For Mark Parbus, the strongest value lessons in life were learned during hard times and remembered forever.
Like most of us, I have had a lot of people in my life who have helped me develop values to live by, but not until I was in situations that forced those values into action did I realize how much they were a part of me.
We can believe in many things. We can talk valiantly to everyone we meet but not until we put our beliefs into action are they truly part of us.
This is something I came to realize when I was in a “fight or flight” mode, was stripped of everything and forced to start all over again and when I suffered the consequences of not acting according to what I had been taught and believed in.
It was when I emerged out of those situations and reflected on how I handled them that I realized the beliefs that got me through. The positions I stuck to when all else and everyone else said that I was wrong or crazy.
The outcomes to these situations brought to mind very quickly whether I stuck to my beliefs or I had given in to distraction.
1984 was one of those years that caused me to realize the belief system that I had and what I needed to change to be true to myself. 1984 was when I lost my best friend to brain cancer at the age of 24 and was diagnosed with cancer myself.
Nothing tests you like being given a 50/50 chance of living. I was 25 and had a six-month old daughter when I was initially diagnosed with pneumonia. When they took x-rays, they found a tumor the size of a football between my lungs.
Denial, anger, depression and the need to fight as hard as I could, were the stages that I went through. The desire to see my daughter grow up and the belief that it was not yet my time, forced me to deepen my resolve, faith and will.
All the lessons that I had learned up to that point in my life and how much I had stuck to them was obvious as I laid in a hospital bed on Christmas Eve, looking forward to going home after being told that the tumor looked like it had been set on fire when they went in to clean up the residue of the chemotherapy.
I remember the details of that night like it happened yesterday.
As I lay in the hospital bed thinking how lucky I was to be alive, I saw a priest walking over to me. As much as I wanted him to come over to me, I hesitated because I am Jewish. I pretended to be asleep, hoping that he would move on, while imagining how it would feel to be home and cancer-free.
I closed my eyes and experienced a feeling of peace and joy as the pain from the staples that were put in my chest during surgery throbbed in the background.
I felt someone watching me and opened my eyes to see the priest standing by the foot of my bed. He was an older Irish priest who came right out of the movies. His balding head was sparsely covered with grey hair, his skin was ruddy and he wore a pair of wire rimmed glasses that covered his soulful blue eyes. I remember him as if it were yesterday.
The priest noticed that I was awake and asked me how I was doing. I looked in his eyes and said “I am doing great! I am going home tomorrow! I am cancer free!”
His face lit up with a broad smile and he asked me if I would like a prayer for healing. “I would love it but I am not Christian,” I said as I looked away.
“I don’t think that the man upstairs cares what religion you are and neither do I. Would you like to pray for healing?” And so we prayed.
I learned that night that the most important things in life was being alive, good health and God. That night had such an impact on me that 16 years later, I converted to Catholicism.
Value Lessons:
- See elegant simplicity in everything around you.
- Find happiness by being connected to nature, other people and our creator.
- Follow the path to happiness by living life in the present moment.
- See the good in everyone and treat them with love and kindness.
- Try to give more than you receive.
- Accept help from the people who love you.
Even though these lessons stayed with me for a number of years, I started to take my health for granted and got sucked back into the world of distractions. A world where we compete with everyone else for limited resources, success and notoriety.
I guess the severity of the lesson is equal to the kick in the ass that I needed because at the age of 50, I found myself broke, homeless, alone and with legal problems. Like the time I had cancer, I was stripped of everything that I thought was important and was left to fight for the necessities of life.
The journey to a new low started in 2005 at the age of 45 when I got laid off after a 23-year career. I had spent my whole life saying that I was not my job, but when I found myself unemployed, I quickly found out that I had defined myself by what I did a lot more than I admitted.
Filled with a sense of desperation, bewilderment, anger and depression, I fought to get back to where I was professionally. The mistake I made was not living a more economical life while I did this.
With half the income, I was trying to maintain a lifestyle that I could no longer afford. The last thing I wanted was for my friends to see me sell stuff. God forbid, I MIGHT look like I might be in trouble.
During this time, I forgot all the lessons that I learned from cancer. When I lost these, I lost myself and my path.
After 5 years of trying to maintain the glass house, the house developed cracks and collapsed—leaving me with a million pieces to clean up.
Within 24 hours, I was living in my car, had all my assets frozen, and faced criminal charges, bankruptcy, divorce and estrangement from my children.
Value Lessons:
- Do not define yourself or others by how much they earn or by their appearance.
- Find happiness in simplicity.
- Do not control those things that you cannot control.
- Do not make judgments on others because you can end up in their shoes in 24 hours.
- Find peace inside first.
- Share peace with others through good actions and thoughts.
- Find peace in the mind and not in your surroundings.
- Do not allow yourself to be defined by money, profession or lifestyle.
- Do not live in fear. It detracts from the good that you can do for others.
- Take care and love who you are because all material things will go away at some time in your life.
- The most important things in life are shelter, food, health, love and faith.
- Take care of the friends who stick with you through thick and thin.
My life is now completely different from when I went through these situations. Even though I have simplified to the point where my life is more aligned to my beliefs, I still find myself fighting some old ways of thinking.
The times that I am filled with worry and anxiety are when I start to live in the world of distraction. When I start to judge my success and worth by my financial and professional standing.
The difference between now and then is my ability to recognize those moments and my eagerness to not make the same mistakes I made in the past.
Every day, I ask myself “am I putting my values and beliefs into action?”
What is your answer when you ask yourself this same question?
— Photo jumpinjimmyjava/Flickr
The post Living a Value Driven Life in a World of Distraction appeared first on The Good Men Project.