The Luckiest person in the World!
Sometimes all we really need is perspective.
This is a true story about how a couple of women I’ve never met changed my thought patterns one afternoon. I think you’ll find it interesting and maybe take a lesson from it for your own life.
I need to go to the allergy clinic every six weeks to get my maintenance dose of bee sting. Specifically “Mixed Vespid” venom. This because I have a bee allergy from getting stung a couple years back and have gone through an extensive desensitization program. The good news is that if I get stung by a bee now I don’t die. The bad news is that I have to go to the clinic every six weeks to get a couple shots and they make me wait for 30 minutes before leaving to make sure I don’t have some sort of horrible reaction.
Since I know I have to wait I bring paperwork with me to make sure the time spent is not totally wasted. I get my shots, set the timer on my IronMan watch (so as not to have to spend one extra wasted minute there), put my ear buds in and work through the endless pile of contracts, proposals, analyst briefs and articles that chase me around in my working life.
Allergies don’t discriminate. The clinic waiting room is home to people young and old of all races and religions. They come for their shots and we all wait together. That’s why I bring my music. Sometimes I need to shield myself from unruly children and chatty old people while I do my work.
My life is such that I never finish everything that I have to do and it’s a constant struggle to fit in what I do fit in. I’m always stressed about the blurry hamster wheel existence and how I know I’m letting someone down or letting some ball drop somewhere. It ends up being a bit of a stress and self pity cocktail that frankly I work to avoid. I just try to do my best, but this is the cocktail that I bring with me to these inconvenient allergy clinic excursions every few weeks.
During my last visit I forgot my IPod. There I am, sitting in my suit and tie with my shiny shoes and executive disposition trying to give off the ‘don’t bother me’ vibes so long practiced in airports and airplanes when this woman breezes in and starts filling the air with happy chatter. Soon the nurses join in. Now the other two women in the waiting room are engaged. I’m thinking “Oh Great, a hen party, I’m not going to get any work done.” I’ve got no choice but to half-smile uncomfortably and listen.
The woman who started it now owns the stage and has pulled another woman into her gravity. She is cheerful and full of energy as she jokes about the day and the weather. The second woman knows how to play the game, senses her opening, and asks, “So, Dear, Why are YOU here?”
Woman one expertly receiving the volley launches into her story.
She says that she worked for the fire department. And, that one night she was out with the crew responding to a call. There was a piece of equipment, a fire truck, parked on top of a hill and she had to move it. The emergency brake was stuck so she leaned in the window to pull up the brake. She inadvertently put her hand on the shifting mechanism for leverage and the truck came out of gear.
Then the truck careened down the hill with her stuck in the window being dragged along. She was slammed up against a guard rail, and was run over by the truck. At this point she highlighted her story by showing the still evident tire tracks grooved into her body. She breezed through a description of broken bones, internal injuries and severed nerves.
“And then”, she says for dramatic effect, “when I finally came to rest at the bottom of the hill I was lying in a patch of stinging nettles, that it turns out I’m allergic to! So here I am, I busted up and to add insult to injury I’m covered in hives!”
And she’s laughing at this point to highlight the great absurdities in her situation. Then she says the thing that ties it all together. She says, “I’m the luckiest person in the world! They told me I’d never walk again, they told me I’d never be able to use my hands again, but here I am, look at me, I’m doing fine! Who else do you know who got run over by a fire truck and lived to talk about it? I am the luckiest person in the world!”
Me, I’m still a fly on the wall in this conversation pretending to read a paper. I’m thinking that maybe I don’t want her kind of luck. I’m thinking that this is interesting and now we’re done with that, but there is more to come…
The other woman, who has been completely engaged in the first woman’s story takes the talking stick and jumps right in without missing a beat, “Dear”, she says, “I know exactly what you mean. Many years ago my husband dove into a swimming pool, hit his head and broke his neck. He became a quadriplegic.”
“It was hard for us and he got very depressed. Back then the doctors told me that he would maybe survive 4 to 6 years, because that’s what they gave quads back then. But you know what? My husband lived for 25 years! I got my husband back and I feel like I’m the luckiest person in the world.”
“He had a job working maintenance at Polaroid at the time. I didn’t know what we were going to do with kids and bills and him being a quadriplegic. Then I got a call from the Polaroid credit union to come down to the office and see them. I didn’t know what to expect. And you know what? I got there and they told me forget about your mortgage, forget about you r car loan, we’ve got it covered. They didn’t have to do that. That was a great company.”
“Then they called and asked if he could come back to work. They created a job for him on the computer and paid for him to take special training to use it. My husband went back to work for the rest of his life. He lived for 25 years, bless his soul, and I had my husband back and my family supported. I am just the luckiest person in the world.”
Now at this point I have pretended to read the same sentence on my paper 25 times and I’m just floored by the humble display of humanity that has broken out in front of me. I’m thinking to myself who the hell am I to worry about missed workouts and having too much work to do? Who the hell am I to feel sorry for myself when these normal women have brushed aside crushing life blows and turned these personal disasters into personal triumphs? It really reset my internal clockwork for a couple days.
Now I ask you, are the things that worry you really that important? Are the stresses you create in your life really that bad? Because I think you know the answer. And I think that inside each of us is the capacity to become the luckiest person in the world.