It’s almost eight years since I wrote Take The Measure Of A Man which in many ways was part of the beginning of accepting my father was going to die.
I shared a story in it in which I slammed into a sliding glass door while running at three quarter speed. I remember seeing the door start to close and figured it would be fun to see if I was fast enough to make it through.
I was not.
The memory still makes me laugh but after having lost almost half my blood this past October I wonder if I ought to write the engineer who designed the door a thank you or if my guardian angel got between me and the door.
If it had shattered it would have been ugly but when you have had almost no serious injuries you don’t think about these things.
I ruptured the distal tendon in my left bicep two days after I wrote What Does Almost Dying Teach You?
It was the second bigger health event in less than six months which has made me wonder if the warranty on this body has expired.
I Am Still Worthy
I hit the gym again today to walk on the treadmill and lift weights with my good arm and had my I Am Still Worthy moment.
I started going back as soon as they stuck me in the brace and gave me my bionic arm.
Been back every day since but today was the one where I tested my right arm a little bit and got the answer I expected.
I am still worthy.
The warranty on me hasn’t expired. The events of the past few months were a little hiccup, just a bump in the road.
No need to play Dylan’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door or Cohen’s Who By Fire.
I am several months away from being able to resume the kind of full body exercise I desperately want to but confident I’ll get there again.
The bad arm experience was frustrating because it made me wonder if I was wrong about what I wrote in the first part of this post but today fixed it.
And somewhere along the way I realized all these events are building more emotional intelligence, more muscle memory and solidifying any doubts that exist about the ability to keep moving.
There wasn’t much there to begin with because there isn’t time to sit, wallow and worry. Life doesn’t provide that kind of time or option.
Sometimes the universe provides signs and signals. Someone read The Happy Places and I remembered more about who I was, who I am and who I have become.
He is more complicated in some ways but in others quite simple and I am very happy with that. He is getting really close to that place he has been working to get to.
Forty-One Years Later
It’s 41 years since I wandered all over Israel the first time. Forty-one years since I would sit in the back of the bus and one of the guys would play this album.
We live in a different world now than we did then and sometimes it feels like it is changing by the day.
The kid that I was couldn’t tell you what an endoscopy is and wouldn’t have known whether to care that one day he would be getting one.
He wouldn’t have cared that He/I have already covered our deductible and out of pocket for for ’26 or understood what any of that meant.
But he would have recognized that taking out Khamenei could be a very big thing and the pun about eating Khameneitashen for Purim.
Probably wasn’t sophisticated enough to say you can dislike Trump and Netanyahu and still see value in removing the Islamic Regime in Iran.
But he would have asked what the plan was for afterwards and wondered if this leads to well deserved freedom for the Iranian people and more stability for the region.
In concept it sounds like it very well could and should do that. It is something multiple analysts have suggested as a distinct option.
For the moment I’ll leave it at that and not get any deeper than that nor remind you that the Pro Pal cult was very loud about a non existent genocide and silent about the thousands of Iranian protesters murdered by the regime.
You either believe in freedom and building a better future or you engage in meaningless performative activism.
Did I mention sometimes I miss the world that 16 year-old boy who wandered Jerusalem lived in. It was still the middle of the Cold War but in some ways it was far more stable or so it feels.
Reality might have been otherwise in large part because 16 year-olds who were fortunate to grow up in stable homes, where they never worried about anything truly serious may not have noticed/recognized more serious issues.
Patience Is Needed
The hardest part about this moment is the patience required to not try to rush through the recovery. For the last 20 minutes my left arm has been free of the brace but in a moment it will go back in.
The doc said it is ok to take it off occasionally and I do but I also know myself. I need the weight of the brace and the clickety-clack to remind me to focus on letting it heal.
I need the reminder so I don’t lift/move things I am not supposed to yet.
The gym reminded me the fire burns bright and if all goes as I plan/hope by the end of the year my left arm will be back to form.
But patience isn’t always my strong suit so I will do my best and focus on the other traits that are used to sail safely through storms.
Life is one hell of a ride, isn’t it.
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