Find a Penny, Pick It Up

Today as I was running, my eye caught a glint of something shiny on the road just ahead of me. I welcomed the opportunity to pause and catch my breath as I bent over to see what it was. It was a penny. A really beat up penny which, compounded by the humidity outside and my own poor ability to focus early in the morning, made it impossible to tell if it was heads-up or heads-down.

I picked it up, ignoring any childish superstitions I still carry about luck and the direction a penny is facing when you find it. I wouldn’t normally act so recklessly, but today I suppose I was feeling invincible. Or maybe I decided that I wanted to know more about this particular penny and the only way to do so was to throw caution to the wind and put the sucker in my hand where I could examine it up close and personal. Even as I held it inches from my face, it was difficult to identify much about it. I had to flip it back and forth several times before I found a distinguishable marking…the outline of the Lincoln Union Shield minted on pennies since 2010.

By this time, I had flipped it back and forth so many times, that I couldn’t remember on which side I had started. The 12-year-old me knew that the arrival of good or bad luck was now set in stone…that happened the minute I picked it up. Thus, the 42-year-old me curled my fist around the tiny piece of copper-plated zinc and continued on my way ready to accept whatever fate awaited me.  

   

Since I was running with a friend and we were talking, I gave only a few seconds of thought to the penny before returning to our conversation. A little while later, after my friend and I parted ways, I returned my attention to the 2.5-gram coin which was nestled in my sweaty palm. 

Many people believe that the penny shouldn’t be minted anymore. It costs the U.S. government 1.8 cents to produce each one-cent piece. Also, they are practically useless save their ability to produce exact change or their perceived ability to conjure good luck. In fact, if you Google this issue, your search will yield pages and pages of results. Campaigns to abolish the penny are a real thing. As are campaigns to keep it. The dispute is a gateway to a deep rabbit hole which is, in my personal view, every bit as useless as some claim the penny to be. As I walked the five blocks back to my house, though, I considered that found penny as a metaphor for opportunity in general.

Many of us ignore opportunities placed on our path because, like a heads-down penny, they aren’t positioned just right. Maybe they aren’t in perfect condition or, like my penny, they don’t tell us enough at first glance. Maybe there is something about where they lie – in the outstretched hands of someone we don’t like or in a place we don’t want to go – that makes them undesirable. Something about the less-than-ideal conditions convinces us to leave that opportunity lying on the path for someone else. 

In fact, we hold enormous power to direct where an opportunity takes us. Although there may be, at times, some luck involved, the role of luck is no greater than our will to overcome obstacles, our resilience in accepting outcomes, and our ability to learn lessons. We can't predict where an opportunity will take us, but we always have the power to choose how it impacts us.

Others ignore opportunities that they deem unworthy of their time. It won’t generate sufficient monetary compensation. It won’t produce recognition that is proportional to effort. Maybe it won’t do enough to cure, mitigate, alleviate, or solve whatever problem it is addressing. Perhaps we feel that some opportunities are simply beneath us. If it truly has value, we shouldn’t have to stoop that low to pick it up. No one would leave a good opportunity where dirty feet and heavy wheels might crush it. 

The fact remains that pennies are still money and all money carries some value. Even those that have been driven over and stepped on so many times that you can’t distinguish between heads and tails. If you collect enough pennies, eventually you will have a dollar or $5.00 or $100 dollars. You have to pick them up, though, if you want them to amount to anything. 

The same is true of opportunities…even those that appear insignificant on their own or too distorted and unfamiliar to be dependable. Seize each opportunity and they can be strung together to create skills, experiences, and relationships. Amass sufficient skills, experiences, and relationships and you may one-day find that you’ve crafted a career, business, or network.

Regardless, you will have definitely created a life.  

Friends, Miscreants, Reprobates...Lend Me Your Ears

Man I have some good friends in this world. People who are so good that they make me forget about the dark side of humanity. It’s probably the reason that I don’t see through scams or expect to be deceived by people – my friends have spoiled me. That, however, is a small price to pay for a lifetime of amazing, funny, supportive people who know exactly who and what I am and love me for it.

And in spite of it.

I know people who, if my husband and I are ever in a fatal car accident, will not only make sure that my kids are OK – forever – but on the way to the morgue, will stop at our house and retrieve anything that we wouldn’t want our families or the authorities to find.

Not that we have anything like that.

And if it’s not fatal, I have people who will come to the hospital and pluck my chin hairs while I’m in a coma. They will make sure that the fundraising sight we set up to cover my medical bills use only the most attractive pictures of me. No double chins. No awkward camera angles. No panoramic ass shots.

And if I kill someone, I have friends who will not help me hide the body (because I wouldn’t expect them to take responsibility for such a thing) but will help me face what I did and testify at my trial. They will know what the victim must have done to provoke me. Because they have seen me at my angriest and know that it is only coffee and running that has protected some miscreants up to this point.

And they will bring me Insomnia Cookies in prison because they will also know that in prison, I will no longer care about Wheat Belly or gut bacteria or getting fat.

But seriously, my friends are the best and they’ve been placed in my path over and over in different cities and jobs and schools and every other circumstance in which I find myself. They cry and pray and light candles when things are bad. They laugh and dance and sing with me when things are good. And they know – sometimes before me – when things are going to turn in either of those directions.

They aren’t all one religion or one race or one socioeconomic class. They aren’t all liberal or all conservative. They are just good. And if I have them…and you have them…and they have them…and they aren’t all the same, doesn’t that just make us a giant network of regular folks doing the best we can? Just taking care of our people who are taking care of their people who are taking care of other people…not perfectly, but well enough?

Let’s hold onto our people, my friends, and not let hate-spewing, single-minded, self-serving reprobates who happen to have a microphone and nice clothes jack with our networks.

That’s a job best left to Comcast and AT&T.

Just a thought.

Well Played, Dick. Well. Played.

I know it’s cliché, but little things really can make a big impact.

Last week, I was listening to my new favorite podcast...Gilbert Gottfried's interview with Dick Van Dyke. It was colossal as advertised. Beyond the enjoyment I derived from listening to the hosts completely geek out over interviewing him – at his home – I was so entertained by the great stories he shared. The guy is 90 years old -- the same age as the Empire State Building, as he pointed out -- and has spent more than 50 of those years in show business. He’s been a TV star, a movie star, a stage star. He personally knew Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He can sing -- in English and in a horrible cockney accent which he recognizes and embraces as the worst cinematic accent ever. He taught himself to dance when he was in his 30s and despite a diagnosis of arthritis in his 40s, he still dances every single day. A recovering alcoholic, he quit drinking cold turkey in the 1970s. A 50-year smoker (1-2 packs a day at one point), he quit smoking with the help of nicotine gum and patches. Seems like he’s cracked the longevity code – and not just enough to keep a pulse until he was 90 but enough to still be LIVING at 90. Thriving even.

And now he’s written a book called Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths about Aging. I was hoping that he might share some magic (free) nugget of wisdom that would help me crack the code on this aging thing that I've got going on. It’s not that I don’t want to read his book, but my “to read” list is unmanageable right now and I could really use some Cliff Notes at this stage. Toward the end, I realized he wasn't giving anything up other than instructing us to just do what we love and be happy. Just as I was about to add it to my book list, Gottfried asked him to share his most important piece of advice with listeners. I let out a single sardonic snicker at this question because really...if I wrote a book, I sure as hell wouldn’t go around telling everyone the best parts. He graciously answered with this:

“Never start going down the stairs sideways.”

I laughed again as this was clearly a humorous way of saying, "No way in hell I'm giving you the best advice from the book...go out and effing buy it." Except that it did turn out to be the best advice ever. Especially for a runner over the age of 40. After a week of forcing myself to go down the stairs forward – no matter how badly my knees and hips were aching – my hips and knees don’t hurt anymore. I can actually bound up and trot down like I did when I was a kid. It's almost as if using them is preventing me from losing them. And if that's not the best advice in the book, then I want to hear the rest of it too. So I guess it's going on the "to read" list afterall.

Well played, Dick. Well. Played.