The view of you

through the eyes of another

is something you

may never see.

The spark you make

may set ablaze

a smile or thought

that saves a life

another day.

Your ordinary self

and what you are

to another is extra.

You may never know

but may soon see

the spark of you

in another

by another

through another

for another.

And their smile or thought

may save another life

in yet another moment

in yet another day

and start a fire.

LMSM,

Don

It took me almost seven miles to drive the two back to my office today.

It was lunchtime and I’d just locked up my post at the senior center where I do outreach to needy older people twice a week.  My head just wasn’t in the drive. I almost forgot I had skipped breakfast. I should be hungry.

I was much too busy chewing on a vocabulary of terms that might describe the past few hours like a ravenous midnight scavenger at a refrigerator door.

I made a U turn somewhere on Boulder Highway.  I’d missed my turn about 5 miles back while I had been thinking thirty years into my future.

“How was your morning,” said Cate as I came in with a portable office hanging from both shoulders.  I could have easily missed her greeting in my zeal to get to my office to offload and unpack from my trip.  They all know I’m out of the office Tuesday and Thursday mornings doing outreach. And by the sarcasm in her voice It had obviously been a crazy busy Thursday at the office during my absence.

Getting my leftovers from the fridge to the microwave as staff meandered into the lunchroom for our last togetherness hour of the workweek, I had been trying to figure out how I wanted to respond  to her question. Unprompted, she continued “You know, there are some of those days wherein working here, you say to yourself ‘How did I ever get so lucky to have ever had the privilege of meeting this client?
And then there are days like today.”

She was oblivious to the fact she had just written the lead to my story.

Lucky me.

Lunch was usually a good time of banter, slurping and Facebook jokes but the brakes of the food truck that pulled up out front with a bed full of canned goods and perishables was our cue. Jokes and food aside for the next 20 minutes, the lunch team exited the break room and knew the routine of working at a non-profit.  Our unattended microwave lunches quickly cooled as we unloaded what would be lunch, dinner and breakfast for many hundreds in days to come.  The food pantries at our little non-profit family resource center were getting filled today once again.

But it was Thursday, which in the four-10s world of work, means Friday and a full 84 hours off work. Every weekend is a three day weekend for us after four consecutive  10-12 hour days of work where the average monthly  income of a waiting room client is under $800 and quite often zero.   Most of them are unaware of the day of the week.  They are often unaware of the coming weekend except that it means their urgent needs are put on ice for three more days while their caseworkers go have a drink or two, lie out by the pool or take a few days for a Disneyland visit.   Every  —-day is pretty much the same for them trying to figure out how to keep their hard times from getting worse…how to keep their heads and spirits up as they negotiate the poorly designed flow charts of social services for a meal, a pillow or enough gas at the stove to heat what might be their last can of donated soup.

It was not only our Friday but also payday.  A mixed blessing.  My small take-home had long since been loaded for an electronic shoot out from my bank account into the coffers of  screaming others as quickly as it would arrive.  If I was lucky, the aftermath of the online massacre might leave a buck fifty to take me through the next couple weeks.

Lucky.

Such a relative term.

But at the moment, it had become one of the words I’d sought just earlier that afternoon.

Is luck just chance? A random draw for the longer matchstick? A disproportionate distribution of goodwill from the gods? Is that really what it all boils down t

Perishables.

Milkcoffeecreamer, baconraspberriesbananas. Mostly coffee though.

I tried to create a short, repeatable rhyme for my 3am grocery run that I was always doomed to forget.

Perishables mostly.

My sleep schedule has always been random at best and an early morning grocery run was normal, especially on paydays and especially when I’m out of coffee…and up writing.

Perishables.

I rarely use that word anymore, but when a lot of your work involves distribution of donated food to hungry people, you soon discover that the inherent sadness of the word is a glorious trumpet sound to the many who regularly survive on over-salted canned goods and family pack sacks of hard dry beans.  A banana, fresh cream, bacon…most are rare exotics in the world of food pantries. Perishable delicacies.

Still searching for the words that had driven me 7 miles out of my way yesterday morning, it was another obvious keyword.

I am lucky.

I am also perishable.

Existentially, these facts of life don’t sit well with me.  They are much too random for this Christian man turned advocate for those who are unlucky and perishing.

At the senior center yesterday, you could have easily called the man I met unlucky and perishing, but if that is true, I will gladly trade my fortunate circumstances to perish along side him in this troubled world.  He may be poor, but he is far from impoverished.

In the earlier words of Cate, “How did I ever get so lucky to have ever had the privilege of meeting this client?”

At 81, he looks every day of 50 with the wit of a 20 year old.  I feel old around him.  He’d popped his head in a couple times prior in the bingo room where I meet the seniors to match them with any help and resources my newbie enthusiasm could find.  Today, he came to our set appointment and greeted me.

“I have some more crap for you, Don,” he said as he handed me a file folder screen printed with those exact words and filled with a $900/month snapshot of his last 30 days income and expenses for us to review.  The “MORE CRAP” folder was the theme for the day as we poured through his documents and poured unexpectedly into the colorful life of this octogenarian I now hope to become over my next 30 years.

His humor and happiness were unperishably captivating.  Like I sat in the front row seat at a comedy club, he picked on me for two hours and I threw barbs right back on stage to him each time.  I couldn’t tell you all the topics we covered in the friendship we were both very obviously interested in creating.  We covered the compulsories I needed to do my job for him but his needs weren’t all the reason why he came that morning.

He had no idea what he was teaching me.  Perhaps he did, and that’s why he came.

What followed was a series of nostalgic one-upsmanships about old Vegas, the rises and falls of an old man’s life and sage recollections of accrued blessings about being 81, alone and incredibly content at being both.  He was genius, but no angel.  I like a man who can use the right expletive at the right moment for the right reason.  I was very quickly realizing the likenesses of our lives despite the differences in the eras we had lived thus far.  And without my consent, I was being mentored in a bingo room.

There’s something about the value of relationship with an older man that is entirely lost on the generation of younger men today.  As parents, we remind our kids, “Wait til you’re my age,” as if some secret epiphany will someday bite them square in the ass and they will understand.  He did more than that.  My ass was being very graciously chewed by a quickly perishing nobody who was becoming somebody to me in the process. Like a schoolgirl with a crush, I could only gaze and listen.  For the experiences and wisdom I thought I’d accrued by 53 were being systematically trumped by the silver words of my newest friend who taught me that while perishing is unavoidable, life is not at all about being lucky.

He has lived quite contently on less than your house payment.  He reads books and finds something of interest in everyone and a clever pun in every experience.  Television is a waste of time, he adds with conviction. The drama of life is a far better sitcom.  And as he leans over the table, he looksinto my eyes with such depth, my already humbled gaze was weakened.  And he said to me, “Don, my new friend, we are all lucky simply because we live.  Shit happens, as they say nowadays. But fortunately, a good attitude can flush it every time.”

I’ve no idea how many more years he will be around but as he got up to leave a meeting that had lasted much longer than either of us had ever expected, I filed his documents in the “MORE CRAP” folder and promised to do what I can to make whatever the time he has remaining a little better if I could.  And as he grunted off the threshold and out the bingo room door, he turned back and said, “I like you, Don.  I think you’ll make a really great eighty-year old one day and maybe you’ll be as lucky as I have been.”

Well, my cup is empty. And so is the pot I made at 3am while you were sleeping. But my eyes are red and wet as they have been most of this morning as I’ve been writing.

I die a little more each day. I feel it.

But indeed, if I should make it another thirty years, I shall be lucky simply to have lived and will have learned from a wise old man to be content with what I’m dealt.

And I promise to flush regularly.

LMSM,

Don

His entire existence
is an utter void of understanding
the comings, goings and absences
of his only love.
To him, no explanation exists.
His only and relentless hope
is in a vague awareness of the
routine of a return.

Someday.
So on that promise, he remains forever
vigilant and alert for that first familiar
sound or sign that affirms his hope
and turns it into a wildly wagging tail.

Hey buddy, I’m coming home.

In this thousand piece puzzle I call my life, it’s clear that what I’m creating bears no resemblance to the image on the box. Perhaps that’s why it’s been so difficult to piece together.  So, I have learned to stop looking at the picture for guidance to my progress.  Nowadays, I just keep my focus on the remains in the pile before me. Through trial and error, some of the most beautiful portions of my life are in the misfitted pieces. I’ve come to realize that it was never God’s intent for me to create someone else’s image of what my life was supposed to look like but rather be the divinely pieced mosaic of my own creation. So, I will continue to enjoy the challenges along the way until I reach the end.  At 999,  the final piece will be an obvious fit and I will finally enter my rest.

And like a proud father,  God will frame it and hang it in the heavens for everyone to marvel at, because he will have a new artist on staff.

But meanwhile, I will be creating a little masterpiece down here outside the box.

Happy Easter everyone.

She walked with a cane.

Almost ten blocks to get here and she didn’t have an appointment.

A lobby full of people in similar predicaments waited for this small Filipino woman, nearing 80, who smiled at me like a 30 year old when I called her back to my office.  She’d sat patiently for over an hour hoping to see someone.    Many years alone since her husband passed, her $901 a month is eaten up mostly by $690 in rent, electricity that powers a fan for the hot summer months and a second hand electric blanket for winter warmth. She’d move to a lower rent apartment but she knows nobody and nobody really knows her. But she knows nothing else. This is her normal.

She reads.  Carries a book in a clean fabric sack she calls a purse. She eats very little and showed no notice of my half-eaten sandwich which out of guilt, I tried to camouflage with a stack of files for our interview.  She is a proud woman.

And that smile.

 After two weeks at work here, I drank the kool-aid and died to myself.

I now work at a very small non-profit family resource center in the worst part of Henderson, Nevada.  After all, if your job is to help those who need it most, you’re planted where they are.  And they are.

There is no right person to help her or all those who are still waiting in the lobby.   Not me. Not you. But there is a peculiar gifting here.  The small staff of 9 served 10,000 just like her last year on only 8% of the entire budget where 92% of all donations went where it was needed most.

This is not one of my longer stories.  But it is important.

I wasn’t born yesterday. I’m not an easy target and I can spot a user looking for another handout at short distance.  The staff here are seasoned business people who work hard and long and who know that our reward is certainly not in the modest paycheck but in the experience that changes lives, including our own.

I could care less… but I can’t anymore.

I said it before.  This ain’t work.  This is life.

I drank the kool aid and there’s no going back now.

I quit my job as a janitor yesterday.

Monday morning, I’m back in the saddle, riding a more familiar horse.

My last post, “Why    it rolls downhill” was written and posted less than a week ago.  In it, I’d expressed how my six months cleaning up other people’s messes had taught me quite a lot about humility, thankfulness, finding contentment and how to bloom where you’re planted, even if it’s in manure.

God’s timing is pretty close to perfect.

My roommate of 7 years had the courage to take the step he’s wanted to for a long time and we moved him into his new digs a couple of days ago.  He deserved it.  Not that I was a horrible person to live with, mind you, nor was he. It was just time and I couldn’t be more happy for him.

However, his moving out meant I wouldn’t be able to continue living where I have these seven years on a part time janitor’s salary.  Concurrent with moving him into his apartment, I began making plans for my own move somewhere else.  Where? I didn’t know, but I had begun making a list of my possessions to sell or donate by the end of the month and to began looking for a room to rent somewhere that I could afford.

My sister, Shelly, was and always has been my sounding board. I whined and cried to her about my predicament on the phone a couple times about how I really needed a break in life after all the bad karma.  I’d changed my ways long ago and made a complete about-face in my life and my perspective on it.  Surely, God wouldn’t permit another humiliating blow and had a slightly better plan he could orchestrate.

Well, of course He did.

My boss’ friend, Aaron,  had contacted him about a position that had just come available at his work. Scott, my boss, pumped out an email that morning to the list of members at church.  Intercepting this email as it arrived in my inbox moments before leaving for work, I caught up with him there to inquire about it. He knows  my background as a therapist and teacher. His wife, who also works with him, came alongside and in hearing our conversation, gave me encouragement to look into it.  They both knew the dilemma created by my roommate’s move out.  I made the phone call and was called in for an interview that afternoon.

The position was a custom fit for me and the wage would keep me put in my condo if I was awarded the job.  The second interview two days later also went well.

The morning I received the email offer entitled “Can you start on Monday?” came to me not 30 minutes after my boss had asked if I’d heard anything on the job yet because he had interviews set up with a couple guys within the hour to interview for a new janitor position to help me out with my work since our facility had doubled in size.

“I haven’t heard anything yet, Scott,” I said.

A little frustrated, he explained how much it would help him if he knew whether to hire just one person, a helper for me, or two people–a helper and a replacement for me if I was gonna get this new job.

As I’d begun my day on campus there at work and the email arrived, my text to Scott read:

“HIRE TWO PEOPLE!!!”

He had just concluded an interview with a qualified candidate he wanted to hire and as my text went out to him across campus, a radio call from across campus had arrived on my hip: “Scott wants to see you in his office, Don.”

God’s timing is pretty cool as I was able to give my notice and take the qualified candidate directly from my boss’ interview on a training run through the campus. He starts Sunday and Sunday is my last day.  Synchronicity.  Seamless synchronicity.

I never imagined that the writing and posting of my last story less than a week prior about being content where you are, had been one of the steps in which God would answer my urgent need, land me an interview and job back in my desired line of work and meet the corresponding needs of every party involved in the process.

The writing of my last story…

My roommate moving out…

My urgent need to find a cheaper place…

The conversation between Aaron, who will be my new boss, and Scott, who will be my old boss as of Monday…

Scott’s presence of mind to blindly shoot off an email…

My interception of it moments before leaving…

An interview that day…

Scott’s interviewing dilemmas…

The timing of the “you got the job email” and the radio call to me…

The on-the-spot training of the guy who will now replace me…

All synchronized by God in perfect timing.

If you’ve ever found yourself way overdue for a blessing, a break in life or some evidence that your future is, indeed, in the hands of someone much bigger than yourself, keep calm.  Bloom where you are planted at the time and rejoice in the manure.

He knows exactly what everyone needs and can craft a pretty remarkable chain of events to meet them.  It wasn’t just about my need, but those of 7 people in all.

Perhaps countless others up and down the line.

That fact is very clear to me now.

LMSM,

Don

There are a few jobs everyone should have at some point in life.  Among other humbling lessons, they teach you important truths like the one in the title of this post. Usually these kinds of jobs are minimum-wage, entry-level training for young, energetic people who by realizing the value of starting at the bottom, will appreciate the ride to the top.  I found the reverse is also true.

By that, I mean I did it backwards.  I was neither young nor energetic and like that one long slide down the game board in Chutes and Ladders, I rolled the dice of life, lost, and though I’m was still in the game,  I was forced to start over again on the bottom rung. But at 53 and a janitor, I learned more about life from that work than in any other job before.

Contentment trumps happiness.

If for $9 an hour you’ve never willingly entered a freshly ripened restroom– so thick with stench that your eyes water– to chop up a stranger’s  giant loaf in a toilet bowl so it will finally flush, your lesson in humility may be incomplete.  If that didn’t gross you out, I have plenty more janitor stories that will.

Let’s be honest. In this world of status, a janitor hangs on the last rung.  The single, scowling, homely, isolated man who works alone late into the nights in a dingy workroom nobody dares to visit unless they are making a really scary movie.  You know all the stereotypes.  This is the guy who never made much of his life by the standards of most.   Being a janitor generally means if it stinks, smokes, leaks, drips, bursts, doesn’t work, wasn’t ordered or isn’t right, it falls into your lap and scope of responsibility regardless of your ability to find the solution.  You are the first line of defense when others excuse themselves from the task because by default, you’re the expert.

I was at a time in my life when my peers were winding down their work and earning and if not there already, planning stages for a comfortable retirement filled with travel to exotic locations, golf and grandkids, American-style.  You would have had every right to call me a liar if I didn’t admit my envy. I lived out their Facebook vacation travel panoramas and dining extravaganzas with a mix of happiness for them and their lovers and still a fair amount of regret that my life had taken a different path down the ladder.

But I can’t lie about the fact that I was yet pretty content.  My happiness had been achieved largely through having lost everything and in the process, having gained a self-respect for things I had found will matter most of all in the end.  Yes, I would have rather been pondering this truth over a steak dinner on a Greek island than with a bowl of mac n cheese on the run in a 23,000 square foot campus.  But I learned that contentment is not always the consolation prize for a happiness lost.  Contentment trumps happiness every hand because it is an intrinsic, self-reliant condition of the heart that depends on no circumstance.  It is solely dependent on character.

Everyone matters.

Respect is like humility in reverse.  When you’ve learned to be humble despite your place in life, your ability over a lifetime  to respect those in similar situations naturally increases. You know what it’s like to have been there.  It’s called empathy.

During my 9 months as a janitor, the most  meaningful moments had been at the hands of strangers.  The brief pause of a stranger who knows what it’s like to be taken for granted can move you from invisible to visible in a single stroke.  “I appreciate what you do, thank you.”

At the church where I worked, I sat down for a bagel and a cup of coffee and calculated what all went in to making the Sunday morning experience.  There is a premium effort to make a seamless hour-long event for those who come seeking something more to life. Behind the scenes, it is the culmination of hundreds of hours each week by staff and volunteers who endeavor to foresee every possible detail as if were the very last Sunday on earth in which someone might come to realize there is more to life.  All efforts are meaningful, interconnected, synchronized events oftentimes dependent upon the success of one another like the gears of a fine timepiece.  The feat is truly an incredible one but in large part, invisible to most.In this effort, there is no strata, no status, no rungs on the ladder.  The endeavor is much too important for personalities to get caught up in such posturing.  Because everyone matters.

I learned that the people who have set their sights on things much bigger than themselves and issues of profound importance, like ants in an anthill, the effort eradicates class lines. Respect, empathy and valuation of the person–not position–prevails.

A job well done is its own reward.

My parents taught me well.  I learned to work at a $5/hour job as if it was a $50/hour job and that someday it would be and my efforts would be rewarded, if not only by my own conscience. Paychecks are necessary, but conscience is vital. And doing a job well isn’t entirely a money thing.

I recall a study in which employees of several different companies were surveyed and asked to make a choice between a)receiving a small raise and b)receiving a genuine compliment from the boss on a piece of work they did.  The result was surprisingly and overwhelmingly for the latter. Conscience-driven people create meaning in even the lowest of positions and in doing so, elevate that job to a place of importance for themselves and those around them it might not have earned otherwise.  Pride in performance is a currency which eventually cashes a bigger paycheck if you are thankful just to be working.

Bloom where you’re planted for now.

Apart from things like knowing the staff’s snack habits through the emptying of their office trashes, their pooping schedules and various hygienes, as a general rule, being a janitor was not so bad. It’s a physical job with lots of dirt, sweat and germs you can wash off with a hot shower or a licking frenzy from your best friend when you come home through the door after a long day.

Some say I’ve had a tough life. But a tough life is being a child sold as a sex slave to support a parent’s drug habit. A tough life is in a plentiful world, foraging for food, water and a place to lay your head. My own mistakes brought me to the place I was at the bottom rung with a master’s degree at 53 years old where the shit that rolls downhill literally fell into my lap and I still smiled and said thank you. Because as a janitor, I learned work isn’t just  a job, a paycheck or a position. Sometimes it’s about accepting the roll of the dice and staying in the game.

So, I’m down in California with both my older sister and younger brother.  We’re visiting my mom and dad at their new home.  Dad, recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, is overheard on the back patio reflecting on his life achievements to my brother’s wife.  As he notices me walking out onto the patio to join them, he says “…and I had two really great kids!”

Funny guy.

‘Ats my dad.  Even in the midst of facing his life threatening illness, he can pull out one liners like a Rodney Dangerfield stand up routine.

Rodney, in fact, has been one of my dad’s idols and was a friend of his before his passing in 2004.  And much like Rodney, you always know where you stand with Mike Miller.

In an earlier reflective time of my life, I used to complain that my dad had a strange way of communicating that he loved someone.  If you’ve been a family friend, neighbor, a high-school friend of mine or have had any other association with Mike Miller in your life, you have undoubtedly been the butt of some joke or pun presented with pin-point accuracy to get the greatest possible roar from the present audience.  He’s turned more faces red with embarrassment than Don Rickles and for one simple reason: he loves you.

About 25 years ago when I was getting my graduate degree in psychotherapy, I took my dad hostage for 77 miles on a road trip to a business meeting.  We had an ad agency together at the time and we were enroute to pitch a new client.  On my high horse and in the middle of a family therapy course I’d been taking, I captured my dad’s undivided attention on a divided road north to Mesquite, Nevada.  I had planned this.  I was going to use the time to ask him all the questions about his life history that had been unanswered or avoided for my entire life.  Enlightened (or so I thought at the time) by my studies and emboldened by the inescapable environment of a late model Cadillac, I pursued him.

During that long hour or so drive, my questions were answered.  While I won’t spill the contents of what went on in the car that morning, the stories of his childhood and parents, the tragedy of his own father’s death and the struggles of a young man trying to fill the role of an absent father at age 13, suffice to say, I understood.

People say “I love you” in many languages our unenlightened minds don’t always understand.  Sometimes it’s like talking in code.  But with Mike Miller,  embedded in every witty quip or punchline he throws at you, deciphering minds will always hear the three words that matter most of all.

LMSM,

Don

tick I have somehow misplaced the moment

tick when the minute hand was touched by God

tick and my clock became a countdown.

tick Clearly, I wasn’t prepared

tick for my perspective on life

tick to be more reverse

tick than forward.

tick And now desperately I fear

tick not the coming end,

tick but the time when

tick there is no more time

tick yet so much of life left to live.

 ti

I had suggested to a friend at work that in order to get such a dedicated man like Chuck Hiatt to finally leave on his well-earned sabbatical, we should put a piece of paneling over his office door with a plant in front of it and a sign that said “GO HOME!”

Before he departed on the well-deserved vacation of a lifetime to Israel, I had the pleasure of sparring with Chuck.  He was my boss and what we learned about each other over those five months assured me that trustworthy men…though now  in lesser numbers.. do, indeed, still exist.

Sparring is hard work.  Good men test each other’s mettle.   I have no regrets about having done so with Chuck. For the work to know the heart, mind and soul of someone I could count as trustworthy and about whom I was excited at the prospect of adding to my short list of  friends was well worth the effort.  Though now, with his sudden passing, I will never know him better, I believe I got the best of him within a very  short time.

Without a doubt, there are countless others who are much more experienced with Chuck, have known him longer and been through more with him than I ever have had or will ever have the pleasure.  But albeit short, my experience with him was very rich.  You never truly know someone until you watch how they manage a crisis.  The order of weapons before them presents a choice that tells you what drives them.

Each encounter, Chuck picked the beating heart first, the informed mind second and held the wisdom of God in the other hand each time.  Such a rare find for a man who had so many other implements at his disposal that he consistently and categorically rendered as lesser choices.

That, my friends, is what makes a man great.

Go home, Chuck.

You’ve worked all your life for this.

LMSM,

Don