My Friend Strider

My Friend Strider

Life has thrown you another curveball, my amazing friend… Things like that seem to happen to us all throughout our lives. Disappointments, setbacks, pain, heartache, and loss just come upon us, often at inopportune moments and in awkward situations. I can’t explain why that is, but I do have a few thoughts about it…

First, last, foremost, and always, it isn’t the blows and knockdowns we receive along our journey that define us… it is the way we react, adapt, and overcome them that do. I have to struggle hard to think of someone I might know personally who is better equipped, in my opinion, to come out of your recent ‘surprise’ in a good way than you are, my friend.

I once had a secretary who was amazingly insightful, and who had ‘my number’ completely. I had just received a career jolt that was particularly hard for me to grapple with at the time, but she was tuned right in…

She left me a note stating simply, “God never closes a door without leaving a window ajar somewhere…” That message really struck a chord with me, and I called upon that simple line for strength many other times thereafter, and I still do to this day…

Strong character is, as you know, a key component in dealing with life’s challenges. While it is always tempting to take the easiest path or to wallow in misery, a strong character will not let us fall into that downward spiral for long. You are such a person with very strong character!

You have displayed a knack for knowing intuitively what to do in tough circumstances. To date, I’ve observed you deal with other career setbacks over the years, but each time you rose above them and made the most of whatever hand you’d been dealt. A common thread in each of those is the way you refuse to stay down or even to let those things keep you down, physically or mentally, for long.

You have imagination, inner strength, and indisputable ‘people skills’. You are a natural leader. Yes, you are a person others are naturally inclined to follow. Those of us who have found ourselves also in leadership roles can’t help but marvel at how you seem to galvanize the rest of us to action… and to success! Perhaps there is no better example of this, and certainly none have touched my soul more, than the entire ‘scooter project’ you undertook several years ago…

But more than simply skill, creativity, and sheer energy account for your ‘success’ in life… I think it is the splendid and huge amount of character you possess that does. It is tempting to attribute that to some external force that has chosen you to be such a person… what I call an impact player! I think there is much more to it than that, however.

Character is not something that comes to us or is given to us… luck plays no significant part in that at all. No, I believe it is the sum of all the choices we’ve made and lessons we’ve internalized throughout the course of our lives in response to the difficult challenges we’ve faced.

To the extent we coast along and take the easier path, avoid hard decisions, or fail to stand tall when we should, we fail to acquire that inner strength, the character, we need to sustain us when only we can find adequate solutions to life’s conundrums. To conquer rather than to submit... To be a victor rather than a victim.

As the rest of us witness your most recent trial, we all feel for you, and we all most certainly are rooting for you! Those of us who know you, though, also know that in time this will turn out to be little more than another speed bump along your path of life… You will take this in stride just fine… after all, you are the ‘Strider’!

DDT