Drive for Five: Attitude Matters

A group of goofs your scribe meets with each Friday morning continues to mess with my mind. In a very good way. How you say?

Well, a recent gathering of half of dozen was pondering the book of James and its consistent and powerful message about patience being a real key to life. Ain’t the the truth? So often, especially when things are not going as we planned, it’s damn tough to stay rooted in such a spirit.

Way back when James was written - it’s the oldest book of the New Testament - early believers were being persecuted. Wealthy landowners were demanding long hours of labor, not paying a daily wage and other nefarious stuff. Life was hard. Folks needed to be paid a daily wage to buy food for their families. This was long before refrigeration and other modern-day comforts. Folks worked, expected to be paid a daily wage and then set out to find grub for the family.

It wasn’t working out as planned among the scattered tribes and there was plenty of grumbling. The book of James is a great read when going through trials and tribulations, whether it’s suffering from Amyloidosis, the destruction of my kidneys and the need for a transplant or something else. The facilitator added a little Victor Frankl too. The psychiatrist thrown into a Nazi prison camp amid daily degradation, deprivation and death. Horrible conditions.

The infamous book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” was born from Frankl’s adversity. Great wisdom within the title published in 1946. It’s still popular and describes a psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose to each person's life through one of three ways: the completion of tasks, caring for another person, or finding meaning by facing suffering with dignity.

Facing suffering with dignity requires patience. Whether long ago in a time of agrarian lifestyles and its challenges or modern-day realities concerning illness, relationship troubles, job uncertainty of whatever calamity is derailing your best laid intentions. Stuff happens. The question always becomes how are we gonna deal with it? Frankl hit it out of the park with this gem: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Amen brother.

To choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance? Two examples were offered. One talked about two frogs languishing in a deep cream bowl. One drowned quickly. The other? Basically said, “I’m going down fighting.” The frog started swimming round and round that bowl of deep cream. Wouldn’t you know it? The churning turned the cream into butter. Frog number two rode that butter to the top and hopped out. Alive and better for the effort. Be long-tempered, not short, with affliction. It requires patience.

The second example really warmed your correspondent’s marrow. It talked about a young professional driving his fancy sports car. Out of nowhere, someone threw a brick and damaged the expensive vehicle. Enraged, successful dude admonishes the child who threw the brick before realizing the desperate youth had tossed the missile to garner young buck’s attention to the situation: Brick thrower’s handicapped older sibling had fallen from a wheelchair into the street, was too heavy to lift and needed help.

Fancy pants’ heart melted as he assisted before watching the pair continue down the sidewalk of a busy Chicago street. The man never fixed the dent. It was a constant reminder to self to not go through life so fast that someone would have to throw a brick to get his attention.

The Drive for Five Network prays this is a wakeup call to America. What needs to be done to get folks attention to the growing kidney crisis? It’s bad and gonna get worse. There’s 600,000 on dialysis. It’s expected to grow to 1,000,000 by 2030. This 66-year-old and 90,000 others need transplants like Dick Franklin received recently.

Our nation is churning in the lousy cream of high blood pressure, diabetes, fatty liver disease and obesity. Kidney killers. Change will not happen overnight. It will take patience and choices. Invest in the booming renal care industry or invest in wellness? Drive for Five endorses the latter!