Sometimes you get news that knocks you a bit off balance and you can’t seem to get it off your mind. This past Tuesday… I heard that a guy I worked with on a project years ago passed away from Colon Cancer at the age of 42. He left behind his wife and 2 children under the age of 3. Under the age of 3…. heart breaking. He was active… healthy… full of life. I will never forget that while everyone else on the set was stuffing their face with snacks… cookies and chips at the craft service table… there he was eating sardines out of a can. I actually have thought about him many times since I have been here at T.I… every night when I tear open my bag of sardines and mackerel (I know… I know) for dinner… the image of him sitting on his lawn chair… chowing down his sardines… me thinking he is crazy at the time… always brings a smile to my face.
The immediate reaction when I heard the news was absolute shock. Quickly followed by the all too written about concept of appreciating every single moment of life that we have on this planet because we don’t know when there will no longer be a tomorrow. This notion has been hammered home so many times over the past 2 years for me… living in the moment… actually living… and not taking one piece of it for granted. But then I started to think about another concept as it relates to how many of us live our lives out there… and that is the pursuit of climbing the professional “success ladder”. We spend so much time thinking about… talking about and working toward that next big job… that next paycheck… that next big break and we are so singularly focused on making these aspirations come true that we convince ourselves it is okay to sacrifice that family time or our mental health in the moment because we “need” to make it happen on the work front. But is that actually true… is all the time… all the mental and emotional effort worth it??
After we worked together… he went on to work on 2 very successful TV shows and from the outside looking in… he made it. He worked his ass off… traveling around the world… most of the time away from his family to get to a professional place where his face was on the billboards… he was on the commercials… he was working on the lots and the sets… he did it. But what does it mean now that he is gone? Are we going to remember him for those roles that he had on those TV shows… for the red carpet moments… for the Hollywood parties? Was the grind of “making it” worth the sacrifice of missing moments with your loved ones when there are now no more days to be with them? I can’t imagine that anything is worth that… I have to imagine that in his last moments… his thoughts solely revolved around his wife… his children… his family… and absolutely nothing to do with his job. Yet… when we are healthy and “thriving” through our every day life… for some reason we focus so much energy on our professional endeavors and leave the important things in life for “once we are done with work”. Seems backward to me now that I have been forced to take a whole different vantage point on life. And I am not saying that focusing energy on achieving our professional goals is a pointless endeavor… I feel like we get great fulfillment out of achieving “success” in whatever way that looks in our professions but sacrificing so much time and energy in order for us to achieve these material goals is what I feel like we need to re-examine. At the end of the day… all the pats on the back… all the fame…. all the money… it means nothing if we weren’t able to enjoy it with the people in our lives that mean the most to us because we were spending all of our time chasing “it”.
I hope he found some peace in his final moments… and I hope his children… his wife and his family continue to find peace as time passes. It is undeniably sad and he is gone way too soon. His passing has certainly made me stop and appreciate life this week and I hope I never forget to continually examine where my priorities lie as I navigate this journey on the inside and even more so once I am back in the real world. Until then… I will enjoy my sardines a little bit more as I eat them for the both of us.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Cherish every moment… we just never know.