The other day an old friend who I haven't spoken with in years reached out through LinkedIn. To be honest, I could give a fuck about LinkedIn, as it always seemed like a fake place to list bullshit accolades. As we have it, my friend was asking for just that. He wanted me to check off things that I thought he was good at, so that prospective companies could approve of said checked boxes and hire him. Keep in mind...this friend (Todd) is one of the most genius, hysterical, creative, beautiful humans I have ever met. He's basically a handsome Texan comedian, meets, the most interesting man in the world. This is our exchange below. He's Todd (in bold italics.) I'm David (duh)
Todd sent the following message 7:58am
Hey bubs, I'm starting to look for a real big-boy job and need some help on my profile. Do you mind taking a few minutes and clicking on shit you think I'm good at? Any critique on my profile would help as well. Thanks!
7:58 AM
David Miller sent the following message at 12:10 PM
Ummmm Todd...is this you? As in Todd, the guy that I met a decade+ ago in TV production working for Brave Street? As in Todd, the guy who I cat sit for, who's cats tore my fucking arms apart while I jerked off to Telemundo on his couch? As in Todd the man who traveled through Central/South America and woke up out of a cold stone black out, getting a tattoo of a heart over his heart? "That way we will always be in your heart." As in Todd, the guy who worked on a cruise liner doing comedy, making fats from Ohio laugh their (literal) tits off? As in Todd, the guy who used to produce/cut Reno 911 interstitials, and make me laugh (my literal tits off?) As in Todd, who's wife Hanna was working at the Whoopi Goldberg show and after a bit of small chatter was told to have their wedding at Whoopi Goldberg's private estate? And then they did and had a rad fucking wedding that was a "backyard meets hoe-down" type ceremony filled with love, family and bobbing for apples? As in Todd, the guy who took a boat trip with a stranger down an unknown body of River with a few other new found students friends from an Ivy League University (I think Harvard or Stamford), and ended up spending 3 weeks with a native tribe who hadn't seen white people for decades, because their stranger boat ride guy disappeared the morning after they got there, and Todd was taken under the wing of the chief and became a "hunter"...and one morning as the sun was rising, brought quietly to what looked like the most amazing color filled bark tree you had every seen, until the chief clapped his hands and 1000's of tropical birds dispersed into the warm milky sky, while one of the other gentlemen you were with started writing down their language into a homemade dictionary (which has since been placed in a museum and is the largest known dictionary of that particular tribe), while the girl you were with kind of freaked out about being abandoned, and then the last guy you were with fixed an old radio that hadn't worked for years but was able to get it going and call for help and get picked up by a plane? That Todd? That's the same Todd who's now sending out copy/paste messages through bullshit Linkedln that everyone knows is fucking fake anyhow. Listen Todd, I'll click on your silly little Linkedln accomplishments just to keep up the face...but my friend, you are way more accomplished than any little box I could ever check. You want a real endorsement, call me for a catch up and then have your potential future employer call me. I hope you and your beautiful wife and child are well. With love from sunny, mountainy, mindful Colorado XX Miller 917 750 2178
Todd sent the following message at 12:56 PM
goddamn do i love you. i'll call soon. getting divorced. in huge depression. trying to get back up. needed to hear that.
David Miller sent the following message at 1:39 PM
"The wound is the place where the light enters you" - Rumi Call anytime my friend, I am here.
He did in fact call and we did catch up. On everything. Life, love, work...but mostly his current situation. He wasn't joking. He is getting a divorce, and now has to navigate this new found loss. Life as Todd knows it has forever changed. And although he's written scripts for the last 20 years of his professional career, this was never part of the real life script of his life. So what's next? Pain, sadness, boundaries, acceptance, reframing, growth, rebirth. A few years ago I went to go see Pema Chodron speak at Naropa's 2015 graduating class. She opened with this. "Fail, fail harder, fail again." The motivation and message behind the next 40 minutes of her speech could have been custom delivered just for Todd. She went on to describe her own life "failures." The shame and embarrassment that came from her divorce. The pains that she suffered from her "loss." But with those failures and losses, something tremendous was born. She survived them. And not only did she survive them...she surpassed and has thrived in light of them. Those experiences allowed her to become one of the most prolific and influential teachers of Buddism in modern day. If we can take pause in the moments where we are most afraid, then acknowledge and name those fears..we can start to heal from them.
"Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know." - Pema