Celebrating my daughter Erica’s quinceañera – November 3, 2012 (Sandra and Eddie García family photo)
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
The great English playwright wrote this sentence in a long letter to a friend about the allure of money and power versus the meaning of purposeful life work. You would think he was commenting about today’s media fascination with the rich and famous. But he wasn’t. He wrote it in 1905.
When I was a kid listening to the grown-ups talk about work, the word purpose was never part of the discussion. Work was a means to put food on the table and pay the mortgage or rent. Any extra money went towards an occasional backyard barbecue and a few beers on the weekend before going back to the grind of the work week.
My parents wanted me and my five siblings to get a college degree so that we could have an important career and earn enough money to live comfortably. When I finally graduated from college, I set out to do just that. I soon became a run-of-the-mill workaholic trying to bring home a good paycheck and make my family and friends proud.
I had never heard about the concept of working with a purpose until I participated in a year-long Fellows Program called the American Leadership Forum. The concept is simple: figure out what gets you up in the morning, find a way to make a living doing it, and give it all you’ve got. I gave these ideas some thought, but the reality of financial commitments and my thirst for success didn’t allow me to do much more than that.
The high-pressure career, and the prestige and perks that came with it drove me to work hard every day. Striving for personal success kept me busy until I had a health crisis that changed my life. Then, in an instant, it all came to a screeching halt. God sent a clear message. An all-consuming quest for personal achievement isn’t in His plan for me.
On a daily basis, I struggle to reconcile what I thought was the definition of success with what I’m destined to do. I still miss the hustle and bustle of working in executive management, not to mention the financial security. But my journey has led me to a deep understanding of passion and purpose.
I’ve come to realize that helping others along their journey and being with people I care about are my passions. I now work with purpose through sharing stories on East Side Eddie Report.com and mentoring others, and I live with purpose when I’m around those I love.
You can find joy in your life. Discover your passion. Work and live with purpose. You’ll be glad you did it.
The Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz, California (photo from Wikipedia)
Author’s note: The following passage is the first installment of my manuscript of Summer in the Waiting Room: How Faith, Hope, and Love Saved my Life.
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Prologue
There are those who say life is like a roller coaster with its ups and downs, and twists and turns. I’ve loved riding roller coasters as far back as I can remember. My favorite is the Giant Dipper, a whitewashed wooden 1920s era coaster with bright red tracks that dominates the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk on California’s central coast. Santa Cruz is about a 40 minute drive from where I grew up in San Jose, California. As my dad drove into town, I remember getting excited to see the high point of the coaster jutting above the squat motels, restaurant buildings, tourist gift shops, and mom and pop stores that lined the streets.
The Giant Dipper was an exhilarating experience from the moment you stepped into the long line that wound its way into the building that housed the coaster station. While in the safe confines of the fast-moving line, friends and relatives would laugh, joke, and revel in each other’s company, with an occasional pause to watch and hear the frantic riders above squeal and scream as the chaotic train roared by. I always began to feel anxious excitement when entering the coaster station as riders took their seats on the train. Soon, I would be securely seated in the two-person car, and without warning, the train swooshed out of the coaster house and quickly vanished into a tunnel.
Adrenalin shot through my body, and fellow riders hooted and hollered, as the train sped through a dark curvy tunnel to a low point before emerging from the darkness and slowly climbing to the first peak with the classic clicking sound of a roller coaster train laboring upward. Once at the top, the train slowly scaled the peak and screamed down the other side of the tracks in a free fall as it rushed toward the earth. After a scaling a couple smaller hills and valleys, the train rapidly rose into the sky to reach its highest point before it violently curved downward to its left on the way to its deepest drop. A few more ups and downs and a slow straight-way led the train to its final resting place in the safety of the coaster station.
My love for roller coasters came from my dad. When we went to the boardwalk, usually because relatives from out of town were visiting, my dad would strut straight to the Giant Dipper. With his trademark mischievous grin, he would egg everyone on to join him on the ride, especially those who looked nervous or scared. My mom never got on the coaster, no matter how much my dad tried to persuade her. My brother Stevie was also a regular holdout, which was funny because he was our family’s tough guy. Stevie had a big heart, but masked it with a perpetual scowl and a look in his eyes that shouted out, “you wanna fight?” He was tough, uncompromising, and angry.
As his little brother, I was regularly collateral damage when he was mad at the world. When Stevie was a teenager, he wore his hair long in the style of a 1970s anti-establishment rebel. Wearing jeans, a leather vest, steel-toed biker boots, and a buck knife attached to his belt, I’m sure he scared people as he lumbered along his way. Despite his bad-boy persona, he was scared to death of that tortuous and seemingly unpredictable roller coaster that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.
Stevie had a big heart, but masked it with a perpetual scowl and a look in his eyes that shouted out, “you wanna fight?” He was tough, uncompromising, and angry. As his little brother, I was regularly collateral damage when he was mad at the world. When Stevie was a teenager, he wore his hair long in the style of a 1970s anti-establishment rebel. Wearing jeans, a leather vest, steel-toed biker boots, and a buck knife attached to his belt, I’m sure he scared people as he lumbered along his way. Despite his bad-boy persona, he was scared to death of that tortuous and seemingly unpredictable roller coaster that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.
When I was about nine years old, I persuaded Stevie to ride with me. In line, he had the steely eyes of a gunslinger preparing for battle, but once the train disappeared into the tunnel, he began to scream, giggle, and screech like a teenage girl at a boy band concert. I laughed harder during the next few minutes than I had ever laughed. With each dip, twist, and turn, this tough guy with the biker boots became ever more vulnerable to the fierce journey of the roller coaster.
As the train slowly entered the coaster station at the end of the ride, Stevie gathered himself, brushed his long, thick mane away from his face, put that bad look back on, and glowered at passersby as if he was about to kick someone’s ass. I didn’t know what was funnier, his screeching on the ride or the mask he put on as soon as the danger went away. Either way; I sure wasn’t going to ask him.
That was one wild ride.
The first forty-six years of my life followed the path of the Giant Dipper. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood on San Jose’s east side was like waiting in line for the coaster. I loved being in the safe confines of family and friends. From time to time, I would be away from them and hear and see the chaos that sometimes unfolded around me. After high school, I ventured away from the neighborhood to attend San Jose State University with the same excitement and apprehensiveness I felt when entering the coaster station as a kid. I eventually flunked out of college and chose a lifestyle fueled by alcohol, dead-end jobs, and the next party. The ensuing undisciplined meandering through the darkness of life was just like the Giant Dipper’s wild ride through the dark tunnel.
I gradually and methodically pieced my life back together in the same way that the Giant Dipper slowly scaled its first peak. I got married, went back to SJSU, graduated from college, and started a family. Vowing to never fail again, I worked tirelessly, eventually climbing the corporate ladder all the way up to the executive suite and serving in public office. The sudden plunge of the Giant Dipper’s first dip and the following short waves that quickly lead to the coaster’s summit mirrors a crushing election loss and subsequent rapid rise to school board president.
Midway through my forty-sixth year, my wife Sandra and I were approaching our 20th wedding anniversary, our two daughters were healthy and happy, and I had achieved some success in my career and public service. I felt like I was on top of my little world. Like the Giant Dipper’s next move after reaching its climactic high point, my life would soon make an abrupt and furious downward turn and plummet toward its lowest depths, changing my very existence forever. What followed was unimaginable horror intermingled with an incredible spiritual journey powered by faith, hope, and love.
ICU Waiting Room at Kaiser Santa Clara Medical Center
Dear Readers,
For those who believe that they alone hold the keys to their own destiny, God sure has a funny way of teaching life lessons. Due to self-perceived shortcomings, I deemed myself a complete failure by the time I was 22 years old. With an obsession to excel and a naive quest for redemption, I fought my failure demons for more than two decades working endlessly in my elusive pursuit to find success.
Thinking I had almost conquered the demons, I had a massive heart attack on June 7, 2010. Ten days later, cardiac arrest caused my heart to stop, and ten days after that, I had an allergic reaction that led to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), a potentially fatal lung condition that affects just 150,000 people per year according to the ARDS Foundation. To treat ARDS, doctors medically induced me into a coma and put me on full life support.
Emerging from the coma, I had to learn how to move my limbs, stand, walk, talk, and swallow all over again. On September 21, 2010, 106 days after the June 7th heart attack, I went home. During my long and difficult recovery and rehabilitation, I had hours and hours to think about mortality, God, faith, and the meaning of love, family, friends, and redemption.
Doctors told me that surviving three life-threatening episodes in one summer is a miracle and encouraged me to write about the experience. With that in mind, I interviewed family, friends, and the medical team at Kaiser Santa Clara Medical Center. What resulted is a 200-page manuscript I named, Summer in the Waiting Room: How Faith, Family, and Friends Saved My Life.
It’s the unique and inspiring story of a boy who grew up in a working-class neighborhood, failed at college and lost hope, met and married the love of his life, returned to finish college, raised a family, and built a career in corporate America and public service. It’s also the story of a man who vowed never to fail again and toiled tirelessly trying to redeem himself, only to find true redemption while in a state of complete helplessness in the ICU.
To share this story, beginning this Wednesday, East Side Eddie Report.com will add a new feature posting weekly excerpts from Summer in the Waiting Room: How Faith, Family, and Friends Saved my Life. My dream is to someday publish the manuscript as a book, so please let me know what you think. Also, if you like the story, please share the Wednesday posts with your family and friends.
I truly appreciate you taking the time to read East Side Eddie Report.com each Monday. I hope the posts are interesting and look forward to Summer in the Waiting Room bringing you back every Wednesday too. If you have any suggestions or comments, please send them along.
My parents sitting at their kitchen table around 1990
On a rainy Wednesday afternoon last week I attended a funeral for a man named Chuck Gibson, my friend Laurie Mesa’s dad. Like most people, attending funerals isn’t one of my favorite things to do, especially after burying my mom and dad more than a decade ago. Since then, I’ve been to many memorial services to support friends and family, and I’m always inspired by the stories. In just a brief time, those in attendance learn something special about the person being honored.
Chuck’s service was no different. Other than being Laurie’s dad, I didn’t know him. Nevertheless, I joined his friends and family by laughing, choking up, and feeling warm inside while listening to the anecdotes. He was a family man, a good friend, and good neighbor. He was a tinkerer and a handyman who could fix anything no matter how complex. In that one hour, I came to admire Chuck for being a man who was selfless and always available to give a helping hand.
After the service, I went to visit my parents’ grave site at the same cemetery. Standing for just a few minutes in the rain, I said a prayer and reflected at their grave markers, and thought about them on my drive home. Although tales about my parents and people like Chuck won’t be told in history books, their small acts of kindness impacted people in ways they’ll never know. One Thanksgiving, my parents did something that left an indelible mark on my life.
My dad was old-school and taught us, through counsel and by way of example, to work hard, play by the rules, and have respect for ourselves and others. There was no variation from this formula. My mom was the epitome of the warm and loving maternal parent. She taught us unconditional love, faith, compassion, and perseverance. Even during the last days before in her death in 2003, she remained strong in her faith and convictions.
While any indiscretion on our part would be met with my dad’s scowls and rebukes, my mom would react with gentle counsel and loving support urging us to do better the next time. She was our biggest cheerleader encouraging us to be the best we could be. Each morning she would remind us that every day was good because God gave us another day, after each meal she insisted that we say “thank you God,” and she encouraged us to pray the “Our Father” before bedtime.
Although my mom never had much herself, she would share what she had with others to make their lives just a bit better. One evening, right after Thanksgiving, when I was about eight or nine years old, I remember a family calling at our front door. A young couple, with a little girl sitting in a rickety stroller and a baby boy sleeping in his father’s arms, stood at the porch. The man, in a whispered southern accent, explained to my mom that they were hungry and looking for something to eat.
It looked like they had been walking around for some time as the man was unshaven wearing dirty pants and shirt, and the woman looked tired with hollow eyes wearing a dress she may have made herself. My parents invited them into the kitchen and shared the few leftovers from our Thanksgiving meal from the night before, which I’m sure my mom was going to use to make some fried concoction for dinner. The couple gratefully ate at the small kitchen table like they were having a meal in a fancy restaurant.
After they finished eating, my mom packed a few more leftovers in a paper bag and wished them luck. I don’t remember what we had for dinner that night, but I’m sure it was something like chopped up weenies scrambled with eggs and potatoes, our usual type of dinner on the days leading up to payday. How that young family came to our door and why they chose our house I’ll never know. I just know that my parents’ generosity that night was an incredible lesson in compassion and giving to others.
We always seem to wait until funeral time to celebrate the neighbor who helps fix the furnace on a cold winter night or a couple who opens their humble home to those less fortunate. In an age of 24-hour news and instant communication, heroes rise and fall in the blink of an eye rarely making a lasting impression on people. For me, it was good for the soul last week to spend an hour at a memorial service and a few minutes standing over my parents’ graves.
As families come together for Thanksgiving this week, I’m sure the dinner table conversations will include the latest about the NFL’s winners and losers, family gossip, and debates about politics. In those exchanges, we’ll be looking for heroes and villains to explain why things are the way they are. I’m sure that I’ll be a full participant in the banter, but I’ll also be sure to take a moment to be thankful for people like my parents and Chuck Gibson, the enduring heroes in our lives.
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