You Value Yourself By Valuing Others

Last week was the first column I’ve ever missed because of illness. I was knocking ice out of trees to save them during the storms.

I bruised my rotator cuff, sprained my shoulder and wrist, damaged my elbow and basically could not move my arm. That might have been OK, but the body lets you know when you’ve done too much and the pain kept me from sleeping or typing. The pain pills kept me from most everything else.

There, I wanted to tell that to someone who wouldn’t say, “Well, what do you expect, climbing trees at your age?”

I still had to travel to give lectures, so I mastered the art of one-armed gesturing and depending on the kindness of strangers. I was reminded that much of our sense of community comes from dependence, from the line “do unto others…” Perhaps so many of us in this country have become independent through money and information that we don’t feel we need each other until it’s too late. Is it easier to be rude to someone if you don’t think you’ll ever need to ask them for anything?

Injury slowed me down, gave me time to notice and to think. One story kept popping into my mind. It happened just a few weeks ago, before Christmas. I was waiting to start a lecture and a woman in her 60s approached me. She said in a very matter-of-fact voice, “You saved my life.”

I thought she was just being generous and had once been a listener to my old radio programs on KVI. But she told me a story that made my nerve endings tingle.

She had been a traditional housewife, married to a doctor, raising her children, when her husband one day asked for a divorce. It was one of those younger-woman scenarios out of the movie, “The First Wives Club.” She felt she had no community to turn to.

Her world was shattered; the children almost grown. She had few work skills to fall back on and her body looked its age. The other “wives” distanced themselves. After the separation, settlement and divorce, she waited until her children were reasonably independent, and then set out in a small boat to die.

She rowed out to Puget Sound prepared to create an accident so her children wouldn’t carry the burden of a mother who had committed suicide. For some reason, she brought a radio and tuned into my program for one last time.

What I was talking about that day changed her mind. She thought maybe it had been a comment like “it’s never too late” or “the best revenge is a good life,” but whatever I said made a difference, an ordinary comment at an extraordinary time.

I told her my story, too. When I was depressed and alone, my plan involved traveling to India to a meditation center where I would unexpectedly die.

The legacy would be one that children and friends could laugh about. “Well, Jennifer died, but, heck, she was on a spiritual journey and just kept going.” One does become narcissistic when planning death. But by the time I was ready to go to India, I was no longer depressed.

She and I laughed, and then it was time to begin the lecture. The audience had arrived while we talked. We two women embraced, knowing ourselves as sisters, ones who had survived. She had gone back to school, and because of her many talents, had risen very quickly to an administrative position she loved. She had created a new community.

She left me thinking about community, the time and the impact we each make on the lives of others without knowing it. Each day you can lift someone’s spirits or help to smash them. Over and over, every moment, we make the choice. Usually without any idea of the impact.

I was thinking these common-sense thoughts on a plane last night. I made an effort to thank the flight attendant who had provided extraordinary service for 5-1/2 hours. As I got off the plane, he handed me a bottle of wine and smiled.

He knew, as did the woman at the lecture, that my life has more value for me if it has value for them. That is the social contract. We had exchanged gifts. It is a contract that extends to all things.

My arm is better now. At least I can type again. I sit here at my computer, listening to Celtic melodies, not knowing how to end what has become a column of musings. But one last story lies at my feet.

Long-term readers know about Rafferty, my big bear dog. He is almost 14 and the vet has just told me over the telephone that his heart is wearing out. Otherwise, Raff is fine, but it means I might wake up one day soon and he won’t. He has been with me through so much that I don’t think I could write about it when I do lose him. It would just be too hard. So, I’ll write about him now. Somehow he fits into my theme of making the choice over and over to care for what is alive and what is part of your community.

Raff has always been a dog who offered endless comfort with endless patience. He is the Mother Teresa of dogs, intelligent, gentle and loving. I was there at his birth because his mother was also my dog. He got his name from a puppy noise he made, “raff, raff.” Of all the pets I have ever had, he is the special one.

Well, that’s enough. Now go out and be thoughtful, take care of each other and all the living things that cross your path.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jennifer James says The Spokesman-Review