surviving -- getting by or living life?

I saw two survivors today. While waiting in front of my old workplace for my lunch date, I saw a former co-worker walk up. So I hopped out of my car and went over to talk to him.

As far as I'm concerned, he's survived at least twice. On Sept 11 (yes, that 9/11), he was scheduled to fly out of Boston to San Jose on a non-stop flight. He was to depart mid-morning because, as he puts it, he doesn't like to get up early. By the time his flight was scheduled to depart, air space was shut down. He got to come home that day, unlike his early-bird compatriots on earlier flights. His wife later said that she wanted to frame his boarding pass. And more recently, he had a multi-bypass (triple? quadruple? I'm not sure). He's my age, and in fairly good shape, too. He looked great -- good skin color, moving at a good pace, and so on.

But he also looked lousy. I could tell before we started talking that he's having a tough time. I think he hates his job -- he told me he'd much rather go back to sitting around the house like he did when he was on disability. I know that heart disease brings on depression. I also know that where he works is unhealthy for many, many people; in fact, I've joked in other conversations that they should put prozac in the water fountains there. I lightly asked whether he's considered doing something else, and he resignedly said that he has two kids to put through college.

This is a man who used to love his job, and who used to do a great job. Now all the wind has gone out of his sails, or at least it had by about mid-day today. I hope that some day he'll realize that he has options, that even if he needs to work, there might be other great places to be, places that can inspire and excite him to be the kind of worker he was nearly a decade ago. Alas.


My lunch date is also a survivor, with a pit-bull's attitude toward life. About ten years ago, she was diagnosed with a form of cancer that's difficult to survive. She was down and out for months. Since she came to IBM (actually, a few weeks before the takeover was announced), she's gone from maintaining a dying product to managing a small group to managing a group of 13. She's riding in the Pan-Mass challenge this weekend (a huge fund-raising bike ride to raise money for our local cancer institute), and she's looking forward to her next travel adventure. She is such a hot ticket and I hope I can grow up to be like her.

Good life lessons here, as always.