Hell...

It's often said that war is hell...

For all its evil, war sometimes has a silver lining.  It can clarify the mind and reboot our ethical compass.  It puts less serious things in perspective.  It nudges us towards our neighbor and reminds us that our needs and interests are intertwined.  It reignites our compassion.  (Historian Dan Carlin)

That's the great irony of war, one I never know how to reconcile: So many of the greatest things we value came from the worst events we pray to avoid. (Finance Blogger Morgan Housel)

Much to consider in these few words.

Read them again...stop and think for a moment after every stanza.

But it's not just war that is hell.

Nearly all of the most impactful life lessons and character building experiences happen while going through hell.

Not the Biblical "Hell" - that word you couldn't say as a child...but man-made hell.  "Chaos" or "disorder" as Jordan Peterson describes it.

And if you've never experienced order, everything is disorder, all of life is hell.

Life generally starts out that way.  No one enters life with a personal grasp of what order actually means when they start out on the journey.

Hopefully we start to gain some experience of "other people's order" while growing up in a family with loving and caring parents.  And there's always a spectrum...so one can only hope you had a happy childhood with parental order provided from the good side of the spectrum...but not everybody does.

But realize your happy childhood experiences were not the result of your own personal order...they were the product of your parent's life order.

So actually everyone has a personal life mission to identify and establish personal order for their own life - and then live within the results.

And it is the most difficult and trying times which create opportunity for clarifying our own personal order.

The challenging events help to calibrate our own personal compass and to test the decisions we've made.

And the tough life events are foundational to confirm what are of highest value and importance in our own lives.

They help us find our true passions and provide meaning to life.

Successfully overcoming challenges is what makes us most alive.

A life shaping event for me happened while sitting on a swing seat - you know, the 10 inch x 20 inch seat found on a child's swing set...

Except this one happened to be suspended from a 3/8" steel cable routed through a pulley atop a 90 foot tall aluminum mono-pole and then finally attached to a large winch truck.

Monopoles...you've seen them...those tall aluminum spires, roughly 8 feet in diameter at the base rising high into the sky supporting cell phone antennas.

But this happened back in the good ol' days, so it was not for cellphone antennas, but for 3 meter microwave antennas (a big metal dish about 10' in diameter) which were state-of-the-art for high-speed communications!

If you look closely, you'll see a series of bolts sticking out of the pole about 4 feet apart, running up the side of the pole...they're for manually climbing the pole if needed.

On this day the plan was simple - sit down on the seat at ground level, hold on while being winched to the top of the mono-pole, then bolt down the new 10 foot diameter monstrosity waiting for me at the top.  All easy to describe in a single sentence.

It.was.HELL

This was my first real experience with tower work and there was no man cage to safely climb into, nor climbing harness, no safety belt, not even a piece of rope to tie myself off with...just that flat 10" wide board to sit on...it was described as simple child's play...so I sat down.

And the winch started to pull... 

Remember those bolts running up the side of the mono-pole?

At 10' high, the seat got too close to the pole.  One of those 6" climbing bolts sticking out from the side of the pole gouged into my right thigh, then caught the edge of the wooden seat.  Hmmm...nobody mentioned to look out for that!

And the winch continued to pull...

The seat, held firm by the bolt started to tilt...and then tilt some more...it all happened so quickly...tilting to the point where I was hanging onto the swing chains with only my hands, my butt slid totally off the seat.

I was holding on tight...and hanging in mid-air! 

OK, sure it was only 10' high, and maybe I wouldn't die if I fell...but still, it felt that way!

I was able to push back away from the pole with my feet and the bolt lost it's hold on the seat.  It righted and I pulled myself back up onto the seat.

And the winch continued to pull...

That 90 foot pole happened to be next to a two story building, although at this point, I was only very keenly focused on staying away from those bolts.

Nothing else mattered in life.  Holding myself away from the pole with my feet - legs extended, with a death grip on the chains supporting the little swing seat upon which my life depended, and the winch continued to pull, higher and higher...

Only 80 more feet of hell to go...

Although it happened over 40 years ago...to this day, I vividly recall what occurred next - as if it had happened just yesterday...

As I came even with the roof top of that two story building - time stopped.

It didn't really stop...but it slowed...so that every heart beat seemed to last a minute long.

They say this type of thing often happens during accidents.  The perception of the passing of time measurably slows, resulting from your brain hyper focused on capturing and assessing your visual images every nanosecond...

My normally small quiet voice in my head was screaming at me.

   "I can't do this.  What am I doing here?

    I can't do this.  I'm going to die!

    I can't do this.  I need to quit! 

    Get me down...now!"  

And in those minute-long seconds, I thought of my little baby boy back home...500 long miles away.

I saw his little face clearly - he was just looking up at me - questioningly...

We were so poor at the time...break-your-heart-dirt-poor...

But that baby still had to eat - he was depending on me - and so was his Momma...

And in that moment in time...I came face to face with one of life's most elemental decisions.

Do I put the needs of the people I love above my own? 

 

That's a pretty existential question to resolve suspended in mid-air, while perched on the edge of a swinging seat headed to the top of a 90 foot pole.

But really, there was no decision to make.

I HAD to go on...for them...

But as it turns out - I really had to go on for me...

I learned more about life in those few nanoseconds suspended 25 feet off the ground than I could ever learn in a 12 year PhD program.

The experience of going through that was necessary for me to clearly understand what life and responsibility truly mean...

I needed to learn the importance and life-long benefit of putting the needs of those I love above my own.

I needed to learn for myself what it means to be responsible...to be a provider...to protect...and to truly love another.

And to establish my own personal life order...to become fully alive.

I don't know how to tell others about learning personal responsibility, or telling someone the importance of loving another more than they love their own self.

But there are lots of great examples of how to fully love another all around if you look for them...

And there is a perfect example of true sacrificial love from over 2000 years ago - - - you just need to look...

Perhaps others may get the chance to realize what life is really about during a few nanoseconds of going through their own hell.  For others, it may be a slow process across 40 years...

But sadly, there are many poor souls who go through life and never learn what life and love are truly all about...

My hope is that you will embrace every opportunity you get to go through your own personal challenges...and to learn all you can from them.

You might even find what true love means...and find a lifetime of happiness from putting the needs of your loved ones above your own...

You'll be the better for it!

Let the adventure continue...