Happy Sunday Everyone:
I met with my dear friend Don on Friday Morning. I’ve explained him before but just a quick recap, I have an 81 year old best friend. I’ve been meeting with Don every Tuesday for the past 15 years. Aside from my dad, he’s the most important mentor in my life. He has a few lives in him…battled pancreatic cancer, a brain tumor, and prostate cancer. So last week I had a weird feeling on Wednesday Night after Don had told me earlier he had some tests done, so I called him. He told me he had been diagnosed w/ liver cancer. So Friday Morning we were talking about it all in his yard and I asked him “do you think this is your last run?”. He said “yes”. He then proceeded to tell me how he has projects that he needs to work on for his favorite social club he’s a part of and wasn’t sure if he could get it all done. With all my wisdom, I said to him “one thing for sure, at this stage of your life, you should only be working on anything that brings you joy and gives you energy”. He nods a bit, I honestly think he was thinking “I’ll be the teacher today, hunter”.
Fast forward to Friday Evening, I’m on a date night with Kim. I tell her about Don (she loves him as much as I do), I then explained my advice that I gave him. Kim starts smiling, and then breaks into laughter, and says “The fake Hunter was giving great advice”. Although we were both laughing, her point was the irony of me giving advice and not living a life that is in complete alignment with the advice I feel the need to give, hence the real me, vs. the fake me.
I’m fully aware I write about this subject or something close to it a lot, because I struggle with it the most, the quest to live a life something close to the ideologies and concepts I believe in. I’m also not entirely sure I’m not just pushing out my whacky brain out to many, with you thinking “he’s nuts”. I actually don’t think I am. I hang around a network of high achieving, hard charging, soul searching, whack jobs….and you all know who you are. I think I just need to accept the fact that a part of me kind of likes the confusion. Keeps things interesting.
One of my favorite titles to a book is “What you do is who you are”. Nothing involved in job/role in life, but about the old adage of it’s not what you say, it’s what you do. When I think about a lot of what I do I come to the realization that it is in fact good, so perhaps I just need to relax (my own mom told me this last week).
My advice to Don, “do things that bring you joy and energy” is what I need for myself. The craziest thing, and where I need to take a step back and be present, is this simple fact, as I’m sitting here typing these Sunday Thoughts (on Saturday Morning), the below email just came in from Don (I swear this to be true).
“Good Morning Hunter,
It was great seeing you yesterday – it lifted my spirits. As I was reflecting on our time I realized that I really didn’t answer adequately the question you asked, “How are you feeling”. It caused me to dig deeper into that and when we next meet I would like to share more with you, which I think you will find helpful in your own search in life as well.
Thanks for taking the time to be with me – it brings joy to my life.
Love you brother,
Don”
My friendship with Don brings massive joy and energy to my life. I just need to sit back, recognize it, and be grateful, and understand it’s all coming together. I think a lot of us, the ones that are hard on ourselves, need to relax, take inventory of the goodness around us, and put a smile on our face. To do anything else is actually selfish and lame. Kim’s only comment on proof reading this is that I need to read this everyday back to myself and hope that it sticks.
#workinprogress!!