I was teaching a storytelling workshop last month when a woman approached me and asked if I remembered her.
I did not and immediately felt bad.
She told me not to worry. It was a long time ago, and our meeting was brief. But it turned out to be more impactful than I could have ever known.
She explained that more than 15 years ago, she had hired me to DJ her wedding, but with a couple of months to go before the big day, the wedding was cancelled, so she needed to pay me a cancellation fee.
We met outside of a local restaurant, where she handed me the check.
Venmo and PayPal had yet to be born.
I asked why the wedding was cancelled. As a DJ, I know there are many reasons to cancel a wedding, and most come down to a postponement—someone has fallen ill or passed away—or a bride or groom (almost always a bride) deciding to call off the marriage.
In this case, the woman had called off the wedding. But as she answered my probably stupid question, she became emotional, so I invited her to join me at the restaurant for a drink.
She agreed.
As she drank coffee and I drank Diet Coke, I told her that Elysha had also called off a wedding about three months before her big day. She and I were only friends at the time (though I had a crush on her from the moment we met), and it would be more than a year after she called off the wedding before we would begin dating, but just over two years after she called off that wedding, she and I were engaged to be married.
At the time of my conversation with this woman, we had been married about five years. Clara was two years old, and Elysha was pregnant with Charlie.
All was well.
Happiness filled our days.
Calling off her wedding was a distant memory.
I told the woman that she, too, would be happy one day, and probably sooner than she thought. I told her that in a year or less, she’d be looking back on her decision to cancel the wedding with enormous gratitude, and that happiness was likely just around the corner.
At that moment, she pointed across to the room to a man who was her husband of more than 12 years.
Happily married with kids.
Like Elysha, calling off her wedding was a distant memory.
She told me:
I never forgot what you told me that day in the restaurant. It was just what I needed to hear at that time. I needed someone to tell me that how I was feeling was temporary and that she would be happy again — probably sooner than she thought.
This is advice and counsel I’ve given to many people over the years. On the precipice of divorce, losing a job, closing a business, and losing a loved one, I like to set a point in the future when life will undoubtedly be better.
That point in time is always closer than the person can imagine, and I’m almost always right.
When you’re mired in the morass of hard decisions, difficult days, mounting challenges, and endless uncertainty, it’s easy to feel like these feelings will persist forever. Telling someone that in one or two years, they will be free and happy can really help.
This woman was not the first to thank me for this simple piece of advice.
I have no recollection of this conversation. It was about a year before I began Homework for Life, and when I looked back on my blog and journals I wrote at the time, I found no record of this conversation.
Elysha doesn’t remember me telling her about it either, meaning it was likely a fleeting and ephemeral memory for me, but something far more lasting for this woman.
“Did Elysha really call off a wedding?” she asked. “Or did you say that to make me feel better?”
“No,” I said. “She really did. In fact, our first real conversation was about that wedding. I gave her advice about her wedding day as we hiked around a lake with students.”
She has always wondered if I had invented the story to make her feel better, but unless I’m writing a novel, I don’t invent stories. Too many good ones already exist in this world if you’re paying attention.
She thanked me again for taking the time that day to speak the words she needed to hear.
It’s a fine lesson for all:
We often make a difference in the lives of people that we may never know. We impact this world in unforeseen and unknowable ways. A few simple words — forgotten by you but indelible to someone else – can truly make all the difference.
So…
- Keep speaking. Trust that your words and their meaning will last longer than you think.
- Know that you are almost certainly doing more for this world than you will ever know.
- Trust that you, your words, and your deeds echo in the lives of others more often than you could ever imagine.
You’re more important than you will ever know. Believe that.
