They had to take out a golf ball-size tumor. And as I lay in recovery, praying to a God that I did not believe in, “Please be gone,” the surgeon came in and told me that it wasn’t, and that I had to undergo a lot of weeks of chemotherapy and radiation.

So, in this time that I knew I needed to be close to people because I was more scared than ever, I decided to go to chemotherapy and radiation alone and deny my daughter and my wife the chance to hear me say, “I am so scared, please come with me.”

I was dying to be close but pushing them away and dying anyways. I’d go to radiation each day, and I couldn’t come home just to face the four walls closing in around me, so I started to go to downtown areas so I could get lost in the sea of humanity and hope that that distraction would take me away from the rampant thoughts inside of my head that my demise was just around the corner.

It’s said, “When you’re ready to learn, the teacher will appear,” but I did not know that that teacher would be a homeless bum. I remember the first day I saw him, scruffy, sitting on a piece of cardboard on a busy intersection corner with his little dog sitting by him, and a big sign that said “Help.”

Encounter with Kindness

And when I first saw him, the first thing I thought was “How dare you? You should be up with a job. How dare you? You’re not more of a victim than me. Look at me, I’ve got cancer, I could die. I’ve been with little kids in chemo. They’re victims, not you.”

Over the next few days, I observed him as I would walk back and forth, trying to get lost, and I never saw him reach out and actually overtly beg to anyone or be overly aggressive, he just seemed kind, offering hellos and greetings to people. One day, walking down the road, heading for home, I was on the same side of the road as him. Normally, I would cross to the other side so I didn’t have to confront him, or, I guess, maybe confront my prejudice, but today I said, “No, I’m going to go right by him.”

A Moment of Connection

And as I started to walk by him, that little dog stood up, and stood in front of me and then sat down and looked at me with a friendly face. I reached down and I patted it, and then I turned to him. Without thinking, I opened up and was friendly, and I said, “What’s his name?” He laughed at me and said, “Well, he’s a she, and her name’s Molly.” “She doesn’t normally stop people unless they need something. What do you need?” The first thing I thought: “Nice scam. Pull on the heart strings, make me feel.” Instead, I said to him, “She must’ve known I needed a friendly dog to pet today,” and I walked away.

Lessons Learned

And I was confused; I was confused about a lot of stuff. The next day after radiation, I knew I wanted to go back and either make amends or do something or figure something out. I wanted to give him something, but not money because we know what happens when you give a beggar money: they’re going to spend it on drugs or alcohol. I stopped and picked up a sandwich and a coffee, some little biscuits for Molly, and as I got close, he waved and said, “You’ve come back to see Molly, I see.”

I was about to hand him the food and stuff, but he stuck out his hand to shake mine. And as he did, he started a conversation with me as if we had been mates for a long time. I sat with him and offered up the sandwich, and he said, “I’m not going to have this unless we share.” The Spanish poet Quevedo once wrote: “There are no sorrows when we break bread.” And there weren’t any sorrows that day. We sat and talked like two old buddies, and for a moment I forgot that I was sick.

After a bit, he reached into his bag and pulled out a little pill bottle, and his hands were shaking – he couldn’t open it – so I offered to. He handed it to me, and I looked, and there was his name, Douglas, and Largactil was the medication, which is used by people with schizophrenia – which I thought meant he must be a psychotic serial killer.

What it is, it’s an internal jail, people get very little government help, we ignore them, we stigmatize them, and so I turned to him and said, “Is this why you’re begging?” And he looked at me and he said: “What? No, I’m here raising money to help the needy,” and he pointed at the sign.

And there below the big “Help” – I hadn’t even looked – were the groups that he was raising money for. And suddenly, I realized it was not him that was disabled, it was me. For the judgment that I have had with him blinded me to the truth of this man’s gracious intent. I saw him often after that. I remember one day, he had this cheeky smile on his face and waved me over. He reached into his bag for a little box of chocolates, that I’d ignore as some cheap treat, but I knew from him that this was a lot of money.

So I reached around the box, shook his hand and said, “Thank you, my friend.” And he started to tear up, and I said, “Doug, what’s wrong?” and he said, “I don’t really have friends, and I sure don’t have important friends like you.” I’d lived my life trying to be important, with TV cameras, recognition. And I never felt more important in my life than I did right at that second. Because I was important just simply because I was giving him my presence. I said to him that I wouldn’t take the chocolates unless we shared, like we always do.

Reflections on Life and Connections

So we sat, and he opened them with great joy. And as we sat, I looked at that sea of people move by us. People with places to go and people to see and things to do, and people that I used to think I was like, people that were looking down upon us like we were less than them. I wanted to be those people for so long, to have that view from above, but now, sitting down below, eating the best chocolates I’d ever had in my life, I realized the best view is right here.

Sydney, Australia, does get a little cool in the winter. It was a winter day as I was walking through town, had a jacket on. As I came upon Doug, he put a milk crate upside down, and I sat on it. Molly came up and put her paws on my knees, so I picked her up and pulled her into me and opened my jacket, and for the first time exposed this long scar which was on my neck.

And Doug said, “What’s that?” I started to explain about the cancer. He said, “I know you’ll be okay,” and I said, “I kind of feel I am, I’m getting radiation and treatment.” And he grabbed my arm, and I turned to him, and he said, “No, you’re going to be okay. You have a lot more to do.” I have never in my life been stumped for words, but I was that day. So I did what we men do when we are emotional and scared we’ll cry in public, I sniffled, turned my head, and tried to swallow the tears.

He was kind; he did the same. And we sat there, sniffling back and forth. I think sometimes… the best things are said when we don’t exchange words, we just exchange space. I had to get up and leave. I didn’t want to say goodbye, so I said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and he just waved and smiled. Molly got up and barked for the first time. I walked down that street that day, and my eyes were pouring out tears – not because I was fearful or angry, it was because I was happy. Because for the first time in my life – or the first time since cancer – I knew I was going to live. And for the first time in my life, I felt I had a real purpose.

Facing Chemotherapy

The next day, I had chemotherapy, and, well, chemotherapy has a way of wiping all positivity out of you. You’re slowly fed vile poison that drips into your body. To make things worse, there was a little girl sitting across from me with a nurse by her. She was combing the hair on the mane of a toy horse. She had a scarf on to cover her bald head, her skin was green – she had a look of defeat. God, I didn’t want to look at her. Didn’t want to look away either.

Then suddenly – madness as I closed my eyes – and I remembered when I was just a young boy that age, and my best friend, Rob Austin, the class clown, made faces, so I turned to her and I went… That’s more of a reaction than I got from her. You know what little kids can look like if they think you’re really strange? Well, that’s the look she gave me. The logical thing would’ve been to turn away and pretend it didn’t happen, but… that would take somebody smart, and nowhere in this talk have I said I’m smart. So I did it again.

Laughter in the Midst of Pain

This time I saw her stomach start to roll; it came up to her chest. I was wondering was she going to be ill and vomit, but… she started to laugh. And the laughter of a young child is contagious, and I broke out in laughter. Nurses started to come in from all the other rooms, and they started to laugh. And I knew I had to see Doug and tell him: ‘You’re right, I do have a lot more to do.’

The next day, I went back downtown, and there he was: gone. He wasn’t there. I didn’t think much, I was hoping just an anomaly. So I went back day after day, I went back for weeks, and he wasn’t there. I asked storekeepers had they seen him, and most would say, ‘Bums just move to better spots.’ I’d phone agencies. They’d say they couldn’t say anything because of privacy laws.

Reflections and Concerns

At night, the time I had reserved to think in my own head the fears about my own demise, I started thinking about him and wondering: Had he been mugged? Had he been hospitalized? Had he been institutionalized? I started thinking about Molly. Had she been put in a shelter? And was she about to be put down?

I wanted to tell you about Doug and give you all sorts of great metaphors on what it really meant to me and how it’s going to be part of a big transition in my life, and I wanted to tell you how great he had made me, and then I realized, that day I hadn’t been prepared to tell Doug the whole story.

You see, in chemo that day, we had to turn our chairs away from each other because every time we looked at each other, we were laughing. The chemo goes on, and you don’t laugh; it kills you. And chemo made me emotional, and I got teared up and I felt lousy, but I knew that I couldn’t leave that day – I knew I was leaving before her – before I said something to her that was going to be so important that it would rescue her.

A Moment of Compassion

So, as I finished the chemo, I walked over and I squatted down in front of her, and I got her eye to eye, and I must’ve looked like hell, and I was shaking, and I could feel sweat coming out of my head, and I was trying to come up with great words, and as I did, she looked at me and she tilted her head – with an empathetic look that you would recognize from a parent, not a little child – and then she reached out with her free arm and placed her hand against my cheek to comfort me. I was the child, suddenly, and I started to cry, and so she wiped the tears away from my face. It was the hardest thing, walking out of there that day. As I looked back, she was just there combing the pony again.

A couple of weeks later, I was in chemo, I saw her nurse, so I mouthed: ‘Have you seen her? How is she?’ The nurse came and told me that she had passed away. God took the wrong one that day. That and Doug sat in my heart a long time.

I started to realize that I wasn’t so scared of dying, I had just been scared, my whole life, of living. I started to realize… that we can all die in just one minute. But we can all live a million amazing moments, filled with passion, filled with pain, filled with love, angst, anger, anything we want, and that I had lived half a century avoiding any negative emotion and trying to insulate myself against the poor, the needy, the desperate. I tried to surround myself with rich, famous, powerful people, thinking if I got to be with them, I can live in this sort of benign happiness, and if I felt any guilt about the homeless, that I could wait until I made more than I needed to give them some of what I had.

A Journey of Healing and Understanding

But here, in my most desperate moment, two people I had spent a lifetime avoiding – a homeless man and a little kid – who I thought had so little to give, gave me so much. I had a lot more to do, but that lot more to do wasn’t me saving other people, that lot more to do was me seeing other people, me receiving, and in that giving them the power to heal others. It also started me on a course of redemption in my life with my daughter. When I was asked to do this talk, I was honored and humbled, and I was scared that I wasn’t worthy.

Normally, in the past, I’d have told a million people, posted about it, but I didn’t tell anyone for weeks, except I called my wife, Marina; she cried on the phone with me. And then I called my little girl. She now lives halfway across the country, down under. She’s going to school. She’s going to be an early-childhood education teacher, and dammit, she’s going to be the best because she’s really good; she’s got a heart so big. And I told her – same little girl that told me she didn’t care if I lived or died – and she said to me, ‘Daddy, I am so proud of you. You’re going to do really good, and Daddy… I love you.’ Thank you.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Jonathan Gravenor’s talk, “The Other Side of Ego,” is a profoundly moving narrative that delves into his personal journey of transformation and realization. Diagnosed with late-stage throat cancer, Gravenor recounts the pivotal moments that led him to confront the limitations of his ego and the importance of genuine connections.

Through his battle with cancer and the subsequent interactions with a homeless man named Doug and a young girl in chemotherapy, he discovers the true value of empathy, kindness, and human connection. Gravenor’s story is not just about his fight against a deadly disease but also about his internal battle to overcome the barriers created by his own ego. He learns that life’s most meaningful lessons often come from unexpected sources and that vulnerability and openness can lead to profound healing and understanding.

The talk is an attestation to the power of changing one’s perspective and the importance of the connections we make with others. Ultimately, “The Other Side of Ego” is an inspiring call to embrace life’s challenges with grace and to recognize the impact of our actions and attitudes on our journey towards redemption and love. It reminds us that in our darkest hours, we can find light through the generosity and compassion of others, leading to a deeper appreciation of life itself.

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