Twenty years pass by in a blink. Births, deaths, weddings and funerals all run together. Gray hairs sprout from heads of youngsters yet to be born.
A lucky break came when an insurance lobbying group offered a scholarship weekend where the murky world of disaster insurance played a role. As the proud members of Maine Mutual Group will be the first to tell, insurance provides for the wholeness of people. When whole, liquidity comes. When whole, new ideas and new beginnings come about. It is the engine behind the growth of the new.
Sunny was that September morning in 2001, looking back. Thoughts of the clear blue skies of home and the peace of The County came to mind. A simple sunrise, and joy abounds.
Then tragedy came.
Like many, I did my job in the days that followed. I filed my first story with WLOS in Asheville, from Washington on the empty streets around Congress and heavy munitions on display at the White House. Other stories would follow of children at the National Zoo oblivious to the carnage of the world. It was but an eye blink in time.
Now, after experiencing this transplant, I am grateful for a chance to continue doing good, to make the world a little bit better.
I wish transplants were like car parts — take the broken one out, put the new one in and go. The organs have other ideas. There is a tune-up phase where chemistry has to be adjusted. Forget about dignity; pain, humiliation and agony all come to the table as invited guests. If you let their rudeness intrude, things will go nowhere. Patience and persistence are your only tools and you find them within the human spirit.
We all want to make this world better. And we will.
Enjoy those crystal-clear blue skies. Laugh at the ridiculousness of your troubles; we all find ourselves in a Three Stooges scene at times. I prefer the pie fights myself.
It is laughter and the willingness to persevere that makes us whole again. It is our insurance policy for a brighter, better future.
Orpheus Allison is a photojournalist living in The County who graduated from UMPI and earned a master of liberal arts degree from the University of North Carolina. He began his journalism career at WAGM television later working in many different areas of the US. After 20 years of television he changed careers and taught in China and Korea.
