He’s the guy who among other things, taught me that on a cold night, two shots of tequila will keep you warmer than a cold beer and leave you free to shake hands with everyone all night long.Though my drinking days are over, if I did, it would still be two shots of tequila because of what I learned from him that cold winter night.At some point, we’ve all been enamored meeting someone like Stu. For me it was in a crowded bar mid-December drinking and playing darts into the wee hours. Someone in our group knew him and called his name to join us as he entered the darkened bar with frosty breath from the cold night. He gestured a wave our way and headed to the bar. Even from a distance, it was obvious he was everything we were not. A beautiful specimen of a man both socially skilled and a truly magnetic attraction. Everything all guys secretly wished to be.Approaching our wayward group with stacked handfuls of half-filled bronze liquor glasses, my second impression was he was either a very thirsty remarkably ambitious drinker or slightly OCD about glassware. I’d never done shots before that night.He was introduced to us by name and that was when I first noticed his uncanny knack of noticing the unnoticeable. “Hey, Don, nice to meet you” was his greeting with a hug as he handed me two stubby shot glasses while regarding the form of my dart arm mid-throw as particularly good. His greeting, hug and comment were all in one incredibly smooth motion. He knew how to meet someone anywhere and make them feel they were a newly welcomed guest in his own home. He spoke his words in an intentional, soul-piercing eye to eye vernacular and a shake with his free hand—the right one, of course–which was a remarkable act of balance in itself considering his left was still stacked with greeting shots for other new guests of our dart team he had yet to meet.Either Stu was the most astutely engaging person I had ever met to date or he was born with the last of a long discontinued gene for it, or both. He seamlessly joined our motley crew as if he’d already been there with us most of the night. He played darts like a pro, did his two shots like they were milk, spoke with ease and generally made everyone around him want to be him. If memory serves me, he was also wearing a kilt. Why? For some reason it didn’t seem to matter at the time but further underscored the engaging social confidence that seemed to drive his very existence.We were all enamored with him, and all the more as we watched him repeatedly whip ass at Cricket, 301 and 501 for the next several hours with the style of a true gentleman. He cast an engaging spell that made each of us feel we were the winners. He was unstoppable in every way.To this day, Stu and I remain friends. I threw him his 40th birthday party when he still lived in Vegas and he has since moved 3000 miles away. On Facebook we still follow and like each other as he now lives a charmed life as a consultant and TV show host and travels the world posting pictures of exotic locations and experiences through which I still live vicariously.Stu taught me something that late night/early morning that forever changed the way I view others.Somehow, he knew what it felt like to be an other. In the middle of one game, he left our group for a vacant corner of the bar to start a conversation with a stranger. I didn’t know he was a stranger, only that I’d seen him over there sipping on a beer by himself all night. Stu returned with him as a new addition to our team of losers. “Guys, this is Michael.” Nobody questioned the add.At this point, let me share that one of the things that makes us all most warmed in the heart are those rare stories of someone stepping out of their element, off their podium and out of their comfortable stature to notice one lesser. Jesus speaking to the Samaritan, the celebrity fixating on the most unlikely of fans in the crowd, the captain of the football team eating lunch with the nerd, the beautiful seeking company of the ugly.What it feels like to be embraced by the smile of one you least expect. What it feels like to be welcomed in smallness at a table of greatness. What it feels like to be considered equal among those clearly superior in so many unimaginable ways.It was in that bar that very evening when I saw love and humility at work in tandem. And it was that unlikely night when I absorbed the virtues of a stranger which to this day, helps to define who I am.Though I haven’t seen Stu for many years, the guy in the kilt taught me more than how to be socially savvy. He taught me that inviting people into one’s life requires a warmth of spirit, remarkable humility and maybe a couple shots of tequila.So this holiday season, come in from the cold and warm up to people. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, to make new friends, and to be the inspiring example you were born to be.

A three time cancer survivor at 78 with no remaining family, she fears the odds won’t be in her favor this trip.
Lab work was completed two weeks ago and she’s so afraid, she’s gone without renewing her prescriptions for the fleeting good feeling of having saved $38.
She says it’s actually not so much the news but of not having someone there with her when she gets it. Just for an hour to help her through it and get her home safely afterward back to an empty apartment to ponder her options.
This.is.loneliness and a true story with dozens more just like it all over town today.
Especially this season, be a new friend to an old one if you can spare the time because someday you may be there yourself.
I know sad stories aren’t popular this time of year, but then sad stories aren’t popular any time of year. And because friendship always is, we got in the car.

I never used to be like this, but would wake up anxious, ruled by ‘what ifs’ of the day ahead and what I might do to defend against consequences of the yet unknown. It’s a miracle how things have changed.
For many years since I first realized I’m not in charge, my first waking thoughts are now much less ‘what if?’ and much more ‘maybe today!’ and a hopeful difference in my morning outlook.
I’m not sure exactly when I pivoted from viewing time and unfolding experience as my enemy instead of my comrade and frankly, I don’t wonder much about it anymore because the view is so much better looking down on a heavenly menu of possibilities versus getting up dodging the anxious unknown.
At some divine moment, anxiety turned its ugly head to reveal a friendlier counterpart, anticipation, and my mornings haven’t been the same since.
Looking expectantly to a day’s unexpected revelations sure beats blind strategizing against them as foreboding enemies.
There’s an untapped power in ‘maybe today’ thinking and a good morning is what you make of it. So try plugging into the power of expectancy and today might just be yours for the taking.

Truth is, you get used to it. It takes a little time but living single and alone grows on you.
You chew your food better for lack of dinner conversation and sleep better alone without a chatty someone stealing the covers, cuddling, or wanting something more.
You save money not buying silly flowers or something special for no one special for no special reason and learn to be self-sufficient when sick, make your own soup, and get your own toilet paper.
You stop worrying about dying alone, just dying, and you gradually forget what it used to be like.
The sad but comforting truth is you get used to being single and alone.
It grows on you like an annihilation of might have beens and draws your heart, mind and soul closer to all the good things which actually are.

A three time cancer survivor at 78 with no family, she fears the odds won’t be in her favor this trip.
Lab work was completed two weeks ago and she’s so afraid, she’s gone without renewing her prescriptions for the fleeting good feeling of having saved $38.
She says it’s actually not so much the news but of not having someone there with her when she gets it. Just for an hour to help her through it and get her home safely afterward back to an empty apartment to ponder her options.
This.is.loneliness and a true story with dozens more just like it all over town today.
Especially this season, be a new friend to an old one if you can spare the time because someday you may be there yourself.
I know sad stories aren’t popular this time of year, but then sad stories aren’t popular any time of year. And because friendship always is, we got in the car.

Staying power is not my strong suit. Nor is small talk, dancing, drinking or tuxedos. I’m in bed by 7 most nights and already a couple hours tucked two sheets in when others are still out getting their three sheets on.
Parties were once calendared in pen at least twice weekly until one day several years back when I made the brutal self-discovery I’m not the man I used to be. And fortunately so.
I was the life of the party and also its casualty. I thrived on attention and often made myself the center of it often when I wasn’t. Insecurity compensates the ego in sometimes unimaginable ways.
I tried way too hard to be liked mostly because I didn’t like myself. Wearing lampshades would send me home in the wee hours with the false sense I was a treasured friend to many when in reality I was merely just a poorly behaved nuisance, likely tolerated and even more likely pitied.
Then one day several years ago very early in my 12 step program, another addict shared his own similar embarrassing epiphany and his story stopped me cold as addict stories often do.
After a long and deep cry over my countless embarrassing recollections of parties past, I began liking myself. Sitting on the sidelines became as satisfying as years in centerfield had seemed to be. Private conversations with a few in attendance became genuinely more preferable than grabbing microphones and lampshades to prove some personal point to myself that I was cool.
Growing up took much longer in life than I ever expected, but like so many times since, it took an honest addict at a meeting to be the messenger I didn’t know I desperately needed.
Tonight I’m dressing up and going to a party. I may dance, I’ll probably chat with a few people and I’ll be quite comfortable in my own skin. And no one there will ever know what it took to get to this point except that guy who saw me crying after his story at a recovery meeting years ago whose name I don’t remember but whose words I’ll never forget.

Peter wrote, “So if life means so much, why do you drive as you do?”
His unsolicited email went unanswered over the weekend as I pondered the author’s choice of ‘as’ over ‘like’ and prepared a grammarians rebuttal. But to be honest and fair, his email to me was honest and fair. I’d never met Peter before, but he was neither mean nor rude and there was no attack on my character thoughI knew this would happen some day. Promote your website on your rear window and at some point you’re gonna get feedback. This time it was about my driving habits, not my stories.
“You sped down Rainbow today and cut me off before your near sudden stop behind a white truck with no taillights.” Sadly, he was increasingly correct as I struggled to escape the culpability of his descriptions.
Every sentence erected another shameful memorial to my horrible driving until I was left sitting there reading Peter’s tirades like a chained prisoner without attorney deserving the chair.
Finally, I replied:
‘Dear Peter,
You caught me red handed. Yes, I was on Rainbow today and yes your description of my driving sounds remarkably accurate. While I am fighting the urge to explain, excuse and defend myself against your accusations, those days have been over for me for many years. So, I am sorry. Please accept my apology for cutting you off and endangering the entire Rainbow Blvd. contingent today. Putting my website #LifeMeansSoMuch.com on my rear window begs for greater accountability on my part and I didn’t live up to it today. I will endeavor to improve my driving from here on out.
Sincerely, Don Miller
P.S. The truck was blue not white.

It was the first cold night of the season and from her trunk, she handed me a beautiful long blue wool pea coat. “Dad, do you think you could find a home for this?” She knew among the population we serve that I could.  I said “Yeah honey, I’m sure it will find a good home on its own. They always do.” She replied, “I know. I’ll be waiting to hear.”
Fast forward two days.
78 year old Lettie had taken the bus several miles up Boulder Highway and walked another half mile from the bus stop in 30mph winds to our office. I took her back for our appointment to help pay her utility bill since the week before, her purse had been stolen. Still shivering, I served her a hot cup of coffee as she described making the police report and in tears that dripped nearly frozen to her cheeks, she shared how she’d stowed another $35 saved in a zippered pocket for a special Christmas gift to herself she would now have to go without.
With her utility bill paid, I carried two bags of groceries from our pantry and asked her to follow me to the parking lot.
And just as it happened two days prior, I opened my trunk and handed her the Christmas gift she’d saved to buy herself. The blue wool pea coat fit like a glove, just like the matching pair of gloves I’d received from another psychic donor that morning to accompany yet another moment just like this.

Magic happens year ’round but it sparkles at Christmastime.

For 30 years I’ve collected greeting cards but I’m giving up the habit for how much it hurts. It’s been a favorite pastime shopping rows of card racks for hours at a time walking out with all the very best wishes for any occasion or holiday or simply “just because.” The funniest, the best written, the most beautiful and all the ones that made me wipe my eyes in the store over the years ended up in three crates, many now yellowed and none of which were ever sent. Turns out I couldn’t bring myself to part with them when someone’s occasion or holiday was approaching. Today a foot-high stack each got their final read and their last cry one by one before being buried in a 13 gallon can of memories whose optimal times had come and gone and were rolled to the street for their crimes of assorted missed opportunities. Everything Mom, every Wonderful Dad and all those bought and cherished to give in case I ever fell in love again, which at my age has turned out as unlikely as me sending out one in my selection to anyone who’d deserved it at just the right time or occasion.
So after a productive afternoon and a half box of tissue, it’s time to make myself dinner and climb into a melancholy dreamland of a regret and rest. From this day forward, if you ever get a card from me, trust it will be a good one and never too belated to matter anymore.