"What fools we are." -last words of a friend's mother

   It's pretty easy to agree that we are fools. Look around, or take a look in the mirror. 

   To live is to be plagued by vanity. To live long is to come to know that happiness and ego don't get along with each other. 

   Like many, I have foolishly wasted a horrific amount of life in meaningless meetings. In the course of struggling to control outcomes and people, I have lost my temper far too often. Every moment I have spent trying to impress other people was wasted. 

   Now that I've flayed myself with such dark criticism, I'd like to mention a few not-foolish things I recall doing in my life.  

   1) In 1998, my son and I stood on a little balcony in Venice and smoked cigars as gondoliers guided their boats along a canal. 

   2) I shouted so loud and often at my daughter's track meets that my daughter asked my to stop coming. A decade later, she thanked me for being such a fan.

   3) In 1966, a year into my marriage, I secretly bought my wife the set of aqua pots and pans she wanted and hid them in the cupboard for her to discover.

   4) Against enormous pressure to stay, I left a Philadelphia healthcare conference mid-meeting and flew back to Columbus arriving just in time to see my daughter score the winning goal at a championship field hockey tournament.

   5) The night before my father's open heart surgery, I returned to his room to find him crying and sat with him until he fell asleep.

   6) During most of my career as a hospital CEO, I regularly exchanged my suit and tie for a housekeeping uniform and worked a shift pushing a broom down the halls of the hospital of which I was president.

   7) When I was five, I gave my aunt my only stick of Juicy Fruit gum. 

   8) In the middle of a healthcare conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, I left a meeting, climbed to the top of a high hill, took off my clothes, and sang to the sky.

   9) When I was eight, I went to Sunday School with a squirt gun hidden in my new blue suit. It leaked.

   10) This morning, I visited Death Row.

   These not-foolish things don't, of course, appear on my resume. But, I don't plan to apply for a job ever again.

   If I do, I probably won't mention to my prospective employer that I tell silly stories to my three-year-old granddaughter about flying pigs, dragons that sleep in bunk-beds, and giant dogs that eat popcorn.

-Rev. Erie Chapman