The Edu-Geek on Life: It's Not What Happens to You, It's What You Do About It

Brian the Education Geek writes an occasional blog with observations about life, geek stuff, politics, and just whatever strikes his fancy...

The Edu-Geek on Life: It's Not What Happens To You, It's What You Do About It

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Back in the early 90's, about the time I graduated from college, I remember it was all the rage to get up in front of an audience and talk about some new idea about life or this or that--and to get the whole thing on video. Then take that video and sell it to some local TV station, private or public, as a "motivational" or "self-help" seminar. That's how that Deepak Chopra guy got popular as I recall; some of the other ones I remember were How to Raise a Child with Love and Logic, Rich Dad/Poor Dad, and Anthony Robbins. Maybe these shows were based on books that the lecturer had written in the past, I don't know; I just remember it being a thing.

I'd watch these shows from time to time when I was bored, and since I went through periods of unemployment lasting 6 months or more at a time back then, boredom was fairly routine. But only one of those shows really stuck with me, and has stayed in my mind right up until today--enough to be bloggable even.

It was a guy by the name of W. Mitchell. I had no recollection of his name--I just now had to look it up--and as far as I know, he never gained the popularity of the people/seminars I mentioned above. What I do remember, like it was yesterday, was his story.

I turned the TV to channel 12 one Saturday morning, and here was this guy in a wheelchair, burned to a crisp. That's not an exaggeration at all; every inch of him had these horrible-looking burns, and he'd obviously had to have his face reconstructed. He'd been in a motorcycle accident with a truck, and he barely lived through it--yet he went on to form a successful company, Vermont Castings. THEN, years later, the engine quit on his private plane during takeoff, and the resulting crash left him paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

It took a few minutes of watching the show for me to really wrap my mind around this. Think of it. You or I could go and lay down on I-25...TWICE...and still come out better than this guy did. So here he is, his life completely torn apart, with every reason in the world to give up hope. Yet what he keeps saying over and over, throughout the show, is this:

It's not what happens to you in life. It's what you do about it.

That was a concept that hadn't occurred to me up to that point, and to hear it for the first time--from about the last person I'd ever have expected to say it--really moved me. Because I wasn't watching it on a news report or reading about it in the Drama in Real Life section of Reader's Digest; I was seeing it right there before me. And I vowed at that moment to always remember this guy's experience, like a TSR (terminate-stay-resident) program on a computer, and to put whatever happens to me in this context.

Now I'm certainly no W. Mitchell, and I can't help but feel a small yet nagging sense of hypocrisy for taking on such a philosophy for myself. Why? Because honestly, not that much has happened to me. Not compared to W. Mitchell, and not compared to a great many of my friends and acquaintances. I've sustained no injuries or operations, I've only really lost one or two people who were close to me, I've not been laid off from my job in years, never been arrested... really its been a pretty quiet life overall. (Knock on Formica...)

But for me to feel completely hypocritical about my fascination with this philosophy would be to completely miss the point of what W. Mitchell was trying to say. Which is that it doesn't matter what's happened to you over the years and it doesn't matter whether or not you had any control over these events, what matters is what they have brought out in you. What, if anything, you've made the result of these events be.

Here's an example: subsequent to that Saturday morning, I found that I didn't complain about things NEARLY as much as I had previously. This was more a subconscious choice than it was a conscious one, and I wasn't really present to how much the experience of watching this show had curbed my complaining until I actually met complainers. REAL complainers. The kind that you just want to roundhouse-kick with everything you have, if only to give them something freakin' REAL to complain about! I hear these people complain, but what I see in my mind is W. Mitchell.

W. Mitchell certainly had other inspiring, moving, downright awesome philosophies to share that day as well. One I remember in particular was, "The people we meet in life are gifts. Fate's gifts to us. How many gifts do we throw away throughout our lives--just because we don't like the wrapping?" He was saying, of course, that the people you meet count as things that happen to you, and that you have a choice--judge them or appreciate them. With the friends and family that I have, you certainly don't have to tell ME twice to do the latter! Yet I might never have become present to just how lucky I am to have them, if I'd not heard this W. Mitchell character put it into words all those years ago.

W. Mitchell has written a book, "It's Not What Happens To You, It's What You Do About It." I may pick it up at some point, now that I read books online (what few I read) and I don't have to lug them around. But for me, the benefit of having watched this self-help show that day has already been realized, no matter what.

For you though, I'm thinking that this book would be an AWFULLY good read, if you're so inclined. I promise, you will be moved...and you might even be moved enough to use it as the subject of your first-ever Internet blog!


--Brian
1-17-2011