Thoughts of Today

Many thoughts ran through my head today as different things occurred.  Perhaps one of the most humbling series of thoughts I had came while I was watching Boston Legal.

Anyone who watches the show regularly knows that one of the main characters, Shirley Schmidt, had another main character, Alan Shore, fight in court to allow her father to be put on a morphine drip in order to die without pain.  During that process a third main character Denny Crane, Alan’s best friend and also a lawyer, witnessed Alan’s closing remarks.  The remarks were made about Shirley’s father having Alzheimer’s and not having the conscious will to live, or even realizing the fact that he was living.  He then stated that his best friend, Denny, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and wanted Alan to take care of him in the best way possible when the time came.

However, that is just back story to where my thoughts were taken.  At the end of the show Alan and Denny regularly sit on a balcony where they smoke, drink, and sum up the shows precedences.  At the very end, Denny says, “Sleep over?” and Alan responds, “Sure,” before clasping Denny’s outstretched hand.  It occurred to me during this moment, while one man was holding a cigar and the other a scotch and both were holding each other’s hands, that our needs in life go from less to more to less sophisticated.  As children we look to bond with our peers; one of the ways we do this is through sleep overs.  We bond with our friends who have similar interests–Pokemon, video games, playing shoot-em-up and running around the house, etc.  As we grow older we abandon the sleep over, thinking it too childish and not a valuable use of our time.  We worry about problems like the mortgage and the electric bill, or we create problems.

Side thought****

And as we come out of the age where we are trying to be totally responsible, we relax a little bit and once again seek just to bond with others.  When Denny and Alan clasped hands, it wasn’t intended to be sexual, it was to show camaraderie.  To show the relationship that is there, the friendship, what really matters.

What really matters is how you treat others and how you are remembered.  At the end of the show, Shirley Schmidt sits next to her dying father, saying he was a great man.  What made him great was never explained, but I imagine that it had to do with how he managed work and what problems he overcame.  To me, this should be cast aside for the more Denny and Alan greatness.  What you do on paper, what problems you solve, numbers you crunch, deals you made, will all be forgotten.  How you treated others and the relationships you form, will be how you are remembered.  So forget about taking out the trash or the leaky sink for a few minutes and set up some bonding time with your best friend, your wife, your kids, your parents, whomever you haven’t talked to for awhile.  To steal a line from Gary Vaynerchuk and twist it a bit, “Legacy is greater than Currency.”

****Sorry this side thought would have interrupted the flow of the post.  I had to laugh because I could have taken the sophistication of needs in a whole other direction while still staying with the sleep over concept.  As children we bond with members of the same sex; primarily because of similar interest.  At the end of Boston Legal, Denny and Alan were also bonding over shared interests.  What I had to laugh about was that sophistication could be taken as emotional and physical.  Think about it.  Do we really abandon sleep overs as we get older?  No, we don’t.  We just call it something different and bond differently–usually with members of the opposite sex through sexual means.  

Feel free to comment. Thanks!