Adventure: Aim to Help, Learn to Love

April 13, 2009

I am very excited about today’s Spirit of Adventure story because it is a guest post by my dear friend, Jay Schryer, who has a wonderful blog named Porsidan (Persian for “to question,” in case you wondered). Jay is in search of answers, just like the rest of us. He dreams of helping others and making the world a better place. But he doesn’t just dream it, he does something about it. That makes him an adventurous spirit.

Life and Love 600 Miles From Home

I grew up on a farm close to a small town in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. Our nearest “next-door” neighbor was nearly two miles away, and on clear nights you could see stars forever.

I had been to a number of large cities, but never lived in one. My father was born and raised in Miami, FL, and so we went back there to visit family a few times each year while I was a child. I had also visited Atlanta, GA and Dallas, TX a few times, so it’s not like I had never seen the big city. I knew that I loved the big city, and that’s where I wanted to live. So many things to do, so many places to go, so much entertainment to choose from. Yes, I was a small-town farm boy, but my heart belonged to the city.

In 2004, my life finally settled down after some major upheavals. My marriage had ended, and my daughter had left to go live with her mom. Suddenly, for the first time ever, without having to compromise with anyone, I could go anywhere I wanted to go, and do anything I wanted to do.

More than anything, I wanted to start my own non-profit organization. I envisioned a very different kind of organization… something like secular missionaries. Just a group of people that would go out into the world, and do good stuff for people. Not to preach, but just to help others. People dedicated to doing good around the world.

With the help and encouragement of my girlfriend at the time, I created The Nezhnost Foundation. “Nezhnost” is Russian for “Tenderness”, and that’s what we wanted… an organization dedicated to spreading kindness and tenderness throughout the world. Our main focus was on orphans in third-world countries, but we wanted to be able to help whoever needed it.

As I started approaching people with my idea, I kept running into the same stumbling block: I didn’t have enough non-profit experience, and nobody took me seriously. At that time, all of my non-profit work had been with Habitat For Humanity, where I worked as a volunteer coordinator and public relations officer as part of the Americorps Vista program. Americorps is a lot like the Peace Corps, but Americorps members stay in America and work to eliminate poverty, instead of helping out in other countries.

When it became obvious that The Nezhnost Foundation could never get off the ground until I found some more non-profit experience, I decided to do another year with Americorps. However, since I was now free to live anywhere I wanted to live, I decided to move to Chicago.

This was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my entire life. As my plane circled the city, heralding my arrival, one thought kept popping into my head: “It feels like I’m coming home.”

In two years of living in Chicago, I learned more about life and myself than I had learned in my whole life up to that point. My character was tested on a daily basis. Temptation of every shape and size was readily available, and I learned that I was strong enough to resist it. I had the freedom to remake myself into any kind of person I wanted to be, without the darkness and pain of my past haunting me. I was free of expectations and of reputations, finally free to be myself.

For the first year, I worked with a great organization called Fairygodmother Foundation, which is sadly out of business now. They granted wishes to adults facing terminal illness. We had a lot of parents who wanted to take their kids to Disneyland, and a lot of people who wanted us to organize family reunions with their loved ones scattered across the country. I was their communications officer, and I helped organize their marketing and PR programs. I raised over $96,000 in free advertising space and donations for them, and that made me feel really good about myself.

But the thing that I am most proud of is the fact that I got to grant a wish. Peggy was a 60 year-old developmentally-disabled person who was dying from pancreatic cancer. She had less than 6 months to live, and her dying wish was to attend a Chicago WhiteSox game. She had been a huge fan of the ChiSox her whole life, but she had never attended a game in person.

I made that happen for her.

I called a local limo company, who graciously agreed to pick up Peggy and her date from their home, and give them a ride through the city and to Comiskey par… errr U.S.Cellular field (corporate bastards!). I called the ChiSox organization, and got them to donate four tickets to the game. They went above and beyond, though. Peggy got to have dinner with the wives and families of the ChiSox before the game, and she got special VIP treatment from the team. She got to meet some of her favorite players, and they gave her a lot of souvenirs, including an autographed baseball and jersey, and several of them took photos with her. In the photo above, she was with Ozzie Guillen. It was beautiful, and magical.

A week afterwards, Peggy called to thank me. With an openness and honesty that comes so easily to a lot of developmentally-disabled adults, Peggy told me that she loved me. I told her that I loved her, too, and that I was so happy to have helped grant her wish.

Peggy died soon afterwards. Her personal care attendant called and gave me the news. We cried together over the phone, and I went home early that day and cried some more. I shed a lifetime’s worth of tears for Peggy… someone that I never met in person. Tears of sadness, and tears of happiness. I cried for Peggy, and for her family and friends that she left behind, but I also cried for myself.

Before that moment, I had always been very slow and cautious to say “I love you,” even to my family and close friends. But since then, I say it often and freely. I never say it without meaning it, but if I mean it, then I say it at every opportunity. I tell my family that I love them. I tell my ex-wife that I love her, because even though things didn’t work out between us, she’s still the mother of my child and a good friend to me. I tell my friends that I love them, often way before it is really socially “acceptable” to do so. When I am in a relationship with someone, I tell them that I love them often. And sometimes, I even sign my blog posts with “Love Always, Jay” because I want my readers to know that they are loved, and loved by me. I love freely, and I love deeply. Even when people decide that they no longer love me, I keep right on loving them.

Because, you see, in that moment when I told Peggy that I loved her, it was true. In that moment, I learned to love a (near) total stranger. I learned to open myself to the Divine Love that binds us all together in one family, one race…the human race. I learned that there is only one kind of love. Even if there are many different ways of expressing it, the base emotion is the same. Love is love. Peggy taught me that. In her dying, Peggy taught me how to live.

Love always,

Jay

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Posted in helping others, love, Spirit of Adventure