I know what this stuff does to me. I'm going to be half asleep all night. And yet, today, I could not help myself. I think it's all the rain.
I've spent the last two weeks doing almost nothing besides going to work. After my father-in-law passed away late February I found myself in a position I did not expect. And frankly neither did my wife. She took this hard. So I canceled everything. I wiped my schedule clean. I didn't ask any questions and I made all the decisions. Whatever the need was, well, I was there to meet it. And that, from my third person perspective, is the irony. My wife didn't need anything except for me to be there. She didn't need me to run errands. She didn't need me to talk to her. She just needed me to not be somewhere else. For me it was surreal. At this time of intense emotion I experienced one of the most relaxing weeks of my life. For my wife, therapeutic. Later she told me how great I was. Hmmm. I didn't do anything.
The following week a friend put this in perspective. He had received a card from a friend after the death of his wife. The card contained a simple message that he took to heart. It went something like this, "I'm here to talk with you or sit with you in silence."
For me, finding a mentor started early in my life, probably when I was about 10 years old. I quickly figured out that if I wanted a wicked slap shot that I needed to study and imitate someone. So I found some mentors. Now I never officially asked them to mentor me, but I would sit in the bleachers and watch them for hours. Then I would come home and put holes in our basement paneling for many more hours. Paneling is not built to withstand the power of a puck.
Fast forward many years and I'm grateful for all the mentors I've had in my life. I find mentors for my work, my character, my family, my leadership, and skills that I want to add or grow in. I look at the person that I've become and I owe so much of who I am to the amazing people who have influenced my life. I'm a sponge in the presence of these people - soaking up all the good and the lessons that come my way.
Just this past week I had a mid-year review with my manager. It went well. One of the comments he made was that a few people have commented to him how proactive and helpful I've become. That comment has confirmed again the value of a mentor for me. You see I transitioned from a software and technology career to a career in product development. In that transition I moved from the IT side of the house to the business side of the house, and into an industry I knew very little about. Additionally, for the first 16 months my manager worked in a different city and I had no one else on site to show me the ropes so to speak. In one sense it wasn't that I wasn't trying to build the business, it was more a case of I didn't know what I didn't know. I simply didn't know where or how to contribute. When a director was hired at my location, a director with 30+ years of industry experience, I found a target to set my sights on. It didn't take long for me to figure out my place, my role, and where I could make a substantial difference with a mentor to follow. In 7 months he totally changed my life. I told him that. I told him he was the reason those comments could be made about me.
So I'm listening to the news at lunchtime today when I hear about the recent uprisings in Greece. Without being there firsthand, I need to take the reporter's word that his commentary is the correct interpretation of the events on the ground. He states that the people are/have been humiliated by an EU ruling that requires Greece to sell off €50B in government infrastructure to support the ongoing repayment of €300B in debt. The protesters refuse to pay for a problem that someone else has caused. Apparently the protesters are in no way linked to the financial issues the country faces.
For me, it's not the financial issues that mattered in this news report. It's the humiliation. I don't have to look at a mirror too long to understand just how flawed I am. In fact, it's so bad that all I can do is laugh at myself and not take myself too seriously. In view of my self evaluation I feel like I don't have anything to hide. I have no face to save. I have nothing to be proud of in an intrinsic sense. There is nothing innately good about me that someone could actually point to and humiliate me. Chances are whatever they say they are probably right - if not in whole then at least in part, and I can learn something from those comments. For me, I think if I'm humiliated about anything I've probably taken an unrealistic view of that thing in the first place.
There is a passage in the Bible that talks about unity among Christian people with respect to lawsuits they bring against each other. It reads, "Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" While the context doesn't apply to the specifics of my life, I have decided to use this to shape my personal view of morality. As I am such a flawed person, I'm grateful to have been given so much. Not materialistically, but talent, drive, ambition, intelligence, and with experience, wisdom. I've received a pink slip. I've had my taxes raised. I've financially supported some pretty stupid causes. On and on it goes. If someone else gains by stepping on me, you know, so what. My experience proves to me that I'll gain both wisdom as well as strength from the situation. In the end I'll become a better person for having some perceived wrong done to me. So for the sake of others, and in hopes that they will also learn from the situation, I'll choose to be wronged or cheated. If nothing else I can sleep well at night.
There is so much to say about this, that a small post cannot do the subject justice. Perhaps I'll pick it up in a future post.
My father-in-law is in the ICU. I give him days, maybe a week tops. It's the machines keeping him alive. They're forcing oxygen into his lungs because the force of his own breath is not enough. The fibroid slowly suffocates him. The unbearable aspect to all this when I let myself be quiet and think about his situation is that he's fully aware of what's happening. His mind is 100%. His body, about 2% and fading fast.
One of my thoughts when seeing him in the ICU was the amount of money being spent to keep him alive for just one more day. I know. I'm not going to fake who I am or the thoughts that go through my mind. I have to deal with this. Four weeks ago I would have adamantly fought against pulling the plug if it were someone else proposing it. Now I was in those shoes. Does this thought define me? No. Still, having it is a reality.
One of my other thoughts was putting myself in his shoes and understanding that I was going to die at any time. And my death would be violent through suffocation. And I would be cognizant of the entire event. So for the last two days I've been wishing we might be able to find some course of action that would allow him to go through the event without knowing.
Finally, he doesn't want his grand kids to see him this way. I respect his wishes. I'm grateful that we all had the chance to be together on Valentine's day for his birthday. I think that time was valuable - we all had the chance to interact with him at home and tell him how grateful we are for him and what a great step-dad, grandfather, husband, friend, and advocate he's been to us.
Updated: This will post on Tuesday. I wrote it Monday morning. My father-in-law passed away Monday afternoon. The doctors had sedated him in order to undergo a procedure. The procedure didn't really help and he did not regain consciousness. He did not know what happened.