The Kind Point June 12, 2025

UNEXPECTED GRATITUDE

Hi! I'm Jeff, if you're reading this, it's because I view you as someone I'd want to sit down over matcha and chat about life with. I'll be sending this newsletter out every few weeks or so. If it's not your jam, feel free to unsubscribe, I won't be offended!

When Terry and I were at the grocery store two weeks ago, an employee in the self-checkout area rolled up to me in his wheelchair and asked, “Hey buddy, how’d it happen?” as he gave my booted leg and crutches a once-over.

I explained that I tore my calf muscle while teaching a leadership retreat.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “That sounds awful. How long will you be in the boot?” He was very sweet and really concerned about how I was doing.

I asked him how long he’d been in the chair. He said that he lost his leg in a motorcycle accident a year prior.

Then he added, “Thank God I knew about my leg before I went unconscious at the site of the accident. Can you imagine waking up in the hospital and having to digest that news?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That would have been so much worse.”

When Terry and I got back to the car, I admitted I knew nothing about anything.

My boot and crutches have led to some amazing conversations and stories in the last three weeks. Conversations I wouldn’t normally have.

A friend who fell off a cliff in the 8th grade and landed on his feet, shattering both ankles.

A Lyft driver whose four-year-old daughter was the youngest recipient of a medical marijuana card in the state of Oregon as she went through cancer treatment.

A phlebotomist who had four surgeries on her feet within a year’s time, leaving her booted and on crutches for eighteen months.

An Uber driver who crashed a paraglider while in South America and had to be carried down a mountainside by a search and rescue team. But not before accidentally being given a near-lethal dose of morphine and told, “Don’t fall asleep.”

I know a lot more about a few things than I did on May 14: what it’s like to traverse our two-story house on one leg. How it really feels not to be able to drive. Or go for walks. How uneven and cracked the sidewalks are in my neighborhood—Terry and I took my rented wheelchair out for a spin around the block one afternoon. It didn’t end our marriage, but let’s just say it wasn’t a bonding experience.

But I am more aware of what I don’t know: what it’s like to have a permanent disability. How to navigate a health-care system without advocates, or enough money, or insurance. The need to keep working while your toddler spends a year stoned out of her gourd while she narrowly avoids death.

And one thing I definitely don’t know is what it’s like to be grateful for the right timing when it comes to learning about losing a limb.

Separate but related: Many of you know I am retaking an amazing year-long class on death called Unmasking Mortality. One of the practices is to meditate on The Five Recollections, which are part of some Buddhist traditions.

1. I am of the nature to age. I have not gone beyond aging.
2. I am of the nature to get ill. I have not gone beyond illness. (Jeff’s addition: Or injury)
3. I am of the nature to die. I have not gone beyond death.
4. All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise, will be separated from me. This cannot be escaped.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. For good or ill, I am the owner of my actions and heir to my actions.

Bracing, right? Due to this injury, The Five Recollections have been less theoretical to me these past three weeks. While this minor injury didn’t really bring me any closer to death, it has made me face my own physical frailty in ways I usually don’t.

It kicked open a door that I would much rather have remained closed: to pain and uncertainty, to a lot of medical appointments. To using my upper body to muscle my way about the house on crutches. But also to incredible kindness from people who have endured the unimaginable. Were it not for this injury, I wouldn’t have heard so many stories of horror, courage, and fortitude. And for that, I am grateful.

I suppose that when life hands you a torn muscle, all you can do is secure the Velcro straps on your leg boot and go along for the ride.

Something Kind

What I'm Reading ​ What I'm Reading ​Wind and Truth: Book Five of the Stormlight Archive​ by Brandon Sanderson Each book is about 1200 pages. Lordy! It's good, but wow, it's long. Any other Stormlight readers out there? ​Buy it here.​

What I'm Watching ​Debuting: The Waltz of Resilience​ When life says “sit down,” but your living room becomes the stage. Yes, I’m on crutches and a scooter since I tore my calf muscle while leading an R1 (because why not go all in?). Proof that healing can still have a sense of humor — and recovery deserves a little razzle-dazzle, a lot of grace, and maybe a spotlight or two. ​Enjoy it here.​

What I'm Planning ​The Kind Camp​ Ready to bring more kindness into your life and work? Join my good friend Nina Simonds and me at The Kind Camp, an in-person retreat October 22–24 in beautiful Sonoma, CA. ​Register here.​