Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good

mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would

ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better,

I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had

followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the

waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural

motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there

telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the

situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to

Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person

all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied,

“Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two

choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can

choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each

time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can

choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time

someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their

complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the

positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut

away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you

react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You

choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your

choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the

restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I

often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of

reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never

supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open

one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While

trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped

off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry

was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was

released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his

body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how

he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my

scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through

his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through

my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied.

“Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I

could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry

continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was

going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room

and

I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got

really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man. ” I knew I

needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said

Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The

doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply..

I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I

told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive,

not dead.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of

his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the

choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

Related Articles:

• Henri Nouwen – more wisdom
• LIVING A WHOLE LIFE (Richard Rohr)
• Faith and feelings
• Beautiful video with a comforting message…
• Wisdom from Henri Nouwen

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.