He carried his box out of the office. Inside were a few files, a picture of his wife, a rolodex and the remnants of his career. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. There was no retirement party. No gold watch. No happy ending.
The Great Recession had claimed another victim. He looked at the people sitting in the office as he passed. The day before he had joked that the Rapture must have happened and that he was left behind. It hadn’t. And he wasn’t.
People who were once his friends turned their eyes as he walked past. The perp walk they called it. Dead man walking is what they thought.
He had been thrown off the boat in the middle of the storm and he was being left to drown. The blow to his esteem was like a lead weight around his ankles. He was sinking. Fast. The guard escorted him toward the door. “Corporate policy” the guard growled. So was no severance. He looked toward HR. He knew that the person who made the decision to cut his position would probably get a bonus with the money they saved from his position. The world had gone totally mad.
A once promising career had become a statistic.
He carried his box to his car, put the key in the ignition and cranked the stereo. The engine idled as he looked at the picture of his wife. How would he tell her? How disappointed would she be? The world seemed gray and devoid of color. People that he thought believed in him didn’t. That was crushing. Would his wife join the chorus of doubters? He tossed the picture in box, closed his eyes and started to pray.
Faith. Belief. Hope. Words that had been laid off by greed.
A knock on his window jarred his eyes back open. He saw an elderly man in old clothes at his window. “WHAT?” he barked. The man smiled and made a motion to roll down his window.
He did for some reason, although years of working at downtown had made him cold to the plight of the homeless near his office.
“No thanks to whatever it is that you want,” the now-unemployed man said to man who looked like the poster child for unemployment.
“It will get better son.”
“No offense sir, but what do you know about better? I’m without work and I feel like I should buy you a meal.”
The old man smiled. Wrinkles filled his face. “Trust me.” and the old man handed the man a piece of paper. “Read this when you get a chance. Until then remember, they can take your job but not your dreams.”
The man looked at the old man with a puzzled look and said, “Who are you?” The old man smiled and said, “Who you asked for.”
He sat in his car and watched the old man walk back over to the park. “Weird old man,” he thought as he watched the old geezer begin to feed the pigeons that had flocked around him.
He reached down and picked up the paper, unfolded it and began to read. He was curious now and thought,”Who you asked for? I didn’t ask for that old guy.”
The elegant writing read, “You aren’t defined by what happens to you. You are by how you react to it.”
That’s all the paper said. But the scripted words planted a mustard seed in his heart. He thought of Victor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor who had observed some people withered and died while others survived Hell on Earth. He thought of Nick Vujicic, who had no arms and legs, yet lived an incredible life inspiring people. The mustard seed began to grow into a mightly plant. He began to write down all his strengths. And thought about the job he had just lost. It wasn’t the end of his world. Just the end of a chapter of his life.
He filled that paper with his strengths. The first was his wife. She’d believe in him, he knew. He filled a second piece and then a third. Tears flowed down his face. A dam holding back his creativity broke that day. A single pink slip launched a new career. He grabbed his rolodex out of his box. Contacts. Keystones for the next chapter. He filled another sheet of paper. Four hours later, he filled his 20th sheet of paper. He looked for the old man. He was gone.
Those 20 sheets of paper are now enshrined in a glass case in the lobby of the corporate headquarters of the company the once-unemployed man started. Employees walked past the sheets knowing that thanks to one man losing his job, they now had one themselves. And a strange old man comes by on the anniversary of that fateful day and writes with elegant handwriting in the company’s guest book, “You aren’t defined by what happens to you. You are by how you react to it.”
