The glory of our days

When I was 6, I wrote a book about state capitals and nicknames. The pages were held together with yarn.

When I was 13, I had major surgery on my bladder and spent 2 1/2 weeks in the hospital after contracting an infection that pushed my temperature up near 106o, but during those extra days of recovery, I got a new roommate who played guitar which?inspired me to start taking lessons 2 months later.

When I was 17, I played guitar onstage at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, a club made famous a couple of years earlier when Bruce Springsteen filmed his “Glory Days” video there.

When I was 23, I went on kidney dialysis for 6 months, until my brother gave me one of his perfectly healthy kidneys.?

When I was 24, I drove across the country for two weeks.

When I was 25, I moved across the country for 3 years, during which time I got hired as a writer for an ad agency who had more sophisticated means of binding printed materials than yarn.?

When I was 32, I met my wife, and we spent the next several months falling in love despite living 3,000 miles apart.

When I was 35, my Mom almost died of heart failure.

When I was 36, my wife and I got married.

When I was 41, my Mom almost died of lung failure.

When I was 42, my wife and I moved across the country—8 years after she had moved across the country to be with me.

When I was 44, I got fired from the job that allowed us to move across the country.?

When I was 49, a global pandemic hit and there I was with a semi-functional immune system from the years of anti-rejection meds I’ve taken to keep my transplanted kidney going strong.

When I was 50, that pandemic gave us chance to move to Arizona and be closer to my very much alive parents.

When I was 52, I quit a great job working with people I love to dive head first into a new career as a coach.

How many credits do you get for all of that? A semester’s worth? A continuing ed certificate? A pre-filled punch card at a discount diploma mill?

I’m kidding. Sort of. Not really.

We learn so much through the sheer act of living. Each trip around the sun a crash course in course correction as our well laid plans get laid out like Spinks vs Tyson in ’88. And yet, when it comes to formal recognition for these hard earned lessons, bupkis.?

Meanwhile, you can receive legit college credits for sleep-listening to a lecture on 16th Century Clown Philosophy once a week on Zoom.

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some book learnin’. Why else would I have that recurring dream where I’m back at my alma mater standing outside an empty classroom after just missing the last exam I needed to pass for graduation if I didn’t crave more time in the classroom?

But I think the wisdom we gather with each bump, fork or groin kick in the road is worth at least as much. These are the things I talk about with my coaching clients. The things that make each of them uniquely qualified to bring what no one else can bring into the world. To bring the kind of pure and imperfect human value we need more than ever right now.

So, I implore every one of us to put it all out there and keep living fully every day. As the great thinker Happy Slappy said back in 1563, “there is no greater tragedy in this life than an unfluttered fart whistle.”?