A few years ago I was visiting a project in Orlando, Florida that was trying to prevent kids from being accepted into gangs. I was with Ted Hardgrove of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and we met for dinner the night before the visit. Over grilled fist and white wine we compared notes.
Both of us had shot holes through the program based on the proposals that we’d read. Agreeing on just about everything wrong with the program, Ted concluded that we have to go through the motions of the visit but he didn’t see any way this program would be funded.
We arrived the next day and they simply blew us away. They may have been poor writers but they were doing incredible work! They went on to receive half-a-million from the Foundation.
I remember Ted saying as we made our way back to the hotel “What a difference a day makes.”
I’m sitting in my room at the Holiday Inn in Athens. The sun is bright, there isn’t a cloud in the sky, and I feel good.
I woke up and the memory of Ted came to mine and I applied it to myself. What a difference a year makes.”
I told my son Jeremy that I really don’t even remember last football season.
“Trust me Dad,” he replied, “there isn’t a lot to remember about the University of Georgia’s last football season.”
But what I meant is that I remember being here, going through the motions, trying to have a good time, but mostly feeling lost and left behind. I was living alone for the first time in my life, had left my career with no clear idea of what I wanted to do next, was worn out and tired from all of those years of trying to save people from themselves, and all of this was overwhelming. I had launched myself on a Sabbatical but didn’t know it yet.
“Yeah,” I said to Jeremy, “I really don’t remember much of anything about any of it.”
“We had some fun,” he replied but as much as I rack my brain I can’t find those memories.
I blew into town yesterday because I wanted to recapture my love for Athens and having fun here. It’s a continuation of the pilgrimage I’ve been on to restore my soul.
I am with friends whom I love, hooked up with my sister Age for cocktails and we laughed and told stories, returned to “East/West” for dinner and strolled around the campus last night. It was a day that erased all of those memories that I cannot excavate from last year.
Later today we’re hooking up with more friends and plan on celebrating the night away in Atlanta, another city that lost every bit of luster that I ever had for it.
Aside from a handful of friends who are trudging away trying to save Atlanta from itself I grew weary of the pompous politics and a city that believes it is the center of the universe. I grew bone tired of forever being the outsider from Savannah representing people that no one really cared about anyway.
But today I refuse to let that part of my journey define who I am. There is joy to be found everywhere … even in Atlanta and I plan on dancing in it tonight.
Little by little, I watched people destroy themselves in my work. They lost a tad more hope with each day that passed. They drank a bit more, shot up with increasing regularity or just continued to lose faith in everything. Then I watched them die.
There were times last year when I cared less about or dying. I was merely existing and somehow got through those months. Unlike my homeless brothers and sisters somehow … though the tenderness of friends …I gained a bit more hope every day, my faith in the future grew, energy increased and … “He restoreth my soul”.
Today I plan to continue the celebration of now and the anticipation of the future. To quote my friend Joe Buck quoting the Bible, “This is the day that the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.” That’s the plan Joe!
What a difference a year makes!
