If You've Got a Chance, Take It

“If you got a chance, take it. If you got a dream, chase it.”

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Do you ever think things happen for some unexplained reason and you’ve gotta just go with it?

This morning, as I was cleaning up in the kitchen, I asked my girlfriend, Alexa, to play some country music.  The first song….. ‘Til You Can’t, by Cody Johnson. I hadn’t heard it before. But those words…. those words struck a chord that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. (Just click on the video above to listen… just 3 1/2 minutes.) 🎵

Longevity

I’ve been thinking about longevity, or the lack of it, and how kindness plays such a big part in the time we have.  Each of us has a choice to be kind (or not).  And each of us has so many chances.  Chances to be kind (or not). 

I wondered if other people thought about this, too. Or, was I the only strange one! I found an unlikely companion. Jeff Bezos. That Jeff Bezos. Probably the wealthiest man in the world. And controversial. Yet he and Cody Johnson, and you, and I, and I bet millions of others, share something. The chance to be kind.

On May 30, 2010, Bezos spoke to the graduating class at Princeton (his alma mater). His speech is titled, “We Are What We Choose”. I’d like to share some excerpts:

As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I’d take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I’d calculate our gas mileage -- figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I’d been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can’t remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I’d come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, “At two minutes per puff, you’ve taken nine years off your life!”

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. “Jeff, you’re so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division.” That’s not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

Bezos went on to say,

Cleverness is a gift. Kindness is a choice.

….How will you use your gifts? What choices will you make?

Will you wilt under criticism, or will you follow your convictions?

Will you bluff it out when you’re wrong, or will you apologize?

Will you guard your heart against rejection, or will you act when you fall in love?

Will you be clever at the expense of others, or will you be kind?

Bezos finished his speech with these words:

I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.

Chances to be kind

As I listened again to ‘Til You Can’t’, I thought about taking chances to be kind.  What could that look like?

I could be kind to myself, even before getting out of bed – what do I like about myself today. No room for negative self-talk.  Just a few positive affirmations while my head is still on the pillow. 

I could be kind to my husband.  A hug.  A smile.  ‘Can I bring you anything?’ 

I could be kind to my thoughts – I am so much happier when my thoughts are kind and not judgmental. 

I could be kind to people on the phone, in emails and texts, in person …  even people I don’t know.  Oh, there’s a whole world of chances to be kind today.  Just thinking about it makes me smile! 🙂

From a country singer to probably the world’s wealthiest guy, to me, to you, there’s a common thread, even with all of the controversy in our world.  If you have a chance to be kind, take it. ‘Til you can’t.

May your week be filled with kindness. 💜

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