If we worry about everything, we'll never do anything

Last June, as I was walking my dog Grizzly — a handsome and stocky Ridgeback / Malinois / Retriever mix (AKA mutt) — down the manicured tree-lined street of our North Shore Chicago neighborhood, I listened to a voicemail that my doctor had left as a follow up to my annual physical.  

In her non-expressive tone that I had become accustomed to over the years, she said “Give me a call when you have a few minutes to discuss your physical.”

The physical was an executive-style day-long bumper-to-bumper 50,000-mile check. So, it was not unusual for her to follow up a few days after the exam with the results from some of the tests that were not immediately available the day of the physical. By most measures, I’m in good shape for a half-century-old executive who has burned the candlestick at both ends climbing the corporate ladder during some of the most stressful and high-profile PR crises of our time. So, I didn’t think twice when she called. 

I anticipated a replay of the tape from the post-exam conversations I have had with her in years past. The calls typically went something like “You are in good shape, Jim. You could cut back on the sodas and red meat, and add more vegetables and fish to your diet. And try to exercise a little more, but otherwise have a great year and we’ll send you a reminder for next year’s exam in February.” 

I unhooked Grizzly’s leash, gave him a beef jerky that I pulled from his treat basket in our mud room and settled into one of my favorite post-modern living room chairs. I rested my feet on the circular leather ottoman and tapped the “Return Call” icon on my iPhone.  

I always appreciated her Dragnet “just the facts” demeanor. There was rarely much small talk in our conversations and I suspected this exchange would be equally uneventful.  

“Jim, your physical was fine, but there is one thing we need to talk about,” I recall her saying.  I could hear myself swallow as a pit formed in my stomach.

My doctor tried to disarm me for what she was about to share by telling me that she was not overly concerned. Which in my world of crisis PR translates into “Houston – we have a problem.” 

Then she laid it on me. In her clinical matter-of-fact voice,  she explained that my chest scan revealed the growth of a microscopic patch of nodules on one of my lungs. Of course, the first thing that flashed across my mind was that I had lung cancer. She’s probably had this same conversation with other patients many times before and knew precisely where my mind was racing and immediately injected something to the effect of “the chances of this being malignant are very slim - you are in exceptional health and don’t have any of the high-risk factors or behaviors that would normally concern me.” However, I sensed there was a “but” about to roll off her lips. “My guess is it’s residual scarring from a past fungal infection and nothing to worry about. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t suggest we examine this further so we can rule out malignancy.”

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. I had just joined the African Leadership University (ALU) as an Executive in Residence and Chief Communications Officer two months earlier and was neck deep preparing for my family’s relocation to the remote Indian Ocean island of Mauritius where ALU’s flagship campus is situated. It was the experience of a lifetime to join a university that was making history by preparing a new generation of African leaders by having them declare missions rather than majors. In doing so, ALU was earning a global reputation as one of the world’s most innovative universities by the likes of Stanford University, Fast Company, The New York Times and CNN.  

I tossed and turned each night following this news – What if it was cancer? The beloved director of our daughter Kaitlyn’s children’s theatre program – Jimmy Nixon – had passed away only a few months earlier from lung cancer.  What if I was sick? What if we can't move to Africa?  What if... 

Would I no longer have the chance to be the person I wanted and knew that I could be? 

Just like that. A five-minute phone call that I assumed would go the same way it had every other year triggered a Category-5 typhoon of anxiety, fear, uncertainty and anger. For the first time in my life I was really scared.

Then I heard my dad’s childhood advice echo from the back of my mind  – “Don’t worry about it until you have to worry about it. You always have options until you don’t have any options.  So, focus on keeping your options open.” 

My doctor advised that I go see a pulmonologist at my earliest convenience. I spent days scouring Chicago for a pulmonologist that could squeeze me in on short notice.  It was summer and many were on vacation and others had been booked for months. 

With a little over a month to go until our family was booked to head to Mauritius, the walls were closing in. 

Amidst the search for a pulmonologist, we were also trying to find a temporary home for Grizzly — relocating him with us to Africa had turned out to be simply too complicated and not advisable given some health issues of his own. 

We were also trying to sell our home in a rapidly retreating real estate environment. Despite the aggressive marketing efforts of our agent, there was little interest in our home. She was bracing us for a steep price cut to ensure our home sold before the prime summer season drew to a close. 

All of this was unfolding while trying to plan for Kaitlyn’s transition to high school in a distant land so obscure most people have to Google where it is. The devastation of leaving her BFFs behind and the trepidation of making new ones during this critical rite of passage in a teen’s life was understandably terrifying. Nothing broke my heart more than trying to reassure our precious little girl that everything would be ok as tears rolled down her cheeks falling asleep each night. 

Then there was locating and securing safe storage for 5,000 square-feet worth of home furnishing and personal effects, as well as our two cars — another adventure in itself. We had grossly underestimated how much stuff we had and consequently how much it would cost to store it. Instead of hundreds of dollars a month, the cost skyrocketed to thousands of dollars a month.   

And, finalizing our international healthcare insurance with this unanticipated medical concern became a quagmire. To our surprise, the pre-existing condition waiver that the Affordable Care Act protects does not apply to international coverage of U.S. citizens. As of our departure, we were still working on securing coverage.  

The list of worries grew by the day. 

As my wife, Stephanie, and I climbed into bed each night we asked each other —  and ourselves — What are we doing? Should we do this? Can we do it? Will Kaitlyn be OK? What will we do with Grizzly if we don’t find a home for him? Is there adequate health care on the island if something  was wrong with me? Would we even be able to secure adequate health insurance? 

Then we would rest our heads on our pillows and remind each other that if this move was easy it wouldn’t be worth doing. I would remind myself and my family that we were now part of the African Leadership University family which embodies the rallying cry “Do Hard Things.”  Indeed, doing the most important and impactful things in life demand “hard things” of us. We had been blessed with the privilege of a healthy and prosperous life. As our university founder Fred Swaniker is fond of professing “Find your moment of obligation” — the culmination that your life and career have been building towards.  The moment the world is calling on you and needs you.  

This was my family’s moment of obligation and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way. 

By mid-July, I had an appointment with one of Chicago’s top pulmonologists. He was a Brazilian born and trained physician in his early 70s. For something as concerning as this, I felt reassured by his experience. Like my primary care physician, he was a straight shooter. As he reviewed my medical records, he turned to me and asked “Now, why are you here?” I responded rhetorically  “That’s what I want to know, too.” He went on to remark on my exceptional health for a mid-lifer. He was as perplexed as the rest of us about this situation.  

Like me, the doctor was ready to get to the bottom of this. He scheduled two rounds of high-fidelity chest scans. He assured me that he would rush the results, but he warned it would still likely take several days for the radiologists and him to convene. The suspense drew me into yet another downdraft of distraction — What if they find something terminally wrong and rush me to surgery like our theatre friend? What if they need to do a much more invasive test like a precarious lung biopsy? Our departure was in a week — what if we had to delay or cancel our move to Mauritius?  The carousel of "what if" scenarios consumed me day and night.  

But I kept telling myself and my family we were going to go. We would make this work regardless of the prognosis. I kept telling myself that this is what people like us do.  We run into the fire – not away from it. 

Africa didn't need us, we needed Africa — more than ever.

In early August, just four days before we were scheduled to depart for Mauritius, the doctor called me. He said that while he and the other specialists he consulted with couldn’t explain what the lung spots were,  they agreed that the growths were so myopic that the chance of malignancy was “practically negligible.” He said let’s just take another look in a year — “Good luck in Africa!” 

In the immediate days that followed, we summoned the moving vans, said good-bye to our friends, finished packing the eight suitcases accompanying us to Mauritius, called a pair of Uber XLs, tearfully locked the door to our beloved home one last time and raced off to the airport. 

As the jumbo jet carrying us to the other side of the planet climbed into the hazy summer sky above Lake Michigan, I was reminded of a bumper sticker I saw a couple years earlier with the words of Winston Churchill: “When you’re going through hell — keep going.” These seven words never rang more true.  

In the three months that led up to our departure, there were a hundred reasons not to get on that plane. Each one of them would have been a valid reason on their own merit to abort our plans and stay comfortably put in Chicago.

But we never abandoned the one reason we were doing this to begin with — to do our small part to help change the trajectory of a continent with so much potential for itself and the world. And in doing so change the trajectory of our own lives. 

There is a lot to worry about as we navigate the new reality of life in the age of COVID-19. Let’s make no mistake about it, many of those concerns are and will sadly be life-changing and life-ending for many people. But these circumstances also provide us with an immense opportunity — and responsibility —  to care for each other, ourselves, our world and our future.  

As we emerge from self-isolation and step into the wilderness of this new world that we call the new normal, we must resist worrying about everything — or we may very well end up doing nothing. And in the most important race the human race has laced up for in generations — doing nothing is simply not an option.

Now — possibly more than any other moment in our lives — is the time to stop contemplating what if and start declaring why not.