"Life breaks you and makes you stronger in the broken parts"
A reader of this blog recently sent me a question asking me as to where I find the subjects of my postings. I answered him that these topics are usually derived from my thoughts. Thoughts that have been lingering in the inner parts of my thinking mind. But the topic of this posting is from my inner being.
The topic is our need to bounce back from the Adversities that we all encounter in our lives. Adversities come to us in our careers and in our personal lives all the time. In addition, we humans face adversities in aggregate. That is, we face adversities as a team, as a group, as an organization, as a nation and as a global community along with those adversities we face individually. Now the whole world is facing a severe economic adversity.
Adversities are a part of life. These adversities come to us in many forms small, medium, large and very large. I have faced a very Large Adversity in my life about eleven years ago. I want to talk about this adversity in this blog.
The reason for discussing my large adversity is to opine as to what lessons I learnt from this huge hurdle that was put in front of me. My hope here is that those who read this blog will gain some insights for themselves on how to deal with adversities that we will all face sooner or later both in our professional and personal lives.
In 1998 my only son died at age twenty four of a rare Disease. He all on a sudden was overcome by the deadly disease called Acute Aplastic Anemia. It is acute because it comes on all on a sudden. He was a smart, handsome, energetic, intelligent and sensitive young man. At that time he was in his final semester in college. He wanted to become a teacher. He and I had many a philosophical discussions about life. He lived alone (I am sure he had a few girlfriends here and there) in an apartment near his college. He used to come home over the weekends. One weekend he came home and we saw some bruises on his body. He told us that they were "football" bruises. The next weekend there were more bruises and on the third weekend he was bleeding all over. I rushed him to the hospital. The general physician immediately diagnosed that he had acute aplastic anemia. He needed specialist care and so he was sent to a very famous University hospital where he was seen by a very famous oncologist. This doctor told me that the disease he had is very rare ( 0ne in two million people get this disease - hearing that my son proclaimed to me - "Dad I won the jackpot!" - a morbid sense of humor if I may say so) and that the cause of the disease was unknown (idiopathic) and therefore there is no known treatment. Strong experimental drugs would be used, and if that does not work then the doctor would try bone marrow transplant as a last ditch effort. By the way. this disease kills the immune system totally. So over the next few months my son went on a huge cocktail of very strong experimental drugs. The drugs did not work and after about nine months he was admitted into hospital for a bone marrow transplant. Luckily his sister was a 100 percent match. My daughter donated her bone marrow to her brother. But that did not work also. So after six weeks in the hospital on January 18th, 1998 he died leaving us his surviving family devastated. Talk about a huge adversity. Me the father had to bury my son. It is supposed to be the other way around. Isn't it?
So what have I learnt from this very large adversity.
Lesson 1. We do not have all the answers. There is much that we do not know anything about. Yet now more so than ever we are continuously being talked down to by so many " so called know-it- alls" - i.e. experts. I have learnt there is nobody who is an Expert. Life is a learning journey. We have to learn till we leave this planet. So when our President says that he is putting a panel of experts together or when news TV brings together a panel of so called experts, I turn off. We do not have all the answers.
I have found that some answers may come from those who have toiled much, paid their dues, gotten their hands dirty, journeyed a lot, studied a lot, seen a lot and have a lot of experience. All of this comes with age. I am now very skeptical if someone says they are an expert and they are hardly forty years old. It takes time to know and certainly it takes a lot of time to profess expertise. There are no quick paths. Do not believe the so called experts. Gain the knowledge yourself for yourself.
Lesson 2. We have to live in the NOW! I urge you to read Eckhart Tolle. He has discussed NOW quite brilliantly. Live life in one day compartments. Because what happened to you today had nothing to do with what happened yesterday and you cannot go to tomorrow without going through today. All yesterdays and tomorrows are in essence NOW. Focus on the NOW.
Lesson 3. Again as Eckhart says there is no use to carry our past pain bodies with us going forward. Because if we let yesterday's pain bodies dictate our todays, then we will not let our true human potential to flow from our self conscious beings. We all have many talents and it is up to each of us to let loose our talents. There is absolutely no sense in being deterministic in our thinking. We should choose our paths and follow our dreams with a singular focus. We one wants something badly and has passion for it, then results will follow.
Our past adversities roll into our aggregate past pain bodies. And if we let our past dedicate our lives then like a rolling snow flake it will form a huge pain body snow ball that might have the capacity to destroy us going into our "Nows". Good golfers know that if they hit a three bad shots in the holes completed, then they need to completely erase the memory of those bad shots if they ever are going to give themselves a chance to recover. If they let their minds linger on those bad shots then forget it.
Lesson 4. We need to keep our fun meter on red hot. If our past adversities steal our humor then we might as well give up. We need to laugh and laugh heartily. We need to give ourselves joyful mini vacations. We need to enjoy the moments. We need to laugh at ourselves. No wonder my dentist, the last time he was doing a root canal he had me lie in his chair and looking straight up at a TV where he had Don Rickles on. I laughed and laughed and I felt absolutely no pain. We need laughing therapy. Humor is our gift for each day!
These are main lessons I have learnt from my very large adversity. These are huge career management lessons also.
Hope readers have gained some insight.
