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The Watershed, Part 5

A “Symphony of Your Life” blog with Mark Hardcastle

SOYL Table Display
Up on the watershed
Standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize
Till your agony’s your heaviest load
Never fly as the crow flies
Get used to a country mile
When you’re learning to face
The path at your pace,
every choice is worth your while

– The Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.

At that point I was given a great gift from the Universe. Now it’s not what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “no foolin’ Sport, you got to walk away from a broken neck.”

Yeah, that was a nice gift. But what I’m talking about is what the surgeon did next. She trussed me up in a cervical collar and told me not to remove it for the next 90 days under any circumstances.

Well, that sort of cramped my style during the summer of 2012. There were things I would have done that I couldn’t do with a cervical collar around my neck. Things I’d have seen, places I’d have gone.

This Watershed Event had brought my life to a sudden stop. And I was given the gift of stillness for a change.

Three months to figure out how to respond to this challenge that Fortune had thrown my way.

So what did I think about during those long days and longer nights of hardly being able to move?

I have a friend who kept coming to mind over and over again. He’s also an airline pilot who works for one of the carriers that was devastated by the events of 9/11. As it happened, one of the 4 Captains on one of the 4 jets that went down that day was his close personal friend and mentor. Unimaginable loss. And in the aftermath of that horrific day my friend’s airline declared bankruptcy and cut his pay in half. Because of that he lost his home to foreclosure and personal bankruptcy. Then a few months before my accident they found 2 different kinds of cancer in 2 different parts of his body.

So let’s see. Friend murdered by terrorists. Career disaster. Foreclosure. Bankruptcy. Cancer times 2. That’s a heavy list. But you’d never know any of that had happened to him unless you knew it had happened. He’s one of the most positive, optimistic, fun-to-be-around individuals I’ve ever known.

How can that dichotomy exist in any individual? How can it exist in the world?

I asked him that question. Here’s what he said. “You know, sometimes Life kicks you where it hurts. And you can either lay there and moan, or you can get up and move on with what’s important.”

In other words, every challenge brings a choice. You can choose to fight your battles, or not.

That was it. He was, and still is, moving forward. And there, through him, was my challenge. Was I gonna lay there and moan, or was I gonna get up and move on with what’s important?

Of course, if you give a monkey 3 months and enough bananas he’ll figure it out. So I did. And 18 months later my book was finished. And all the good things that have flowed from that got underway.

So here’s my question for you today. What Watershed Event has brought your life to a sudden stop?

More importantly, how are you responding? Are you resolving today, tomorrow, next month, next year to get up and do what needs to be done? Are you embracing the challenges that history has taught us are inevitable? Are you taking the opportunity to create meaning out of those challenges?

What if today as you fight your hard battles you recognized that it’s not what happens in life that matters – it’s how we respond?

A few days ago we looked at ancient philosophers and what they had to say about the inevitability of challenges. Let’s conclude by going back again to the philosophy of the ages. Further back than Epictetus. Beyond Plato and Buddha. Back 3,000 years to one of the oldest philosophies of all.

The Judeo-Christian tradition expressed in the book of Isaiah promises that if we resolve to do the things we were put on this earth to do, embracing the reality and opportunity of challenge, creating meaning out of the inevitable Watershed Events that bring our lives to sudden stops, then we shall have a song. And gladness of heart.

What more meaning could there be?

Thanks for reading!

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The Symphony of Your Life

Link to Mark’s book, The Symphony of Your Life

http://www.symphonyofyourlife.com

Mark graduated from the USAF Academy in 1982. After nine years as a pilot on active duty, he left the military to join a commercial airline. In addition to flying B-777s around the world, Hardcastle spends time in the Rocky Mountains and serves on the artistic staff of the Colorado Children’s Chorale. He lives in Centennial, Colorado, with his wife and four children. Contact Mark today to schedule a keynote or workshop for your organization!
Posted on by Mark Hardcastle

The Watershed Part 4

A “Symphony of Your Life” blog with Mark Hardcastle

Seth Loading Dad Into Medevac
Up on the watershed
Standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize
Till your agony’s your heaviest load
Never fly as the crow flies
Get used to a country mile
When you’re learning to face
The path at your pace,
every choice is worth your while

– The Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.

In the silence of that moment Fortune presented her challenge in great big letters across the sky: Your neck may be broken. Your right arm is gone.

How are you going to respond?

The next group of riders came along, found me lying there, pulled out their cell phones, called 911, and got an emergency response. So began the rescue that involved getting the ambulance up to me on the trail, me on to the back board, into the ambulance, and then back down the hill to the Moab emergency room where they took x-rays. And we found out that indeed my neck was broken.

Because x-rays can’t tell us everything we need to know about soft tissue, the doctors couldn’t know how badly my spinal cord was damaged. With a broken neck and a paralyzed arm they thought they’d better figure that out. So they decided to evacuate me on a flight-for-life helicopter up to Grand Junction and put me in an MRI machine.

Back on the gurney, out to the helipad, loaded into the chopper and strapped down again. As the helicopter lifted off for the short flight to St. Mary’s hospital the chaos of the rescue melted away and I found myself thinking about the gravity of my situation.

The question that came rushing in – that I couldn’t push away – was ‘how much worse is it gonna get?’ I knew my neck was broken and my right arm was gone. Was I gonna lose my left arm, too? What about my legs? Were they gonna stop working before I even got to Grand Junction? And if you go just a little bit further down that line of thinking you come to a pretty dark place. I won’t say it here – I’ll let you get there on your own. But suffice it to say I knew for the first time on a gut level something I’d known in my head for my entire life:

Tomorrow is not promised.

That’s me on the gurney being loaded into the helicopter in the picture above. That’s my then 18-year-old son standing beside me, saying goodbye before I began my journey.

The image of him standing beside me, doing what needed to be done, being the adult in the situation, was burned onto my psyche during that gentle cruise beyond the LaSalle Mountains, northeast toward the Grand Mesa. I wasn’t finished raising him, his sister and two brothers. But tomorrow was no longer promised.

Why did you do the things you did today? Are those really the things you should have been doing?

Is there something you need to say to somebody close to you that you haven’t said yet? Are there things you need to do with your kids, your grand kids that you haven’t done yet?

The helicopter landed at St. Mary’s. They wheeled me into the MRI machine, did the test, and wheeled me back out again. The neurosurgeon came over to give me the news: “Yeah, Mark, no fooling, your neck is broken – in five places. That’s the bad news. The good news is that there’s no spinal cord damage.”

“No spinal cord damage? But doc my arm is paralyzed?”

“Yeah, Mark, the nerves that control your arm are badly bruised way back up at their roots. But the bruise is outside the spinal column, which means your arm will likely recover.”

Sure enough, it was only a matter of hours before I began to regain function in my right hand.

At that point I was given a great gift from the Universe. Now it’s not what you’re thinking…

Part 5: https://thesymphonyofyourlife.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/the-watershed-part-5/

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Link to Mark’s book, The Symphony of Your Life

http://www.symphonyofyourlife.com

Mark graduated from the USAF Academy in 1982. After nine years as a pilot on active duty, he left the military to join a commercial airline. In addition to flying B-777s around the world, Hardcastle spends time in the Rocky Mountains and serves on the artistic staff of the Colorado Children’s Chorale. He lives in Centennial, Colorado, with his wife and four children. Contact Mark today to schedule a keynote or workshop for your organization!
Posted on by Mark Hardcastle

The Watershed Part 3

A “Symphony of Your Life” blog with Mark Hardcastle

Seth - Moab May 2011 028

Up on the watershed
Standing at the fork in the road
You can stand there and agonize
Till your agony’s your heaviest load
Never fly as the crow flies
Get used to a country mile
When you’re learning to face
The path at your pace,
every choice is worth your while

– The Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers.

…we have an opportunity in those challenges to create meaning. Now it’s not the challenges themselves that matter. We have no say in what Fortune throws at us. The opportunity is in how we respond.  So how are you responding today when Fortune challenges you with difficult times?

Challenges. Are. Inevitable. It’s how we respond that matters.

Ok, Mark. How inevitable are these challenges?

Well let’s look back in history and see if we can find a pattern or two. How far back? Well, how about 2500 years? Would that provide enough perspective?

In about 400 BC Buddha imagined the Four Noble Truths. Truth number 1: Life is suffering. Fifty years before that on the other side of the world, Plato was reminding his followers to “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” Still in the Mediterranean half a millennium later Epictetus was teaching that “it is what it is.”

Hmm. Can we just skip over the Dark Ages and come right to the 20th century? In 1946 we received Viktor Frankl’s wisdom. He posited that life is not so much a quest for pleasure or power as a search for meaning. Then in 1978 M. Scott Peck wrote his controversial (at least in my world) book, The Road Less Traveled. Chapter 1, page 1, line 1: “Life is suffering.”

Right back to Buddha.

Seriously? Is that the best we can hope for? Absolutely not!

Every one of these individuals used those ideas as starting points in a conversation about how to find joy in an imperfect world..

May 18th 2012 I had  a profound opportunity to join that conversation…

I woke up on that trail, my nose and mouth filled with the dust of the Utah desert. The sun, earlier hidden by overcast now making itself fully known on my face and in my eyes. Pain building steadily between my shoulder blades and at the base of my neck as I became more and more aware. With that awareness came clarity and I told myself I must remain still until I knew more. With absolute care not to allow my head to move I took inventory of my extremities. Left toes? Yep, they work. Right foot? Check. Left fingers? No problem. Right arm…?

Right arm!!…? ? ?

Problem.

In the silence of that moment Fortune presented her challenge in great big letters across the sky: Your neck may be broken. Your right arm is gone.

How are you going to respond?

Part 4: https://thesymphonyofyourlife.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/the-watershed-part-4/

IMG_20151209_182818

Link to Mark’s book, The Symphony of Your Life

http://www.symphonyofyourlife.com

 

Mark graduated from the USAF Academy in 1982. After nine years as a pilot on active duty, he left the military to join a commercial airline. In addition to flying B-777s around the world, Hardcastle spends time in the Rocky Mountains and serves on the artistic staff of the Colorado Children’s Chorale. He lives in Centennial, Colorado, with his wife and four children. Contact Mark today to schedule a keynote or workshop for your organization!