I have been humbled by how tragedy is never far away – no matter how good our lives are.
Take Quadriplegia: Around two and a half years ago, a classmate from Harvard Business School fell in her apartment. In a freak of bad luck, she broke her C4 vertebra and became paralyzed from her neck down. She no longer had use of her arms or her legs. It’s a shocking and dramatic change.
A couple of months later, I discovered that another business school classmate and friend had glioblastoma, a very aggressive and deadly version of brain cancer. He passed away recently.
Why do I write this here? Because I have lessons to share.
- Cherish every moment
Cherish every relationship. Every joy. A disaster that is completely outside of our control might be just around the corner.
- If disaster strikes, work with it
Viktor Frankl has said,
“for the person who has a why, they can stand any how.”
If disaster strikes, our job is to go work on making meaning out of the disaster. We have no other choice. In the glioblastoma case, my friend made the most of every moment he had. With his wife. Doing the things he loved. Celebrating his incredible family. I was lucky enough to be able to hear the eulogies at his funeral. He squeezed so much into his life.
And if we can’t find that meaning, we have to keep working at it. In my most recent conversation with my quadriplegic friend, I encouraged her to keep asking the questions that Anthony Robbins taught me to ask in times of difficulty:
“How can I use this?”
And:
“What is good about this?”
By repeatedly asking these questions, our subconscious can go to work on finding the right answers.
- We don’t have to solve the problem, but neither can we disengage
And what if you are just a bystander when disaster strikes elsewhere? As I was in both these cases. Here, I have learned from my rabbi and friend Nochum Bernstein, who quoted Pirkei Avot to me. We don’t have to solve the problem, but neither are we allowed to simply disengage. We make meaning out of our own lives by taking the tragedy we see around us and finding some sort of meaning in the struggle. Exactly what that means for each of us is for us to figure out.
- Celebrate when you can
We can’t let disaster and tragedy pull us down. In the midst of the difficulties of the world, we have to celebrate. Lory and I started planning a celebration of our 20th wedding anniversary before these disasters struck. A part of us wanted to cancel them but the Rabbis encouraged us. Disaster should not stop us from celebrating where we can.
Christina Patterson – who was a guest on my podcast, did a beautiful write-up of our celebration in London, and you can read my words to Lory here.
