Have you ever been focused on getting something in particular done or going somewhere in particular as soon as you expected to get done doing whatever it was you were doing at a particular time, only to have something pop up here, there, or somewhere else that requires you to either stop what you were doing or postpone what you wanted to do next when it does? (Was that convoluted enough for you?Well, sometimes, life is that messy. But, I digress.) Yeah, me, too. Because, sometimes, we are liable to respond to what life makes go on around us.
This whole idea of responding to whatever life throws into the present circumstances is a major part of the definition of Greatness! So, let’s start with a review of that whole definition.
Greatness! — is a peaceful and satisfied state of mind resulting from using proaction, perception, planning, preparation, practice, and persistence to promote your values, vision, and mission into a practically perfect performance of a balanced creation, highest and best use, and recreation of your life’s precious resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people to do what most enhances life in the present circumstances for the optimal balance of the highest priority and the most of those people, places, things, and ideas with whom and which you have relationships and to whom and which and for whom and which your values make you responsible.
Focusing on the underlined last half of this definition, we see that our purpose in life is to “do what most enhances life,” but what most enhances life, like beauty, art, ugliness, and pornography, almost always lays (or lies, depending on your perspective) in the eyes of the beholder. And then we have to consider how what most enhances life changes in response to what life throws at us in the present circumstances, because change in the moment brings with it the anxiety of having to constantly assess and then reassess what’s the “optimal balance of the highest priority and the most of the people, places, things, and ideas with whom and which you have relationships and to whom and which and for whom and which your values make you responsible.”
Seeing all this stuff in action may make it a bit clearer for you, so let’s enjoy tonight’s “true life adventure.”
My dear friend, Linley, spent the afternoon watching his son fish (see “Proud Papa’s” photo above) and pooped out on doing my second workout of the day tonight, so I was forced to enjoy the evening in Cordova’s Planet Fitness alone, after which, I planned to watch Madam Secretary long distance with my wife. It was the best alternative enhancement of life we could think of instead of watching it with her in person, because I am working in Memphis this week while she is working in Maryland. Fools plan and God laughs, however, and life was about to hang a Louie on us.
As I returned from my post-workout shower to my locker, at 8:10 p.m., ready to head home and FaceTime my dear wife back in Maryland to recap our respective days, I noticed a large, muscular man sitting on a bench in front of a bank of lockers, pensively and intently closely staring at a nice sturdy lock on the locker directly in front of him.
“You look like you’re trying to think open that lock, man,” I jested.
“Nope,” he replied. “I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to get my keys out of that locked locker and get to work on time by nine.”
I advised wisely, “So, go to the front desk, get their bolt cutters, snap the lock off and get on to work.”
He sighed and answered, “They can’t find them,” just as one of the two young night time front desk employees came up with a pair of channel locks and a hammer.
The attendant explained, “We still can’t find the bolt cutters, so we’ll just have to beat your lock open.”
I put my second stockinged foot in my pants and proposed, “You got too much lock and not enough tool there, sir.”
“Why?” he asked, hitting the lock ineffectively another time or two.
As I called Linley, who ignored me again and didn’t answer his cell phone, and then called my sister to send her scouring her nearby garage for some bolt cutters, I explained, “You’ve got three-sixteenths of an inch of high-carbon cold-rolled steel hook tucked in a solid brass lock casing and you’re going to break your locker hasp long before you break that lock.”
I turned to my new, forlorned friend and asked, “What kind of work do you have to get to in forty-five minutes?”
“MPD. Night shift.”
I finished tucking and buckling, gathered up my bag and told the front desk attendant, “Stop beating that thing. You don’t have the right power, the right tools, nor the right angle of attack to defeat that lock.” I looked at my cell phone clock and said, “Well, the wife will have to wait and we’ll watch Madam Secretary in the morning. Did you go to church this morning?”
He looked at me a little puzzled and embarrassed and said, “Nope, I didn’t get off until nine this morning and went home and went to sleep.”
“That’s okay,” I assured him as I put my big, black religious beanie on my head, “because the Lord has sent another Jew to save you again.” He chuckled as I finished. “Get your shoes back on and let’s go work the problem here.”
I told him we were going to take my car, drive south, turn in to the first store we thought might sell bolt cutters, buy some, and come back here and snip the lock off. He protested that his wallet was locked in his locker, along with his keys.
“Figures,” I chortled, leading the way away.
AutoZone was first on the left. I left the cop, whose name I still haven’t asked, in the running car. Josh, a nighttime AutoZoner, was reluctant to let me borrow the store’s bolt cutters without giving him some security, until I jammed my iPhone 7 into his hand. “I got an MPD cop in my car who needs to get his uniform out of his locker at Planet Fitness up the street there and get to work in thirty minutes. I don’t have much time. Here’s your collateral. I’ll be right back.”
Five minutes later, the musclebound member of Memphis’ finest, snapped the lock and handed me back my emergency cell phone pawn ticket.
“I don’t know who you are, man, but you are totally awesome.”
“Ken Besser’s the name and Greatness! in the moment’s the game. Just do the same for the next person you see who needs your help.” I split quick, because AutoZone was closing sooner rather than later and I’d already missed the first 20 minutes of Madam Secretary.
Why did I go through all that trouble for a stranger I’d never met and will likely never see again? Because, in those present circumstances, with me having only a less-than-perfect virtual TV date with my wife and with a cop needing to get to work protecting me and the rest of Memphis from bad folks, my values made me responsible to do what is best for the optimal balance of the highest priority (me, first; Susan, second; this cop and the rest of Memphis being normally lower priority) and largest number (the community at large needing this cop’s protection) of the people, places, things, and ideas with whom and which we have relationships (we are all related to some degree) and to whom and which and for whom and which our values make us responsible (we all have the duty to serve and protect our respective parts of the world).
All that being said, in the circumstances that presented themselves, I had to interrupt my planned evening for the exigent circumstances presented. I let me schedule slip a bit and stuffed in a little bit of knight work for a city night watchman. It cost me little of my life’s precious resources of time, effort, and energy; but it paid me a larger amount of the resources of emotion in that I was doing good in my little part of the world.
And it all gave me a timely and practically perfect example of Greatness! in action.
All this being written, the next post I promised you in the last post, will have to be the next post I’m now promising you in this post. See you then.
[reminder]What would you have done tonight in these same circumstances? Turned toward the need and fed it or away from it and fled it? Hopefully, the former. Certainly, next time ….[/reminder]