Death and Destruction as Stepping Stones to a Better You

As I sit here today pondering my list and watching the snow grow ever deeper outside my door I have several things on my mind. It is convenient that today is the day I finally signed up as a campaigner on Seb Terry’s blog http://100thingssebterry.blogspot.com. Seb provided the push I needed to finally put together my “bucket list”, make it public, and put a plan together to accomplish it. “Shit or get off the pot,” as my dad used to say.

I have never met Seb but heard about him when he was staying in my hometown in the pursuit of one of the items on his list, #23. Deliver a baby. He was able to check off a few things from his list during his time here and I have followed his quest since that time. If you need some inspiration, or just want to read about some Austrailian traveling around the world doing crazy stuff like #36 walk across a country (France) or #73 get shot (both of which he has done) I recommend reading his blog. While there you can help him achieve one of his goals, which is raise $100,000 for Camp Quality (a charity supporting children with cancer).

The reason I am talking about him today is that the push that made him set out on the journey he is on now was initiated by the sudden death of a good friend of his. Unfortunately this is the kind of event that it takes sometimes to spark us out of the ruts that we get ourselves into. In my case I can honestly say that the passing of my father when I was 19 and the sudden deaths of an aunt and cousin only a couple years later affected my life greatly. My father was my hero and my friend, my aunt I always felt, even when she was alive, was my guardian angel and my cousin was the guy that lived every moment to the fullest and got every once of life from the 19 years he was allowed on this planet. The only positive I can really take from these events is that I simply don’t take life so seriously anymore. When little things go wrong (or even some big things) it really doesn’t seem so bad because they mean nothing when you look at the big picture. And those deaths, as hard as they were on me, made me appreciate what I have in my life and made me realize that I can weather any storm if I need to.

Today is the second anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine. He lost a relatively short battle with cancer and I think it came as a great shock to all of his friends when we got the news. Cory was an inspirational person who overcame a lifelong “disability” to accomplish some great things. I write it as “disability” because he never really seemed to treat it as a disability although most people would consider it so. My friend Cory was a “little person” but to us he was just another guy we hung out with, probably larger than life than any of us were if the truth be told. We treated him the same as any other person in our group and he never expected to be or wanted to be treated any differently. He lived his life to the fullest right to the end, even setting up some scholarships before he died to be presented in his name at our former high school.

I take inspiration from Cory’s life and try to remember that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it. Seb Terry takes inspiration from his friend who also lived his life to the fullest right to the end. The funny thing about it is that the people that we so often take inspiration from are not trying to inspire us at all. They are just smart enough to know that life has an unknown expiration date so we need to make the most of it while we can. That is what they do, live life every day, just like you and I, except they make the choice that tomorrow will not be a carbon copy of today because what would the point be to that?

Death is on my mind for other reasons today as well (I am not this morbid normally I promise.) I live in a province with a relatively small population (just over a million people) and the norm is small towns. I lived in one of these small towns for 10 years before moving back to Regina to finish my degree. This past weekend at two of the neighbouring communities of my former home suffered a great tragedy. A vehicle collision killed 6 people including 4 young men in their late teens and early twenties from one community and a mother and her grown son from another. These things are always tough but even more so in a small community where people literally know everyone else. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who lost someone close and although I don’t believe anything “good” can come from the accident, I hope people can use the memory of the lives of these people to inspire their own lives, even if just some small way.

We are also coming up on the one-year anniversary of the death of the brother of a close friend of my wife and I. I know she has used his memory to create some positive things in her life even though it has been incredibly hard for her. I wish her and her family all my love and prayers and hope they can celebrate his life and not dwell on death and know we are always only a call away if they need to talk and would always drop everything to support them. I believe strongly in the power of family and friends, if I lost all my material possessions today, I know I could rely on the love of family and friends but if I lost all my family and friends, all the money in the world could not fill the void.

Death and destruction is on my mind for a different reason as well. I was fortunate to spend 4 weeks on a international business study trip to the Republic of Korea (South Korea) last year. It was an amazing trip and I had the opportunity to meet some amazing people from Korea (and around the world). I look forward to the day when I can bring my wife to see some of the places I was and meet some of the friends that I made (#123 on my list). In South Korea they have mandatory military service and most of the young men that I met there are currently involved in the military in some way. With the recent actions by North Korea that killed two South Korean soldiers and two civilians I worry a great deal about my friends. It is amazing to me that as advanced as we like to pretend our civilization is, there is still conflict around the world and trillions of dollars spent on defense budgets while billions of people live in poverty.

Short of the leaders of countries putting themselves and their families on the front lines in the direct line of fire, I don’t see that this will change anytime soon. I think it is a goal of many of us to make the world a better place; it is for me for sure. I know I have to start in my little corner of it and make what changes I can. In the meantime I will continue to try to come up with a solution for world peace and I will pray for the soldiers of the world who are simply doing the job they are sent to do, whether they are South or North Korean, Canadian, American, etc.

I will keep believing that I can make changes in myself and my community that will make a difference, and I will continue to take inspiration from my heroes and friends, whether still on earth or gone to a better place.

With every step,

With every obstacle,

With every dream and challenge,

There are those you meet,

Those you love,

Those who touch your heart and life.

Written in Cory’s honour by his sister Carla