My friend John and I talk every week on Skype. We’re each other’s cheering section, you know? We listen, encourage and ask good questions that always lead to great insights.
I thought I knew John pretty well.
What I didn’t know is that John lives just around the corner from the fountain on Danforth Avenue in Toronto where Sunday’s mass shooting began. You’d expect that he might be safe and sound inside his living room on a Sunday night watching Netflix, right? Wrong.
In fact, John decided to go and see his parents Sunday night. He left right around 10 p.m. and got into his car. As he turned onto Danforth, he immediately saw a woman on the ground surrounded by people, many of whom were on their cell phones. It looked to him like she’d been hit by a car. John’s impulse was to stop and help, but there seemed to be so many people doing just that, he decided to keep driving.
It wasn’t until the next morning that John found out what had really been happening around 10 o’clock that night on the Danforth.
By the grace of – what I’d say could only be a power bigger than you and me – he was spared at the exact moment in time when more than a dozen other people were being shot. Had John decided to leave home two minutes earlier, he might not be here right now.
I asked if the shooting has changed him. You know, does he want to “live every minute” now – the way people usually say they do after going through something like this?
John’s answer made me smile.
Turns out, the shooting hasn’t made him want to “live every minute”. That’s because he feels like he’s been doing that anyway. Yup. He’s been doing that anyway.
Which of course got me wondering… Have I ? Have you?
When you think about it, life is like a litre of milk with no labels on the carton. It has an expiry date; we just don’t know what it is.
Why should we wait for a shooting to wake us up? Why should we wait to be terrified into grabbing our life by the balls and living it?
We shouldn’t. What we should do is snap out of our complacency coma, suit up, get out on the field and get in the bloody game.
John and I are going out for dinner on the Danforth next week to celebrate the fact that he is still here. I think we’ll order some Ouzo and drink a toast to life. Yeah, that sounds good.
