“It’s just the end of the beginning, Sean,” exclaimed my Egyptian friend, Ahmed, during a Skype conversation following a trip from his home in Alexandria.

He was there. “Cairo was a circus.” My good friend had predicted this years ago. This land of people, whose blood traces to the most significant times in civilization, would experience another transformation in their grand journey. A warm people. A land that is home to one of the Seven Wonders and home to great oppression.

Like much of the planet, the gap between those with means and those without is more of a chasm. My friend, a healer, sees the political sea change as an opportunity to affect a better life…design a next era in the rich history of this beautiful place. People stood and voiced and yelled and chanted. With each day there was a renewed energy…momentum. The leaders, including our own, hoped it would just wane and eventually be a rolling headline skipping along the bottom of CNN.

Sure, it was likely to influence the leader’s–and the world’s policy—but much of the world hoped it wold just “go away” and get things back to “stability.”

There’s nothing stable about not being able to feed your family. The grandeur of the Pyramids cannot mask the void of dignity that accompanies joblessness. Thousands, hundreds of thousands said what needed to be said. Peacefully–as peaceful goes. Several hundred lost their lives in the end. One was too many. The price to pay for revolution? History would suggest it.

There comes a point when humans have no choice but to put their very lives on the line to stand up for what they believe. Human rights and civil rights run deepest. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be global values.

During my own lifetime, good men an women gave their lives in speaking out against the beasts who wanted them to separately dine, be schooled, be transported, and have no voice in their own government. They stood. We still have miles and miles to go before we sleep. To our brothers and sisters in this desert place that gathers its life from the Nile … Peace, Prosperity.

To my friend, Ahmed, thanks for making a point to let me know how you were and for being a voice in a revolution for human rights and patient rights.

It was seventeen days ago. I was running along the shoulder of Johnston Road headed for the Greenway.

A single penny, tails up, caught my eye as the sun hit it just right. I stopped and picked it up. I’m not sure about the whole “luck” thing, but I thought to myself, “I could use a little right now, it can’t hurt.” I tucked it in the small pouch of my running shorts and headed off.

The day was good. It got better. The next day rolled around and I went for a long bike ride. At one point I hopped off and walked a bit. There again, just at the turn into my little village, was a beaten and battered penny. I smiled and picked it up and once again dropped it in my pocket. It was a good day. It was a good night. 

The next day I wondered if another penny would be discovered along whatever path I chose. I found myself paying attention. Sure enough, I found two. The day was good. That was fourteen days ago. Since then, I have found a penny on the street every day since.

Yesterday was the first without a copper find. I resisted the temptation to get all superstitious about it. The days have been better.

My pennies were teaching me. Be aware. Create good fortune along with the days serendipity. They are all around. Everywhere. I just decided to pay attention. For me, I want to be aware of the good things around me. Look for them. Anticipate that discovery. Expect good fortune ~ not the stuff of economic wealth, but of the heart and the soul. The “value” of these one-cent wonders was in their symbolic message of what is out there if I look for it. That is some pretty valuable stuff, right there.

Good luck.

A restless earth centers its energy on this tiny country during this few minutes in time.

What was an already poverty-stricken island was virtually leveled. Staggering numbers dead. More missing and injured. Lives forever changed.

Meantime, Pat Robertson links it to a nation that is “cursed.” Rush Limbaugh suggests no support should be given since it was already via our income tax. And Conan O’Brien – this Irish Gumby – uses his own network to wax on about the loss of 1/2 hour and wants sympathy over his 40 million dollar mess.

A single day’s pay for any of these lunatics would probably take care of a significant portion of this country’s pain. It won’t happen. Ego is a powerful thing. Pat wants to scare people to a God who I’m convinced would rather operate from a place of grace. The God I know is probably disgusted with him.

Rush is so lost in his own lunacy that he would probably justify the holocaust if he thought it would make our President look bad. There is nothing American or Godly about these media monsters.

Call me out-of-touch; call me crazy, but I have this fantasy: something terrible happens… people die … a world is collapsing… and those behind the mic come together and leverage their position power to rally humanity. Then I wake up. Someone snuck in my room and put CBN and Rush on my pre-selects.

I change stations. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds … what’s the difference?

It was a grand conference in a grand hotel in a grand city. I was there to learn; to engage in a national debate over the future of healthcare. Thousands of attendees milling like cattle with their badges placed in colorful lanyards and hanging neatly around their neck. Celebrity speakers motivated and challenging, pitched their latest books. Breakout sessions ~ with all manner of topics ~ adult forms of show-and-tell. One went so far as to speak for thirty-five minutes about all of their industry accolades and devoted less than fifteen to what they were doing to affect patient care.

I politely walked out prior to the wrap-up in silent protest.

We began early and ended late. The wisdom-thirsty few (me among them) listened for insight, solutions, nuggets of innovation and possibility. There was precious little of any of it. More questions that answers. Perhaps that is where we begin though, with dialogue. I felt lost in a sea of self interest in an industry so desperately seeking selflessness. There was more discussion of margin that mission; more debate over partisan agenda that patients; more selling of goods than challenge of what might actually create value for the sick, diseased, and struggling. Expensive suits, expensive rooms, and expensive meals and nights on the town seemed to have more attraction than the agenda so much in need of attention.

All the while I thought of my daughter. During these same days she is volunteering at a hospital in the mountains of Nepal. A hospital devoted primarily to leprosy patients. A condition, highly treatable and even curable, but not so among those living in ignorance and poverty. She spends her days providing wound care to an outcast segment of society. Those with little to no means. She spends her hours assisting a staff of physicians and nurses with precious few resources to treat the condition of their calling. They are grateful for the most basic and crude of medicine, supplies, skills, and those with a sense of humanity in a place people go to die or, at best, survive. I thought how the price of one attendee at this mega conference would likely fund the hospital’s operations for a month, maybe more.

I thought of how providers and insurers and operators and the legislators fight and jockey for political position and debate and joust just to create paper trails of speeches and the illusion of a campaign promise honored or a protection of an element of “liberty.” It made me sick (pun intended).

We have much to do in this country to make healthcare something that is offered with equity and dignity and good evidence and compassion. We have miles and miles to go in offering healthcare that is WITHOUT judgement, disparity, extraordinary waste, and harm. We can do this, but it will come at a cost. The cost of ridding ourselves of the idea that healthcare is a source of profit without dividends paid out to society. Our technological, pharmaceutical, informational, and human innovations may not be producing a healthier planet. Granted, we know more and can treat more than ever before in history; but are we healthier?

Today, in a southern California city, executives and providers alike are leaving sessions early to attend group galas and local shows. Today, in Nepal and in the urban and rural and even suburban pockets of this great country patients are arriving with hopes for care that is offered without motive other than to return quality of life for the patient.

I expressed my internal struggle to a new colleague during a Vendor Sponsored Continental Breakfast prior to listening to the keynote session from a speaker known to draw $20K for a speech. His response: “You must be a socialist.”

The response in my head was a mash up of Jesus and what I imagine Jon Stewart of the Daily Show might offer: “Forgive him, for he knows not what an ignorant moron he really is.” Yes, I get angry at this. I watch the debate in congress ~ a form of self torture ~ and wonder if there might be a drug or protocol for the symptoms I experience: nausea, dizziness, brain cell dilution, spontaneous laughter coupled spontaneous crying, and the strange feeling that I am actually living as Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day.

I am here to create change. There are days when I wonder if my DNA was even present. There are days when I feel I facilitated a proverbial dent in the rusted steel of a system that is failing, but has such possibility. This week, I found purpose again. Not because I was inspired, but because I was disgusted at what I saw among my peers. My revolutionary self is riding a treacherous and beautiful path. I am surrounded by a posse of gifted, equally committed and passionate humans who show up every day to make a difference.

God and Jon Stewart help me.

There is a tribe in South Africa with a grasp on something that we in this country, and much of the world for that matter, have lost sight of: looking for what’s right. I discovered them through Christina Baldwin’s Storyteller. “I have read the story of the Babemba tribe in which a person doing something wrong, something that destroys this delicate social net, brings all work in the village to a halt. The people gather around the ‘offender,’ and one by one they begin to recite everything he has done RIGHT in his life: every good deed, thoughtful behavior, act of social responsibility. These things have to be true about the person, and spoken honestly, but the time-honored consequence of misbehavior is to appreciate that person back into the better part of himself.” To “appreciate a that person back into the BETTER PART of himself.” What a delightful departure from most of humankind’s response to someone doing something wrong. My days as a healthcare junkie are filled with responses to the life-changing actions of a system whose mission it is to bring people to a healthier part of themselves. When we fail, when we let them down, there is often a quest for who to blame. No question that accountability in medicine, and in life for that matter, is necessary. What is so curious to me is how quickly the default position goes to fault and blame. Does it somehow ease the pain. I don’t think it really does. To this day I don’t understand how a dollar really serves to reduce “pain and suffering.” It is a legal myth. It is our world though. It is a symptom of a society whose focus is more on managing risk than living life. What if people blow it? What would happen if instead of calling them into the proverbial principal’s office, we called them in to bring up all they have done right? Would people be less paranoid about trying to do the right thing? What if we looked at the whole person and what they bring to the planet and our work and not just what they missed? I wonder if our perspective on the world would change. What if we assumed – just for the Hell of it – for a moment that greed wasn’t at the center of corporate America; or personal America, for that matter? I think there are a bunch of us out there who believe that understanding and giving people the benefit of the doubt are good alternatives. This world is tough. For those of us in this country, this experiment of Democracy, we have a chance to believe and even live a dream. Right now the dream has too many elements of a nightmare. This isn’t created by a party or a man. Let’s dream from a place of what is right. Let’s find out how to bring people back into a better part of themselves.

I’ve been to the forest after the burn.

The seemingly lifeless earth thrives. Below its scarred surface is a renewal in the making. Nature’s perfection seeding new life. Open to the sun and the rains and the life-giving elements of a next generation. If it’s “just nature” then why do we struggle so to understand that we humans also go through a purging, a burning, and a renewal of our own – as hard as it may be?

The wildfires burn and change direction. One day we find ourselves in their path, with no apparent escape. We burn. We fall. We recover. We renew.

Looking forward to new life. Saddened by the scarred earth left behind. It gets better though. It will.

I see those signs of life in the colorful words and time and space shared with people I love and who love so deeply.

“God, I hope they don’t play another James Taylor song,” she said.

I was sitting outside at the Village Bistro (my dining room, basically) enjoying a spinach salad, a glass of fruity Pinot Grigio, and the sounds of the acoustic trio on the patio when I overheard these words from my table neighbor. I was disappointed since I dig his music so much. It was a nice piece mixed between a Nickleback tune and a Dave Matthews classic.

Her date said, “You don’t like James Taylor?” I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I could help but lean a little to catch her response. “I used to” she said, “but ever since I found out he supports Obama I decided I don’t anymore.” At first I just shook my head, in my head. Then I thought about it…then I started shifting in my seat…then my breathing got a little deeper…and the voice in my head said, “DON’T YOU DO IT.” I couldn’t help myself. There are times when my tolerance and appreciation can only go so far, for crying out loud. James Taylor is at stake here!!!

Yes, sarcasm can slither its way into my conversations now and then, and with the wine and the tough day and need to express, I went for the jugular.

I called my waiter over and asked if he would make arrangements for me to pay their bill. He smiled and said, “Sean, what’s up with that?” I just asked him to go with me and bring me their bill when it was time to wrap it up. He obliged.

Ten minutes or so later they were ready to leave. They sat only 3 or 4 feet from me. Jason pointed to me from their table and said, “The gentleman here would like to pay your tab.” I raised my glass. “Huh?” the woman said. Jason repeated the offer.

Her date politely invited me to join them. They denied the offer for me to pay the tab, but did suggest we share a drink. The woman asked why I made the offer. I said, “Well its not as nice a gesture as it is a charity case.” They both looked confused; understandably. I continued. “You see, I overheard you talking about how you really didn’t like James Taylor music anymore because he supported President Obama. Frankly, I was so shocked to hear of that level of ignorance (pardon my candor) and just felt like I should contribute because I kind of feel sorry for you.”

Her man immediately burst into laughter. No chivalry here, he was cracking up.  She curled in her bottom lip in preparation for what was sure to be a verbal left hook. One I deserved. Instead, she began to laugh too. She lowered her head and raised it back up along with her Corona with lime and said, “Touché.”

We sat and talked about our President (although she says he isn’t “hers”) and about the general state of things. I expressed my views and my support of him – although I disagree with much of his policy right now – and, more importantly how James Taylor’s music has stood and will stand like a rock through presidencies past and those yet to come. On that, we found common ground. We laughed more than we argued. We found we had more in common than difference. We moved on to more delightful topics like our kids and the new wine list. We became friends.

I excused myself and walked up to the band with a request. “Will you guys play Shower the People?” The vocalist said, “Here is another from Carolina’s own, JT. This goes out to the fine couple right over there.” I raised my glass. When it was time for the chorus, the whole place sang together. My new friend, while wildly off key, was the loudest in the bunch. 

Cheers.

I listened to an interview on NPR recently where the guest looked back on his life and contently said, “I have no regrets in my life.” His comment stayed with me.

I can’t imagine a life without regret. Despite how beautiful it might be, are there things I wish I hadn’t said or done? Rhetorical to the extreme.

I regret not spending a million more moments with my precious kids.

I regret the times my selfishness and flesh hurt those I loved. I regret not getting to know Dad. I regret not having the self-confidence to follow my passion versus a logical career track (although I am thrilled with the current state).

I regret that the depth of so many friendships was left wanting. I regret unkind words leveled at those I love regardless of reason for argument.

I regret spending more time building than experiencing.

I regret that I didn’t attend the funerals of some who made a difference in my life. I regret not writing the songs I wanted to write (though I am making up time now).

I regret I didn’t take that lay-up my junior year against Port Saint Joe.

I regret that I didn’t read more fairy tales to Logan and Chelsea. I regret that I didn’t take the leap into politics, just to see if I could have made the difference others told me I could. I regret I didn’t live in the mountains.

I regret so little, all things considered, but they haunt me. My glass-half-full side is saying, “What are you waiting for?” I am only fifty-percent through my years (based on my scientific calculations and determination). Stop regretting, dude. Get with it and learn!