To no one in particular, in the midst of a pleasant evening on the deck listening to old tunes a bit too loud in my headphones...
I could tell you the songs and you could listen and we’d hear the same sounds, but I can never really convey, we can never truly share, the way those songs make me feel; the memories they invoke, the joy and occasional melancholy. And such is my amazement and wonder for the art of music, that it can stir such emotion. And no one else will ever experience it quite the same way.

Ever see an odd, unspecific post on social media from a friend? Of course. We all have. Some call it Vaguebooking, right? 

Saw one about two weeks ago. At the time, it occurred to me something might be up. Posted by a friend who isn't all that active on social media. It was an easily identifiable line from a popular novel. I wondered what it was about. I posted a short reply, prompting for more. Briefly had the thought that I should follow up with a direct contact via e-mail or text. But it was late and it went to my mental to-do list. 

I came across it again a few days ago. It was a lazy weekend, so I fired off an e-mail to inquire. It seemed he was saying goodbye, but I assumed it might be a farewell to social media or a job. Not long later I received a text, "Got time for a call?" Slowly I began to reconsider my assumptions.

His post was a farewell. But a far more permanent one that I interpreted. He tried to kill himself that night. Fortunately, the medication he took was not as potent as he thought. He was hospitalized. He spent several days in a psychiatric care facility. He now has a therapist who can prescribe better meds for his clinical depression. It will take time to titrate the proper dose, but he's already doing better. 

These times are a challenge to all of us. Some of us have better support. Some of us aren't burdened with serious mental health issues. Let's keep an eye on each other. I'm glad I reached out to my friend. I wish I'd done it sooner, though I would not have been able to reach him then. As it stands, I may be the only one who responded. But I intend to start checking in with lots of other friends a bit more often these days. 

On a recent business trip, I was having lunch with the customer in a food court near his offices. We talked of our careers, including my days in the Air Force when I was right out of college.

A women near us leaned in and asked if she had heard that I had been in the military. I confirmed and she told me of her husband’s military aviation career and of an aviation museum nearby she suggested I visit.

As we were getting up to leave, I asked her if she knew the answer to the old question, “How do you know if there’s a pilot in the room?” She quickly finished the joke with the reply, “Oh, you don’t have to wonder. They’ll tell you.”

​But then she turned the conversation back on me by asking if I knew how to tell if you’re on a date with a pilot? She answered with “When they say, ‘But enough about me, now let’s talk about airplanes.’”

I love meeting people!

The contact person for the class I was teaching, Joe was a brilliant and engaging guy. He was the product champion for the software I was teaching at the time and arranged for the class I was teaching. He sat in the back and asked insightful and challenging questions. It was clear he was the smartest person in the room, but he never made you feel it. That was never his intent. He asked questions he needed answers to, not to prove anything. 

As a trainer, you get used to filling time waiting for computers with silly things; jokes, observations, and other time-fillers. Many are rhetorical. Most generate no responses. But every now and then he would have a really clever comeback to something. He was always thinking about things around him. He obviously had more brain bandwidth than most of us. 

I don't remember the details, but one of his responses to a trivial aside was really deep and philosophical. I paused to comment that I'd never heard such a profound insight on such a throwaway line and he offered to let us know about the four most important questions of existence:
1. How did stuff arise from nothing?
2. How did life arise from stuff?
3. How did consciousness arise from life?
and…
4. What do women want, anyway?

Now he’s clearly one of the smartest and funniest people I'd ever met. 

We enjoyed each other’s company and he invited me to join him, his wife, and another friend for dinner. We had a wonderful meal and conversation, including meeting the chef, also a good friend of theirs. I was touched and grateful to have been treated as a friend by a customer I'd met only a day before. I made a mental note to send a thank you note when I got home.

Once home, life got hectic with the usual things. About six weeks later, I was cleaning out my briefcase and found Joe’s business card. It reminded me to send the thank you note and I called the office number to ask for his home address. I wanted to send it to his home as a personal note, not a business one. When I asked the receptionist, there was a pause as she informed me that he was no longer there. He had passed away two weeks earlier. 

The week that I was there he was in terminal stages of cancer and said nothing. Yet he shared some of the precious time he had with me. And I learned never to wait when you want to send a thank-you note.