How Impatience Teaches Life Lessons

I was in my mid 20's when I opted out of a high paying job with a Forbes 500 corporation doing operations management and re-manufacturing. I swapped industrial safety goggles and warehouse attire suddenly for hospital scrubs. I made a career change so I could tell myself that I was doing something more worthwhile in life for the benefit of my fellow man. I also remember how completely full of shit I was and how I compensated for my lack of sound parenting by fitting into white collar jobs and prior to that selling my soul a few years in exchange for a Montgomery G.I. bill. 

I remember going to work Saturday mornings at a skilled nursing facility with a hangover that wouldn't go away. At night I learned to box at old boxing gyms - a theme that kept repeating for every wrong reason well into my mid 30's. Many times, I thought I could gain my soul back if only I learned the art of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu which I saw on late night cable commercials when I lived in Carson, California. I felt empty at that time.

I worked part-time shifts at a skilled nursing facility (SNF) when one day I met a young patient with cerebral palsy. He was around my age, but the wear and tear of the tremors that made his muscles tense and toned caused him to appear many years older. His name was Brian and he was an unassuming figure of a young bearded man hunched and torqued in his wheelchair - a product of years of spasms that froze certain parts of his body into certain unfamiliar and uncomfortable contortions. His speech was slowed and slurred and over the course of the next 9 months while assisting therapists with treating him I discovered that Brian was an educated and learned man with 2 bachelor's degrees and was working on a master's degree between his most recent hospital stays.

I remember feeling an ever-increasing sense of dissatisfaction with my day-to-day existence knowing that Brian was more capable and accomplished than I was at life. At the time I was a fully capable ex-athlete and I was facing a self-imposed career ending decision in order to satisfy my self-centered needs and low self-image. I chose what I thought was a seemingly selfless career, but I chose wrong.

There I was struggling to find the time to study in order to finish the prerequisite science and math courses necessary to gain entrance into a bachelor's program for physical therapy. It was the mid 1990's and the APTA was phasing out bachelor's programs for physical therapy the result of which I'm positive had turned away lot of otherwise competent future therapists due to the nearly incomprehensible cost of attending graduate and post-graduate academic programs. I got depressed over the next 3 years of focused study and underpaid work that eventually led me to a dead end career-wise. It would empty my soul every time I put on my scrubs knowing I would never be a licensed PT and my attitude affected everything I did. My circumstances and a tiny string of personal failures weakened my resolve and all I wanted to do was give up. A few years later my drinking would eventually lead me to hit rock bottom and I ended up losing everything.

It’s been over a decade since I lost it all. And I have to say that through separation and struggle and loss and suffering... I am grateful for what my life has become since. I thank Brian for his courage. His example didn't stop me from ruining my life, but remembering that Brian was a humble man with great courage helped me find the courage to ask for help when I tried to put the pieces of my life back together - and thankfully every piece that was lost was later replaced and my life fit back together in the all the right places.

What did I learn about those years of suffering in my life?

Humble men can perform incomprehensible acts of courage that would make otherwise greater men crumble to pieces. 

So stay humble...
Only always...
Thanks Brian...

P.S. For me not to add my heartfelt thanks to the grace of God would be a robbery... So thanks to the holy mystery that some call Yahweh, Yeshua Moshiach, and Ruach HaKodesh.