How Do You Measure A Year
I suppose I’ve had my fair share of blessings in my life. When I was my 5 Santa brought me a putt-putt speedway and when I was about 17 Mr. Hughes still let me take his daughter Shelly to prom, even though I ran over his basketball hoop with dad’s Dodge. At 22, I got to introduce Rosa Parks at my college commencement and interview Jack Nicklaus about why he shanked his chip on hole #11. And in the fall of 1996, about a month after the Yankees won the series and around the time the so-called Soup Nazi from Seinfeld fame gave me an extra piece of bread with my potato bisque, I got to sit in the 5th row to see Rent on Broadway. It was life changing - the show came at a time when some of my colleagues and friends were living with HIV and facing a world that didn’t understand them, nor their disease. I was probably one of them. Some of them like Greg sadly passed on but now, 25 years later, I remember them for the grace and courage they showed. People can live longer with HIV thanks to treatment and early diagnosis and the impact of shows like Jonathan Larson’s Rent. We took the family to Rent last month and it struck me how the show just doesn’t have the same meaning or impact for our kids. They can’t appreciate those times or the disease. Much like they can’t understand why their Black classmates would ever have to sit anywhere on the bus but right next to them. They do have their own cultural crises to deal with now, their own epidemics, and their own music for their own time. But there is one song from Rent that probably does transcend. 525,600 minutes – it opened the second act with the cast of 15 moving in unison to the front of the stage. How do you measure a year, they sang out. How do you measure this year, or how will you measure the next one? For those of us in healthcare it may still be things like COVID shots and vaccines, but also those moments when real humanity shines through, like the nurse who sits bedside, holding a hand and singing a song. Maybe for our kids, it’s measured in lost masks or hours of homework or Instagram friends…or maybe it’s laughter, love, and those Friday night “let’s have pancakes for dinner” with mom and dad and the dog.