You've still got your health...

There’s a well-worn joke – actually a whole family of jokes – in which one guy relates an absolutely staggering chronicle of misfortune piled upon woe piled on disaster. His friend listens sympathetically, then notes, “Well, you still have your health.”

Back in my earlier incarnation as a PR entrepreneur, one of my most valued clients was Edison Electric Institute, whose annual convention was a highlight of my year. My contact there was Tony Anthony, a man of wit, charm, good cheer and great imagination. I had fallen out of touch with Tony since joining the ranks of the full-time employed about three and a half years ago, so I was shocked to hear he had died over the weekend. Cause of death was a heart attack, apparently quite unexpected. Tony was not near retirement. He was roughly my age, maybe a little younger.

At the other end of the scale is the news, which rippled through my Squatting Toad writers’ group over the last few days, that a young writer one of our group has been mentoring for the last year or so actually sold the novel he was working on – as part of a two-book, million-dollar deal followed within days by a movie sale that added another half mil to the pile.

More on Squatting Toad in a later post, maybe. For the moment, suffice it to say we are six middle-aged guys (OK, maybe a little older than that) for whom the news of life-changing wealth dropping on some undoubtedly undeserving youngster was not as well received as you might think. The email exchange reached a point where one of us actually asked, “Am I the only one who sees inspiration in this tale?”

When I related the story to my wife, she said the author “probably has a gorgeous girlfriend, too,” to which I replied, “Well, if he didn’t before…”

What does all of this prove? Nothing, except that, as someone once said, life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Right now, the only long range plan I have is focused on getting through a 13-mile race on June 5. But as Coach Mark keeps saying, “it isn’t a race, it’s an endurance event.”

Kind of like life, if you’re lucky. In the end, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on, the lone and level sands stretch far away, and the torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

And I’ve still got my health.

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