Musings | Lessons from A Dying Man
“Make the most of the best and the least of the worst.”
There have likely been several moments or extended periods in your life when you may have felt like you were piloting a malfunctioning plane or bus, or vehicle of your choice. Life is like that – we get periods of turbulence (like pandemics, for example!), we get through them, and then we get relative calm periods. When we are in turbulence, we often forget that undulations are a part of life and that the turbulence is fleeting. Likewise, in periods of relative calm, we often forget the turbulence. Of turbulence and trouble, Hank, a man ill with terminal lung cancer, had this to say:
“What am I going to do, start getting pissed off now? Every other time I’ve gotten pissed off it hasn’t helped me a damn bit.” Then he launched into one of his stories, of another time he was pissed off when he thought he was going to die in a malfunctioning plane. He put the anger away and landed.
“Life is like that,” he told me. “No matter how pissed off you are, you still have to land the plane, and being pissed off isn’t going to help you one bit. You’ve got to make the best of it.”
Words we have all heard before, perhaps not in the context of a malfunctioning plane, but making the best of any situation can help us alleviate frustration and anger if we can accept reality and act. Not always easy to do, but somewhat easy to remember (even when we don’t do it – having perspective can help). Hank had other pieces of advice captured by Aaron Nichols when he worked in Hank’s retirement home. Aaron turned that advice into an article called: Three Lessons from a Dying Man: None of Them Involve Money. The three lessons are noted below:
Life (and the world) is a malfunctioning plane, the more pissed off we let ourselves become about it, the more likely we are to crash.
Happiness is not a consumable product. It is not something you find by searching for it. It is a naturally arising byproduct of a fulfilling, well-lived life.
A well-lived life has more to do with perspective than anything else. As long as you can laugh, there is hope.
The third may be the most relevant for this time but also the toughest to lean into. After a year of “making the best of it,” it may be hard to have perspective – and that is ok. It may be hard to acknowledge not only the malfunctioning plane we got on last March but also just how close we are to the landing strip. It’s true, it is the turbulent flights that seem to go on forever, but it is also true that getting on the ground after those flights is a most satisfying feeling. Perspective is a gift we can give ourselves. Take a moment to reflect on just how far you have come, how much you have overcome, and just how close you are to the finish line.
Resources & Sources
There are two ways to review the entire article referred to above; you can either read it at this link or click play on the play button under the picture and listen to it. The audio version is just over five minutes long.