From a blog I recently published on the Huffington Post:
I have an odd kind of superpower. I can look at people who are suffering and feel immediate empathy for them. I’m not bragging here; it’s true.
It’s because I’ve been through my own brand of hell.
Read more here about the most important lesson I've ever learned: that even the deepest grief can be healed by acts of compassion.
There are quite a few things I could tell you about Dr. Charles Miller, a retired physician in Wilmington, Delaware, who has made dozens of trips abroad to care for the world’s impoverished peoples. But what I want to concentrate on today is Dr. Miller’s ability to adapt easily to changes in plans. This is a skill I’d like to hone, especially during busy times. The holidays, for example.
I met Dr. Miller when my father suggested I speak with him about his experiences in international health care. In 1999, after 30 years as a pediatrician, Dr. Miller settled into what he hoped would be a happy retirement with his beloved wife. He was 70. A year later his wife suffered an internal hemorrhage that left her with a brain injury. Two years later she died.
I don’t want to give the impression that Dr. Miller adapted to this initial change of plans with ease. Quite the opposite. For nine months he lived in what he describes as the deepest sorrow imaginable.
One day he received a magazine in the mail that advertised a “Weekend for Renewal” at the Cove, the retreat center in Asheville, North Carolina, run by Billy Graham. He signed up for it without reading any details.
The year 2014 was not a good one for Bill Rea, a musician and teacher on the Outer Banks.
First he lost his day job as a banker. “It happens,” he says with a shrug. “Banks get sold; people get let go.” Still, it wasn’t easy. He received other job offers but decided to take some time off.
On a trip to the grocery store one afternoon, he impulsively grabbed a carton of fried chicken. He ate it all—and felt worse than he’d ever felt in his life.
“Hey mister, what’s your story?”
I was sitting in traffic at an interminable stoplight. Around me were upscale stores, the kind where I feel a little guilty shopping, and people driving nice cars. This made it all the more difficult to ignore the sunburned man who was crouching at the intersection with a sign: “Homeless and Harmless. Please. Anything Will Help.”
It was the “Harmless” that got to me. I rolled down my window and called to him.
He was a nice looking man in his late 20s. As he came over, I expected him to tell me a sob story. But not at all.
Six years ago, during a time when my life had completely lost its luster, I met a clerk at a Wawa convenience store who understood the healing power of happiness. Actually, I suppose I never really “met” him. I simply had the good fortune to go through his checkout line.
