Perspective

This morning Cora called me at the office.  She was sobbing and I felt down in my gut that I knew the reason.  She told me, through sobs, “I just want to cry.” She’d received a call from the oncologist at Kaiser.  I was about to cut her off and tell her that I’d be on my way home.  The oncologist, she went on, told her that she didn’t have to go to her appointment on the 14^th of this month.  Huh?  Wait, you’re telling me that you got a call from the oncologist, you’re crying, and they told you NOT to show up?  When the oncologist calls and tells you not to bother showing up and tears are involved the news has to be the worst possible. And then she told me how she was so thankful for the people that prayed.

She went on, “The oncologist said it was stage one cancer.”

“Wait.  Are you telling me good news or bad?”

“Good news.  The tumor in the kidney that was removed was stage one.  All of the lymph nodes were clear.”

Sigh of relief.  More details of the conversation that I frankly don't recall.  Some tears running down my cheeks.  She asked me to call the kids and tell them.  "You know you scared the shit out of me?"

And here is where perspective comes into play.  A short time before Cora’s call I’d been in a departmental meeting in which a petulant salesman decided it would be good sport to brutalize me.  Following the meeting I went into my office, shut the door and stewed.

And then the call came from Cora that jolted the world back into perspective.  This is what I hate about the business world and what I’ve hated for years; the tragedies of seeming galactic proportions that are so horribly out of proportion to what is really important.  A quote is wrong, a salesperson takes down an order wrong, shipping sends out the wrong item or an invoice is over paid by 50 bucks.  All hell breaks loose, someone calls for heads to roll and it’s all hands on deck for managers at various levels to launch investigations on how it happened and how can we prevent it from happening again. 

I once worked at a company that produces parts for gaming machines for casinos.  There were times that managers ran around acting like their pants were on fire because a customer was shorted something or an order was running a day or two late.  You would think that we were supplying ammunition for the troops in Afghanistan or shipping organs for transplant.  Oh hell no – slot machine parts. 

And while salesmen deliver petty rants and executives raise hell and berate the staff over some delayed slot machine parts other events take place.

                My wife is told she doesn’t have cancer anymore.         

                Someone's spouse somewhere is being told she has terminal cancer.

                A mother is told her son won’t come home from Afghanistan.

Cora and her grandson Jackson

                A father arrives home from Afghanistan to see his baby child for the first time.

                A new life enters the world.

                A grandmother and grandfather mourn the deaths of their grandchildren at the hands of the kids’ crazed father.

                People perform meaningful work teaching, finding cures, saving lives, enriching lives, working to free the oppressed and feed the hungry.

In retrospect maybe I'd allowed my own perspective to be skewed. What I should have done was to recognize the gift I'd been given and gone home to be with my wife.