Every February 24th, without exception, my phone rings, and without fail the phone call catches me by surprise. This year, I was in the middle of sorting through a pile of debris on my desk, when the voice on the other end of the phone said, “No matter how bad things in your life may seem right now, I remember the day when it was worse.”
The voice belongs to Mike Toconita, my former roommate in the Marine Corps. The day he’s referring to is February 24th, 1991, which is the day that ground combat began in Operation Desert Storm. The night before, on February 23rd, the guys in my fire team huddled around our platoon sergeant and we were told: “Look at the guy on your left, now look at the guy on your right. One of those guys won’t be here this time, tomorrow.” In fact, we were told to expect 50% casualties the first day. Talk about a bad night of sleep.
As dawn broke on the morning of February 24th, I was packed into the back of an AmTrac (amphibious tractor), sitting knee to knee with guys, friends, that I’d known for years, and I felt the armored vehicle grind to a halt. Then a really strange thing happened. Everything went silent. The guys I was sitting next to, the ones you could never get to shut up–totally silent. You could hear the pins release on the AmTrac door, and then it dropped down. Out the back door of the vehicle, you could see dirt flying from the bullets that were sprayed at us–but I couldn’t hear anything. Time slowed down. Then, suddenly, our first guy bailed out, and all you could hear was the rat-tat-tat-tat of his machine gun firing. And then everything sped up to hyper-speed, racing, racing, including my heart! Every single one of those guys jumped out and did what they were supposed to do. And every single one of them came back.
This annual call from my friend Toconita is a reminder that 1) I can endure anything and 2) things that are “bad” in my life are relative. I need this type of reality-check in my daily life and I am grateful for my good friend who reminds me, without fail, every year.
If you’re in the middle of experiencing a business interruption loss, I know that it’s been tough. “If you’re going through hell, keep going,” said Winston Churchill. There just may come a day when you’re grateful for what life has dealt you…or have you already had that happen to you in your life? Leave me a comment, below.
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