Hospice
2008-12-31 10:43:00
How one keeps from getting hurt on job
Question: In your work as a hospice chaplain, how do you keep from getting hurt?
Answer: I don’t! October Sky is one of my favorite movies. It is the story of a boy who had been told to put his dreams of becoming a rocket scientist behind him because like every other boy in his town he was expected to go to work in the local coal mine. The only way a boy from that town could ever hope to go to college was to go on a football scholarship and that was not going to happen for him. His father regarded his son’s experiments with rockets as a foolish waste of time. In the end, the boy wins an award at a national science fair and also wins the respect of his father and the admiration of all the people in town. He goes on to become a rocket scientist and works for NASA. True story.
Thus the first lesson of the movie – dream big and follow your dreams.
But what is really funny is the circumstance by which I watched this movie. My wife and sons were all away from home for a few days with school music trips. I decided to take off a little early, go home in the basement, get comfortable and watch a movie. But as I sat there, I thought, “Why should I have to be home alone when the rest of my family were having fun in exciting places?” I decided to splurge a little and treat myself to a movie at a real theater. At least I would have other people around me. Being a cheapskate, I went to the matinee showing. I bought my popcorn and my drink and I was the first one in the theater. I had my choice of any of the hundreds of seats. I settled in to watch the previews and the announcements. Still, no one else came into the theater. When the movie started I thought that surely someone else would soon come in. But no one did. Just my luck. That day I did not have to stay home and watch a movie all alone. I could go to a theater and watch a movie all alone.
It was a good thing though – I cried like a baby.
Now I really don’t like to admit I cried. I am a grown man, in my fifties. I have had many experiences with life. Most have been pleasant but some have been disappointing or hurtful. I have witnessed much pain in others as well. So much pain and so many instances of pain in fact that I began to wonder if I had started to become “too tough to cry.” But when I began to empathize with the relationship of the boy and his father, tears began to flow.
And that became for me a second lesson – sometimes pain can feel good. Whenever I invest myself in another’s pain by being with them in their times of greatest need I know that I too run the risk of being hurt. But that kind of pain lets me know that I am not merely breathing and existing – I am alive!
