Sunday Serenity

Good Sunday evening, Cadre crew. I am happy to be back with you here. My name is Jason Lennox, and I'm your resident recovery champion. And this is my series titled Sunday Serenity. And I bring it to you Sunday evenings, really with different experiences, things that happen in my life and the lives of others around me throughout the week. And I try to accumulate stories from those experiences, turn them into something digestible for you all. And was out of town last week. Was actually out of town for a week.

So excited to be back here. And, yeah, really look forward to delivering a message tonight. Jules, welcome. It's always great to see you. And so again, Sunday serenity. And again, I'm Jason Lennox, resident recovery champion. Good evening. Sherry as well. Jules, got the crew. Thanks, Sherry. It's great to be back. Just landed actually, a few hours back, and I went right from the airport to my cousin's soccer championship game, and they won three to two in dramatic fashion. So it was great. But that cousin is somebody who was with me for the majority of the week, and it's kind of what I want to talk about.

One of the things that really struck me yesterday and really more today probably is just the level of sadness that comes I'm out of town. So a little bit of context about this trip. I went with four, three cousins, I guess two younger cousins, an older cousin, and then two partners of those cousins. So there were six of us in total. And this is a trip we do every summer. It's 2017. I went with my older cousin, 2019. We brought Emma, who's one of my younger cousins, just graduated. And then a year later, we brought Sophie.

And for the last four years, we've just continued to bring different people. And so it's a, it's an annual trip. Absolutely love it. And at the end of every one of them, and especially this one, because now one has graduated and is going on to college, and one of my cousins out there has also graduated high school and going to college. So there's a chance that this maybe was the last year that this group would get to spend this kind of time together in the summer. So there was a level of sadness, and I thought about that, and it doesn't always feel good.

And by the way, I'm going to say that I'm not promoting sadness, but in a unique way. I want to talk tonight about seeking sadness and a couple reasons of why I think that's beneficial. First of all, there's sadness because of an event, and. Yes, absolutely, Jules. It's the best time, most memorable I just could go on and on. And I get to do this so many times throughout the year. This is one of. I'm getting on the road in two weeks with this. I'm in the same family this time. We're going the other way to Colorado for a tournament, a conference.

We're mixing it all in and just having a blast. But sadness, one of the reasons I believe that seeking sadness and why sadness is a good thing is because it's better than regret. Okay? So, yes, sadness comes because maybe this is the end of an era, maybe this won't happen again. But I know from the people I've talked to and in my own life and in reading and researching a little bit about regret, as people get to the end of life, there's so much there with regret. And regret is so much more painful being sad because something comes to an end.

So that's the first reason I say I seek that sadness, and I'm okay, and I embrace that, and I go after that. Second reason is, if there's a. If something like an experience like this makes me sad, that means that good things happened along the way, that means there were moments to leave me with sadness, with an emptiness, with something to be desired. Right? Because it is. The week goes by, and we go to New York City, and we do bunch of different things there and stay there for a night, and we're seeing all kinds of new stuff.

We go to Boston for a day, and we go up to the beach in New Hampshire, and we're just all over the place and doing all kinds of fun stuff and just having a blast. It's just so much joy. So, of course, at the end of that then is there's an emptiness, there's a sadness because it comes to an end. So, sadness again. I think there are two reasons, primarily that came to me just from this trip. That seeking sadness and getting to that point is really okay. It's better than regret. And I don't know, like, if I didn't take the trips, if I didn't do the things that I do, I don't know if at the end of my life, I would think back and know any different and wonder what I missed.

But I gotta believe I would. I mean, today's world, we have so much social media. We see all the things that other people are doing. We get to see how big the world really is just through interactions like this. And so I gotta believe that I would be questioning myself, knowing that I have many opportunities to do that. And so I feel like regret would be at the end of that, and I would choose sadness every day of the week. And Sherry says you'll most likely have a deeper appreciation of time together.

100%. As crazy as it gets, you know, you all have families. You've probably experienced it. I do. We get in the car, we're driving long hours, we're spending long days together. Not everybody's getting along. We're not always agreeing on what we should do. Where should we eat? Where should we go next? Should we try this? Should we try that? How long should we do? So, there is a lot of that, but at the end of the day, being able to spend that quality time with family, there's nothing like it. I don't think I would trade it for anything in the world.

There's no sum of money that would give me the feelings that doing these kinds of things give me. Even if that is something that leads to a little bit of sadness and feelings of just dang it, it's over. And again, second, I know that getting to that point where it feels like something's incredibly sad because it might be ending, or even if it's just a week that's ending, that means that there was a lot of fun. I mean, if that was an absolute disaster and nightmare and none of us had any fun, I would not be coming to the end in sadness.

I would probably be happy. I would be so grateful to get home, to get away from family, to get away from the experiences. So just my little two words of wisdom from the night are, you know, to seek sadness, it really is finding the things that are worth so much and that mean so much to us that they just leave us feeling not the greatest when they end. That's okay. And the beautiful thing about that feeling, and I learned this early on when I found out my aunt was terminal. And I would go and see her and she would get very sad, and I would, too.

But I would come back in a month, a month and a half, two months. And now I'm out there, you know, 6810 times a year. And even though there's sadness, we both know that it's not going to be long before I'm back in her house, before I'm seeing her again. And it's the same with this family. Like I said, a couple, couple weeks, we'll be going, and we'll be doing something like this on the other side of the country and in the area just as beautiful, Colorado. So I really seek those moments. And then we go up north just a few weeks after that, you know, 40 of us, and that's probably the most fun week of all.

And then we get back into fall and school and all the things start again. And so that's how I was when I was a kid. We got to go up north, and, like, the greatest week of the year was the week before Labor Day. But guess what? Always followed that. The ride home was the worst day of the year. It was the Monday was Labor Day, and it meant the next day we went back to school. All the summer was over, family time was limited, and we just ended. We just had to come to an end, that incredible week that we had.

So that's always been the case. And I think I'm just learning more and more that that's okay. That's actually a good thing that represents something special that's happening, that has happened. And how do I keep replicating that and doing that in different ways and creating more of those experiences, joining and participating in those experiences at the end of the day, those are the things we take with us, the memories. We were talking with my family out there. We were talking about my grandpa's funeral, which really was something that brought a lot of this family back together.

And I read the eulogy at my grandpa's funeral, and it was a compilation of a whole bunch of stories that people told, and they fed me and they shared, and I kind of put my own little spin on them and told them in first person, as if I was those people. And that's what it was. It was ten minutes of just stories, people's stories, and the memories and the fun and the joy and all the things that we continue to remember. And we sat in front of the tv this week, and we watched all the videos and all the fun things and the things that make us laugh and the things that make us cry.

And I'm going on and on a little bit, but the sadness, it really means there's a lot that happened that led up to it. So, of course, I'm not talking, like, depression and clinical sadness, anything like that, but just the sadness, you know, dang it, the week's over. Thankfully for me, I've got a life that's full of experience and joy and passion and purpose and serenity and the interactions I get to share with all of you. And so I'm right back into, you know, just another great part of life that exists for me.

And I'm thankful that you all join and share. Yes. Quality time is a wonderful love language. It really is. I don't know if anything beats it for me. So this is quality time. I always appreciate when you show up. You guys are, you know, you men, women, everyone else that's out there watching. I really appreciate the time together, the engagement, and look forward to doing it again. But I'm gonna leave you with, again, those two points. Seeking sadness for two reasons. One, it is better than regret.

And two, it means that there's something along the way that was worth it, and that was fun, and that was full of happiness and joy, freedom and peace and serenity and all the things. So I'm grateful that I got to experience a little bit of sadness, got to reflect on it, got to process it and understand what it means, and then turn it into something that hopefully means something to you. So I hope you all have wonderful weeks and that you've got some family time, some friends time, some of that quality time on your own schedules here in the coming weeks, and just embrace and enjoy that and know it's okay to feel sad on the other end.

In fact, that's what we should expect. If all goes well and it's time worth spending and having, then we certainly will. So have wonderful weeks. Look forward to seeing you back next Sunday, where we'll do it again. Look forward to it again. Have great weeks. Go get them. Thanks so much. Bye.