At work, over the last few months, I have interviewed around 200 people for various positions within the company, it’s been quite the grind. Clearly, in a 30 minute job interview, it’s impossible to get deep into someone’s story. And in interviews most people are putting their best foot forward and trying to convince me they would be perfect for the position, so I am getting a very narrow scope into each person’s life. They want to be perceived in a certain light and everything they are do is to support that light. However, while discussing management style and hearing them explain how they handle conflict in the work place, it became overwhelming to me that certain things in our lives hang by a thread kind of like getting a job or not.
So many people I talked to were good workers. They were out of work, not because of something they did wrong, but b.c that’s the way things are right now. Several expressed that had been laid off from a job they absolutely loved, but the company went under. I spoke with several candidates who had just been through a divorce and were trying to pick up the pieces. Some candidates had been out of work for a long time. Not everyone, but those I mentioned above had sense of desperation in the eyes, they seemed desperate and just exhausted, and rightly so. They seemed keenly aware of the fact that life had not gone as planned, while at the same time they are sitting in front of me, trying to make themselves seem so awesome that my only choice would be to hire them. Things are Fragile.
Last week my little girl Harper Michelle was born. She’s so wonderful. Healthy. Beautiful. It took 49 hours for that little girl to make her debut. During her delivery, it seemed to be taking longer to push her out than our midwife thought it would. When her head finally came out we could see why. The cord had wrapped around her neck. My wife was in the tub, so our midwife and the nurses pulled her out legs out of the water, holding Harper’s head out above water. The midwife is trying to untangle the cord and guide Harper out. It was intense, probably the most scared I have ever been. Turns out the cord was wrapped around her shoulders/armpits and one leg (no wonders she couldn’t get out). During that 30 second I am holding my wife’s upper body out of the water and thinking “what I am about to witness?” In reality things weren’t as dire as I thought, but still, it was intense. Again, I am reminded about how fragile life can be.
Everything can change in one instance. Employed one day and jobless the next. Married one day and divorced the next. Alive one day, and dead the next. It can be one car accident, one mistake at work, one fight with your spouse, one dreadful act of stupidity and everything is different.
Now, my response to this growing reality of the life’s fragile nature is this. Love your family. Love your friends. Be there for them when their threads break. Do your best to make good decisions Think about how your actions can affect others. And when your threads break, when things crash into pieces, deal with it. Get smarter, get healed, get stronger. Keep moving. Have Faith.
