that we hadn’t told anyone in a long time, in this case since the fall of 1984. I had gone with the flow, and regardless of anything else, that had felt good.
Now comes the reality check: I’m so proud of having done it once that I’m giving it boku ink on my blog, yet I have about a thousand chances a day to take risks like that. But do you think I take them? Or do you think it takes seeing a friend in a wheelchair to bring out my best behavior? Exactly. I’m no saint, I know that…But I must admit, if I could do it once, I know I can do it again. Meaning that I really have no excuse anymore.
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 