Sunday Serenity

Good evening to the Cadre Sphere. Hey. Hope everyone's doing well and hope you've all had wonderful weekends. If you can see it out here. Anyway, you might actually be happy to know that I took my Christmas tree down finally. It only took me until the end of March. I really haven't been here a whole lot this year, so I have that. But I think I've kept it up until April in past years. So not an excuse. Anyhow, it's in Minnesota. We just had some snow again. We had a 70 degree day on Friday and back to a little bit of a snowstorm just a little bit ago here on Sunday.

So good to be here with you. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I am not feeling the greatest tonight, so I'll jump right into it. I want to, I should tell you a little bit in case you're new. Jason Lennox is my name and I am, what I like to say, your resident recovery champion. And what that means is I'm just here to talk about all things recovery. I'm a champion for this work for everybody in recovery. I've lived on both sides, you know, receiving services and kind of having to go through addiction and recovery on my own and now working in the industry.

So my life is full of recovery and I absolutely love it. Hey, good evening. Speak Wonder. It's coming. Nice to see you. From Pennsylvania. So anyhow, that's who I am. And, you know, there's just a lesson that I want to share a little bit. This past week, lost an aunt of mine who's very near and dear to me. And she's been battling cancer for a long time. In fact, 34 years ago is when it started. And she's had several rounds and, you know, kind of just gone through the wringer. And she's been terminal for the last eight.

Frankly, it is a miracle that she continued to fight and lived as long as she did. But nonetheless, she was one of the closest people in my life, perhaps the closer, just from an emotional standpoint. So it was really hard to kind of go through that and finally see that, you know, the road had ended last week. But I want to tell you a little story. So I sat with her three weeks ago, maybe about six weeks ago, we had the conversation that she was going to be going on to hospice, stopping treatment.

So a few weeks ago, I took the initiative to have a conversation with her and ask her, if you could tell the world one thing, what would it be? What would you want the world to know? What would you Share with them. And she paused for 10 seconds, and then she looked over at me and she said one word. She said, live. And then she paused again, and, you know, 10 seconds went by. She was thinking a little more, and she said, yeah, live. Because we never know when it's going to be our last year, our last month, our last week, our last day, or our last hour.

So live and be good to people. She added. And so I want to talk a little bit about the live element to this. I think there's a woman named Bronnie Ware, I believe, and she does a lot of studying, and she wrote a book on kind of the top five regrets, I think is something along those lines, if you'll check it out. But she talked about all the things that regret, and she ran around and she would talk to people at the end of life and kind of get. Get this feedback from them. And I think four of the five had to do with what people didn't do.

People regretted more about what they didn't do than what they did do. And so what I'm trying to say is when my aunt was telling me that I was actually supposed to go to Florida, and she was trying to convince me to go, she said, remember what I said? I said, but, you know, there's going to be another conference in Florida. That happens every year. I'll go next year. I knew this was the end of her time, so I rescheduled that trip. But since then, and hearing that, and I've always done a pretty good job of this.

Not always, but the last few years for sure, I've really gotten out there and explored, done a lot in this world and just decided to say yes to more things and be a little more spontaneous. Our founder here at Cadre, Luke Wendtland, is a huge reason for that. Do a lot of those things just very spontaneously. And I've noticed since then, I've booked actually that Florida trip three times. I'll have to book it a fourth time now. I've had to cancel and kind of shift things around, which is fine. But the point in that is I say yes and then I just book it.

Thank goodness these days there are no change fees, anything like that. I'll just get an E credit and I'll use it at some point. And I go on. So I booked that trip, that Florida trip, four times. So that'll actually happen here in a few weeks unless something changes again. I booked a trip to Ireland at the end of April and then also planned out the rest of my summer which will consist of a trip to Hawaii for the first time in May with my brother. Colorado in June, California after that, Sedona in July, Massachusetts and the east Coast a few times in between.

Of course make a lot of trips there and then our regular up north trip. But all those things, all five, six of those places that will end up going this summer, really what my aunt was talking about, live, live and get out there and do the thing. And you know, one of the things I talk about in recovery, I think it's so important is routine and consistency. It can also be something that holds us back from doing things like that. You know, I never really, I was five years into recovery before I really got on a plane again.

I think I'd left southern Minnesota. I could count on one hand how many times in my life. And I was, you know, almost 30 years old at that point. And in the last 10 years I've been going, going, going, and especially the last few gone international and done things like that. Yeah, Ireland, exactly. That's first time in Europe. And you know, I just got on a book that some of those things just, you know, I want to wait and I want to make sure all the details are right. And again, I think message my aunt was trying to deliver is just get out there and live.

You know, she was sitting there at the end of her life and she did not have those regrets. She knew she lived her life the way she wanted to and she felt good about that. And that's what I want to do, not only at the end of life, but throughout life. Want to be able to come to every end of every year and look back and go, boy, I really lived. Because if we're not living, then what are we doing? We get into this recovery thing and I've seen it, it can actually be worse. People can be miserable in this thing and not doing well.

The point in getting into recovery and doing the things that we do is to have a life. And it doesn't always mean travel. Look, I've got a 19 year old son, I don't have any other young children. I'm not married. I do a lot for work. So the reality is like I have the ability to get up and go and do those things. Maybe that's not traveling for you. I mean that's just a family trip up north. Maybe it's a weekend away at the Great Wolf Lodge, you know, theme park, anything like that. Something that you know is just around the house.

Maybe it's game night. Maybe it's just experiencing more of life. It doesn't mean, you know, spending a bunch of money, getting on planes and doing any of that, though. I highly recommend that, because there's a lot of world out there to see. But live. That's what she said, live. Because we never know when it's gonna be our last year, our last month, our last week, our last day, our last hour. And, you know, we see it all too often. We lose people abruptly. She was one that I got to watch and kind of be with as she wound down her life and reflect on that.

But oftentimes that's not the case, and people leave this world young, and there's a lot left on the table. I think it's Les Brown. He says the richest place in the world is the cemetery. Because we take so much of the things, the talents, the skills, the opportunities, things we could have done, we take those to the grave with us. And I'm not interested in doing that. So I'm going to continue to kind of take those words from her and remember that that's what this whole thing is about. Especially for those of us who've gone through what we've gone through and made it to the other side in recovery, we should do something with that.

And there's a world out there to see. There's a lot to do. There's a lot of life to live, and I'm grateful that I'm able to do that because of my recovery. I hope you are able to do the same, and hopefully you can gather something here and maybe think about what is it that would, you know, be living for you? What could you go plan today, what could you go start doing tomorrow that would really honor those words? Yes. Honoring her. Well, that's exactly what I'm trying to do, so I'll keep doing that.

Grateful to be here and sharing with you all and look forward to doing it again soon. I hope you all have wonderful weeks and remember, live. We'll talk to you very soon. Bye.