As We Are Fully Known

A Stadium Full of People are Having Their Very Worst Day Ever - TODAY!

There are roughly 8 billion of us on this planet and each of us live an average of 73 years / 26,645 days. On any given day, about 300,244 people are having their absolute worst day! That’s two full Rungrado - May Day Stadiums.

Rungrado May Day Stadium - Pyongyang, North Korea - Officially seats 150,000 spectators. . .

“On Their Worst Day”

I’ve met lots of men and women because of their worst day ever. Many of them are disabled US veterans who sacrificed so much for what they believed in - including us. Through my work in a couple of refugee camps, I’ve also met numerous Vietnamese and Nicaraguans because of their worst days - as they left their families behind in their war-torn homelands. In an ideal world, the worst part of anyone’s life shouldn’t define them but amazingly good and bad legacies have come out of these life shaping experiences.

One of the most “disabled” veterans I’ve ever worked with or for, was U.S Army Staff Sergeant (Ret.) Travis Mills who described having “had a bad day at work” April 10, 2012. He left various portions of all four extremities in Afghanistan. But I use the term disabled loosely.

He’s probably done more good in his lifetime, since his injury, than most of us will ever do. I met him and his wife in Maine at the headquarters of their non-profit called the Travis Mills Foundation. (Please click on the red link to read his inspiring story.) While there, I helped with adaptive winter sports for many other severely injured vets. There were the usual outward signs of their injuries - like wheelchairs, heavy scars and plastic prostheses, but the injuries don’t stop where the clothing starts.

There are millions of other war veterans across the US and around the world whose scars are not so visible. Most of them also sacrificed for what they thought to be the greater good. Not all of them look like us.

And then there are the countless victims of violence of every type whose worst day never really ends.

Maximum security prisons are filled with people who will pay for bad choices they’ve made - on their worst day. We’ve all had bad days, but some have had particularly bad days that “keep on giving.”

On a more pleasant note - about 300,000 people around the globe are having the best day they will ever have - TODAY! Imagine two huge stadiums full of people in their ultimate happy place.

None of us know what the best or the worst days of another person’s life were like. The better we know the individuals however, the more we can imagine. When we associate with people mainly like ourselves, we never get the perspective that enables us to envision what those days or even the “typical days” would be like for someone outside our circle. Is it helpful to judge anyone we know nothing about?

I Know a Guy - we’ll call him “George”

He’s one of my best friends but he would never think so. Why? Because we’re so different, at least on the surface. In many ways I respect him, but in others, not so much. A deeper dive reveals we’ve lived through a lot of the same chaos together. We’ve both made more than our share of mistakes, like all the people around us. I know we’ve hurt and at times disappointed each other. We’ve both shared really good times as well.

Regardless of how much I think I “get” him, I can’t fathom what his worst day was like as a Marine in Vietnam. I know he’s at heart, a very loving, generous, and creative person. It must have been painful beyond measure for him. But that’s because - I knew him before his worst days, the ones that disproportionately shaped the rest of his life.