I was recently reminded of an event from my past, a chance meeting that had a good ending.
Many years ago I went to New York City armed with a collection of my cartoons and a lot of naivete` because a co-worker’s daughter, who was employed at a publishing house there had suggested that I do that, and even if I met with rejection, I could end up with some helpful advice.
After showing my work to the person with whom she had arranged a meeting, in spite of his liking what he saw, he let me down easy by explaining that at that time they had no projects in the works that would call for my style, but when such came up, I would be on the list of people to be contacted.
It was the usual call us. We’ll call you” dismissal, a verbal version of the rejection letter that praises the work offered followed by “However at this time”, although he did take the time to tell me how I could make inroads into the industry.
I had no need to hurry back home to Boston after the meeting, so I decided to have lunch at a famous deli that is now closed, and walk up fifth Avenue like I owned the city.
Although when I lived in New York I had walked by St. Patrick’s Cathedral many times, I had just never gone in, and decided as I came to it that on that day I would.
I was the ultimate tourist looking at every detail in great detail, even occasionally opening doors to peer behind, something tourists, I’m sure, are expected not to do, and played the innocent whenever I was directed out of some area by a priest who was keeping a nonchalant, but watchful eye on the tourists.
As I rounded the corner at the front pew and started up the center Aisle, I saw someone with whom I had attended college, but hadn’t seen in the intervening years, kneeling, involved in a deep and serious looking bout of prayer.
He happened to look up as I was approaching him, and being glad to run into each other, had me join him, not in prayer, but in a catch up conversation sitting in the pew.
When I finished telling him where I had taught, where I was teaching, and why I was in New York City, he relayed that, although his life had started pretty well after college, his medical condition which had him with only a short time to live, really brought his life and attitude crashing down, and that he had been praying about his decision to just end it since there wasn’t much time anyway and all he had was the waiting.
I wasn’t prepared for this. What do you say when out of the blue you run into an old friend you haven’t seen in years, and he tells you that he is contemplating suicide?
So I told him what I had and have told other people I had and still run into who may be where he was.
If his life had been good for the most part, but he ended it at its lowest point, that would be the best his life would get. And, regardless of anything he had accomplished, any good he had done, whenever people in the future talked about him, they would always come back to how bad his life was and how he had ended it to escape it.
But, if he held on, there was always the possibility that things could turn around. What if he committed suicide in anticipation of his death in six months when, if he had lived, it turned out that he didn’t die as predicted and in the immediate future a cure or more efficient treatment for his condition were to come around and his life could have become something wonderful again? Killing himself was final, and it eliminated all future possibilities.
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And, if he lived, and those optimistic possibilities did not materialize? Well, what did he lose? Things certainly didn’t get any worse.
His choice was the definite vs the possible.
He went on to become a lecturer and an author of books dealing with making company work places positive experiences for employees, and in that bettered the lives of countless other people. Then he retired and moved to Florida.
That was a much more positive outcome than having ended it all at his life’s lowest point and eliminating those possibilities.
But life is also perspective, so let me put this into perspective.
A few years later in another city, in another state, and in another time, I was sitting having a drink at a bar observing the man on the barstool next to me, someone I didn’t know at all, moving a collection of about six pills around in front of him. Making incidental bar conversation and hoping to satisfy my curiosity, I asked if he was scheduled to take a pill, and by looking at them was attempting to remember which one he was supposed to take at that time.
He told me he was thinking of killing himself, and was deciding, because of their side effects, which was the best order in which to swallow them, and whether he would do it at the bar and be permanently remembered as the guy who had killed himself in the bar, or do it quietly at home and maintain a little more dignity at the end.
He then related all that had brought him to this spot.
I took a shot and repeated what I had told my friend, and after some quiet reflection, he leaned over the bar and threw the pills into the drain of the empty glass washing sink, and they were flushed away when the bartender filled it.
The perspective came in when the bartender that night, who was also part owner of the establishment, told me the next time I came in that he had heard what I had said to the man at the bar that night, and then told me that although it was a very good thing on my part, that man was the most miserable and annoying son of a bitch who came into that bar and he made everyone’s life hell and ruined everyone’s evening when he came in.
I may have saved his life, but if a vote had been taken the result would have been unanimous, for the sake of everyone else, to let him go.
After that night the bartender and I were the only ones who knew that the misery visited upon the other patrons was because of my good and noble deed, and that I was expected to be the best patron at the bar, or the bartender would let it be known their misery was on my head.
He lasted two years before finally drinking himself to death. His life got no better than that night I had met him, and in that time I got to learn what the bartender had told me. He was, indeed, the most miserable and annoying son of a bitch who came into that bar.
The Ying and the Yang.