One More Day Alive

Last week a teenage boy stuck a gun to my head. The peach fuzz on his face was still not mature enough to make a real beard, but the gun was all too real.

As I stared down the shiny black, cold-steel barrel of the gun, I wasn’t as scared as I was shocked — that a boy this young could be so desperate and so willing to destroy life.

It was just after dusk, when I parked my car at the edge of the parking lot at a local restaurant in Central Phoenix, only a few blocks from my home.

I emerged from the car and only made it a few steps before a young, wiry youth, donning a black-hooded sweatshirt pounced on me, pointing a small caliber gun in my face and screaming at me.

I had just given a teen talk at a local church a few nights earlier, and as strange as it sounds, the first thing that popped into my head was that he reminded me of one of those kids. Was this for real? Could this be some badly conceived prank? But the gun was no joke, and as I hesitated he became more irate.

I pulled a wad of five singles from my wallet and threw them at him. The flying cash distracted him long enough for me to make it into the restaurant and call the police.

Within minutes the place was swarming with cops, and half an hour later they had three suspects in custody down the street.

As a police cruiser drove me a few blocks away to where they were being held, I reflected on the whole event for the first time. I wasn’t as angry as I was sad. As I thought about the years of jail time he would receive for armed robbery, I wanted to sit this foolish boy down and drum into his brain exactly what he had done, and what he jeopardized.

What might have been

I thought about my mother who recently had a stroke and depends on me. I thought about my friends and the rest of my family who would be so extraordinarily traumatized by the event if this kid would have shot me.

I thought about his family and what they would lose if I were armed and shot him.

I thought about all the people this young man could help in the future.

I thought about the children I would never have, he would never have and all the ways the world would be deprived of one or both of us.

I know how much I have to offer; he obviously had no idea how much he could give, and he was willing to throw both of our lives away for a few dollars.

I wanted to tell him all of that and more as we neared the sea of flashing lights sitting atop the caravan of cop cars surrounding the suspects. The cruiser stopped 20 feet away, and three suspects were dragged from the back of an SUV and paraded in front of the headlights. None of them were him.

My heart sank a little. I could never look this misled youth in the eye and tell him why what he did was so insane!

But I am still here to help and to make a difference. And maybe there still is a way to get to him, by telling you to share this story with every young man and woman you know, so that they never make the same stupid mistake.

So that maybe eventually every one of them will know what he didn’t — that God created us to live, to let live, and to revel in the love that surrounds us no matter how much we have or don’t have everything we want. And that blessed mission is priceless.

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The recent tragedy surrounding “self help” author James Arthur Ray’s sweat lodge ceremony in Sedona, Ariz., which killed three people has stunned the spiritual community there and left many across the nation condemning the author for abusing a culturally revered ceremony that he knew little or nothing about not to mention violating city codes which he made no attempt to adhere to.

But what nobody is talking about is the bigger problem, and the bigger issue that Ray represents – a cancerous culture of success that has permeated the American psyche, if not the world’s, and has practically become a religion unto itself. It’s an addiction that Ray and countless others like him have tapped into for profit – one which promises that you can have anything you want, whenever you want and however you want it or as the cover of Ray’s book Harmonic Wealth reads, “The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.”

Well as a Catholic self-help author, who does not ascribe to this point of view, I think it’s high time that we call this ridiculous charade for what it is – snake oil salesman claiming to sell the elixir of life when what they are really selling is death – usually spiritual but in this case actual.

For God’s sake have we not evolved enough to realize that our happiness cannot wait for the good times to roll around in a world where tragedies and tough times never cease?

The bottom line is that for all of us, there is a reality, and no amount of positive thinking or perception twisting rhetoric is going to make it go away.
We can make that reality meaningful and constructive, not by becoming obsessed with changing it, but by finding a noble purpose in the way we deal with it, that purpose is to love and be loved by others.

What if our problems, our inadequacies, our imperfections and our failures don’t make us less worthy or less important but even more important because they give others the opportunity to reach out and love us – giving their lives even more meaning – and they give us the opportunity to reach out to God?

That means none of us are dysfunctional or any less worthy of life, no matter what we do or don’t do, no matter how many mistakes we make, no matter where we go right, where we go wrong, how much we succeed or fail or how well we fit or do not fit into society.

Or as Author and psychologist Viktor Frankl put it, “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.” Frankl suffered the atrocities of a concentration camp during World War II where his entire family lost their lives, culminating in his wife’s execution in front of his eyes. After overcoming the compulsion to end his own life, he realized that the pain he was experiencing because of their deaths was proof of his extraordinary ability to love, and he wanted to go and love some more.

I guess sometimes only death reminds us of the value of life, and that every day is one more day alive, a miracle, and an opportunity to experience that miracle in oh so many ways.

Hopefully these three deaths will not be in vain but will remind all of us that’s life’s value lies not in whether the glass is half full or half empty but in the value of the glass itself. That glass of our lives is always valuable.

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