The Value of Storms

"The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.

As I've spent time on LinkedIn I have begun to question the platform's value to me, my various companies, and as with other social media, to a broad swathe of users.

For anyone who wants to comment, how does it benefit you?

I began my career in journalism - I now write non-fiction - under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize winners and a savant editor and writer whose essays read like symphonies. His arts reviews remain among the finest writing I have read.

He was banished from New York for a career ending literary faux pas - plagiarism was the rumor but it could just as well have been an affair with the wrong man's wife - and ended up at a Midwest newspaper chain in a city on a downward spiral from its early 20th Century glory days. Decades later I remember the pleasure and envy they prompted.

Last winter I almost died from the complications of my third health emergency in two and a half years. I spent many days curled up in a ball feverish, shivering, and in mind bending pain and exhaustion I had never experienced. It felt as if my cells were trying to breathe, and could not. More than once I asked myself, "am I dying?" Months later my physician said as much, and apologized for not taking it seriously.

I have been in more than my share of blizzards and hurricanes metaphorically, medically, and relationally. Life is storms, and if we are fortunate the time between them is long and sweet. Some were just life and others of my own choosing, chasing desire, curiosity, adrenaline or all three.

Quite a few doctors have asked me what I learned and how I survived. I don't recommend they do that. Lawrence Gonzales wrote a very good book, "Surviving Survival." As a World War II Marine once told me, "it's not a bowl of cherries."

My answer to their question is, "it's an entire book, but in brief, sometimes life requires we learn to suffer, and smile during the lesson."

The value of storms, if as I recommend one cannot avoid them, is that one learns how to function while hurting, exhausted, perhaps alone, and if there is time enough probably afraid. And that if Churchill's maxim "when going through hell, keep going" is not an option, hunkering down and taking the blows just might teach you a lot about your body but far more importantly, your mind and spirit.

When the gods are fucking with you, you learn what you're made of. Then if you survive, the clouds part, blue skies and following seas arrive, and you are aware of the shortness and preciousness of time.

Personally, I am not fucking around, and recommend it as a fine way to live. While I look forward to mooring out in some spectacular cove in the Caribbean, I know more storms will arrive. The fact is they are where I have been most terrified, but also most alive, most joyful, most in my body, and in absolute awe of existing on this amazing planet that is my and your home.