Five things happened to me in the same season, three years ago.
My father went into intensive care. I was dealing with an eye condition that would later require surgery. A relationship came to an end. I moved to be closer to my parents. And I founded a company.
Americans say that when it rains, it pours. I wrote about that phrase a while ago, and about the friend at Harvard who taught it to me. That season I remember as one long weather. I could not have told you where one thing ended and the next began.
One evening I sat in the kitchen with my mother. It was late, and neither of us had eaten much. We talked about taking the money for the funeral out of the family bank account. We spoke quietly, in the tone you use for a bill that has to be paid. That is how close it was.
In those same weeks, between one hospital visit and the next, I signed the incorporation papers. I walked out of a room where nothing depended on me and into a room where everything would.
Three years later, most of those five are closed.
My father made it through. I can write those five words in a second today. For a long time I did not know if I would get to write them.
My right eye got fixed. The surgery came, and after it almost a year on a rollercoaster of creams, eye drops, visits, check-ups, and who knows what else. But I came out of it.
The heart took longer, and it healed quietly, the way hearts often do while you are busy looking elsewhere. I will keep the details for myself. I will only say that one day I noticed the anger was gone, and the heart was whole again. Maybe that is how you know.
The move is long behind me. I am close to my parents now, which was the whole reason for it. My idea of family is about the same as Dom Toretto’s in Fast & Furious, and I was there when they needed me.
Whether I stay is another question, one I have not answered yet. Whatever comes, comes. I have a weakness for lakes, islands, the sea, and places with a spiritual pull. My traveling schedule gives me one requirement, which is a good train station or an airport nearby. Otherwise I might already be in Venice or Assisi. Maybe one day.
So let’s say three and a half.
I am grateful for these endings in a way I find hard to put into words. An ending lets you put something down. You can tell it in the past tense, with a first line and a last one, and once you can tell it, it stops asking things of you.
The last thing is different, and it turns three today.
Better Ipsum is the one I cannot tell in the past tense. It asks something of me every morning.
Nobody was waiting for it. I had come back from the United States, where I had been doing research at Harvard while working in Big Law, a combination I would hardly recommend to anyone who cares about their health. Back home I had a strong role in a great firm, offers on the table, and easier roads in every direction. I could have slowed down. I could have gone solo and put my own name on the door. I made up a new name instead, for something that could one day stand in a room without me.
The launch was a quiet one. The announcements went out, but there was no party. There was a name, a signature, and a great many things to do. The name has a story of its own, and I am keeping that one for another blog post.
More than one person asked me the same question back then, and a few of them were kind enough to ask it out loud. Why complicate your life when it is already this complicated? It was a fair question. I asked it myself many times, and the honest answer is that I still don’t fully know. I remember thinking it was either the worst idea I had ever had or the only one that made sense. Most days I still think both.
Here is my best guess. That year was full of things I could only wait for. A doctor’s update. A date for the surgery. A reason to hope. I think I needed one thing that did not ask me to wait, one beginning in a season when I was afraid of endings. Complicated, sure. But it was a complication I had chosen, and that year there were very few of those.
Three years later, that beginning is still going. To me, that looks like the good news.
Health, sight, family, heart: that year I wanted nothing new from any of them. I wanted them back as they were, or at least whole again. Something you build is different. It is meant to stay open. If it works, it will still be open on the day I am no longer the one opening it in the morning. That was the point from the start, and it is the reason for the title of this post. Most of what happened that season I can finally close. This one I hope to keep open for a long time.
This morning, during my meditation, I went back to that season and counted again. My father, my eye, my heart, the move, the company.
Three closed well, one is half closed, and I am fine with that. One I am still making. And I believe it is the one that will reach furthest beyond me.
If someone had offered me that deal three years ago, in a hospital corridor, I would have signed that too.
At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of faith and time. Everything gets better. Well, Better!
