Dr. Dave Buck of Houston and I had been in my hotel room planning for things that need to be done to advance the work that we’ve been doing in L. A. At six o’clock I told him that I had to meet some friends for dinner and he got up and walked with me to the elevators.
The doors open and as I took a step to get on he grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Hold on! I need to tell you something.”
Now there were three very attractive girls who happened to be on the elevator and I was very much looking forward to the ride down from the 14th floor but the doors slid shut and I’m just left to think about what could have been.
I turned and looked at Dave. We’ve known one another for six years. He is a pioneer in street medicine, teaches medicine in Houston and is currently developing hand held electronic medical records that can be used on the streets. I’ve visited him in Houston and he had visited me at Union Mission. We’ve blindly stolen from one another’s work.
“You know something Mike you’re different from the way you used to be. You’re warmer. I mean you’ve always been nice and stuff but you’re different.”
I was taken aback because this isn’t the kind of things that friends normally tell one another; especially those who only see one another four or five times a year.
“I think that it’s good,” he continued, “you don’t seem as burdened or as heavy or as hurt as you used to be.”
We embraced and I thanked him and we rode an empty elevator down to meet my friends.
It is true over the past several weeks that people have been telling me that I am different from how I used to be. “You look good!” they tell me though when I look at myself in the mirror I think that I look the same.
I called my friend Bob Colvin recently who went through major transitions in his own life last year. “Mike you sound great,” he said after we talked for a few minutes. I told him that he did too and while I thought that I sounded like I always do, his voice was lighter and friendlier than I remembered it.
At dinner in a Brewery because none of us could stand anymore Japanese food, Gordon and Valerie from Hawaii wanted to know about my future. Valerie reads my daily musings and we write from time to time so she is pretty current on what’s happening in my life. Afterwards we found ourselves back in the hotel bar quietly talking what we want our futures to be. It was a conversation full of encouragement.
“You’re so much closer to your future than I am to mine,” she said at one point.
I think about all of these things and know that they are true though it takes other people telling me as I’m not at a place where I can recognize them for myself. It’s probably true that most of us fail to see the changes that are taking places in who we are and how we live. We get better or we get worse, happier or sadder, emptier or fuller and we don’t recognize it as it is happening. Then we wake up one day and we are in such a different place than we ever thought we would be.
Today is my last day working before I return to my Sabbatical (except for Tuesday when my new partner has me scheduled to do all kinds of things). The last two weeks have been a world wind of travel, people and activity.
And it is coming to an end with affirmation from different people and in different ways that I’m headed in the right direction, happier… More content…less burdened… warmer.
Closer to my future.
