Have you ever experienced something significant you did not desire and, when you’ve enjoyed about as much of it that you can stand with, you screamed, “My God, why have you done this to me?” Yeah, me, too. But, I’ve thought about this a lot, especially after having suffered many setbacks over the years. So, let me tel you what I’ve found out.
Life gives us our challenges, to which we are liable to respond, and how we respond to them makes us who and what we are. For example, meet a pair of my new Planet Fitness friends, Stacey and her father, Doug. I will not use their last name or home Planet Fitness facility to protect their privacy. Before I tell you what little I know about them, however, let me tell you more about another father and daughter-in-extremis couple I know.
A few years ago, I handled a post-divorce child support case for a mother of a lovely child who was badly injured during her birth. The child, now in her late teens, continues to live despite severe brain damage that causes her to have very little muscular control, thinking power, or verbal ability. Her mother loves her and has made it her life’s mission to manage and use the child’s large legal settlement trust to give her as good a life as possible. Her father, however, divorced her mother shortly after her birth and essentially checked out of the child’s life, leaving the mother to pursue the lawsuit, the settlement of which has now provided both daughter and mother a better life than they would have had. The mother is employed by her child’s trust to take care of her child. It is a win-win situation. The father married another woman, had more kids, and is much less involved in his challenged daughter’s life.
Let me say here and now, as I have often said before, no one knows what it’s like to be in a particular marriage, challenged family, or other situation until one has actually been there. So, any disparagement of this first father is only based on my objective perception of the facts presented to or discovered by me as part of my work as that mother’s lawyer in that case. So I do not judge the father as a person, though I can imagine some better ways to handle a situation where a couple is challenged in life by having a challenged child.
For example, Doug and his recent Sunday morning workout accompanied by his daughter, Stacey. I was just starting an elliptical step workout when I saw someone near my age pushing his daughter in a large, custom-built wheelchair to a cable-driven weight lifting machine in front of me. The daddy was much buffer than I think I’ll ever be, but he was not the object of my attention. Stacey was.
From my medical education and experience, I assumed Stacey has experienced either a massive neuro-muscular genetic mutation or a hypoxic brain injury. The etiology of her disease is not important, nor the specifics of her physical and mental impairments. What is important, however, was her ability to engage me with some facial expressions and hand movements while her dad did his set on that machine.
Stacey grinned and me and I could not help but grin back. I am, after all, a tremendous flirt with attractive women. And Stacey, challenged as she may have been, attracted me with her attention to me. We flirted for a good, long time as her father finished a set on one machine in the row in front of me and moved her and himself to the next, again and again. Each time, Stacey adjusted her head to look at me and smile and, each time, I could not help but smile back and imitate her hand motions as she thumbed her own jaw line and grinned.
After I finished my time on the elliptical, I went over and introduced myself to Stacey and her father and told them both how much I admired and respected the way the two of them came to work out together. Doug informed me he came to work out with his daughter and she came to ogle the hunky guys. I felt even more flattered by her attraction.
Doug was the opposite of the other father in this story. Her saw the challenges shared by him and his daughter to be life affirming instead of life imposing. Such is the essence of the definition of Greatness! I teach in my writing and speeches, “Doing what is best in the present circumstances for the optimal balance of the highest priority and greatest number of those for whom our values make us responsible.”
Most religions teach, we should be thankful for both the good and bad things in our lives, for we do not know with certainty which is which as they happen but they all make us who and what we are.
Doug and Stacey (and their wife and mother, Mary, I am sure) are the essence of such Greatness! They are inspiring and have added to my life. I hope this post has added to yours.
Turn not away from uncomfortable things for coming to know them better will usually teach you something better about them and, hopefully, your self.