I learned the other day that a former colleague had passed away over the holidays. I knew he was sick but you always hope they recover.
I didn’t work with him much but after 25 years of employment, you get to know a lot of people through golf tournaments, Christmas parties, and through so many other social and professional gatherings.
I am listening to the soundtrack to his memorial slideshow. I sobbed my way through the first go through, and wanted to write this with the same emotion that I felt that first time.
The music rips through your chest, pulls your heart out and raises it into the air. On display for all to see the humanity within all of us.
Photos with his kids when they were young, vacations, their cat waiting for scraps at the stove, doggie cuddles, and a squirrel sitting on his chest eating right out of his hands. It reminded me of a story I wrote about an injured squirrel right around the same time our path’s came to a head.
I actually wrote about my coworker a few months back. I spoke of a time we became foes, only for the moment we reconciled to be one of the most significant memories of my 25 years with my current employer.
He showed compassion and understanding during one of the most difficult times in my life – my divorce – even when I showed no interest in the humanity of his story.
Where many companies may have canned my ass, I got a second chance and a life lesson of the significance of a conversation to change outcomes, and the power of risking the rejection you have already preconceived.
Don’t wait for death to expose the human side of those at the end of our anger.