be yourself. remembering what’s important.

[Today’s guest post comes from BL Och­man.]

Be Your­self. Remem­be­ring what’s important.

By B.L. Ochman

Three times in the past 10 years, I have faced down death. Once from ill­ness, once by being hit by a car, and once run­ning through the cloud of debris as the Towers fell on 9/11. Shoulda been dead each of those times, but I’m still here. I figure there’s a rea­son. Even if I don’t know what it is yet.

The result of those brushes with mor­ta­lity is that a lot of stuff that used to seem impor­tant, like owning the first iPad, or collec­ting yet another pair of shoes, lost their urgency.

What’s urgent and impor­tant now: making time for my family and friends, my dog and cat; having time to think and write; being able to share ideas and to keep lear­ning every day; and being able to call bullshit on false urgency, disin­ge­nuous­ness, and greed.

I know I am abso­lu­tely for­tu­nate that my imme­diate family is alive and – except for my mom – well. We are bles­sed to have each other. But hey, life is not per­fect, and there’s always lon­ging for something more. I wish I could pro­tect my niece and nephews from anything bad ever hap­pe­ning. I wish I could help my mom come back from Alzheimer’s. Because that’s a really ugly place to be, and it’s one we can’t do anything about.

I don’t know how to pre­vent or change those things, but I have become sure of who I am over the years. I got a really big clue about that just last summer.

My late pater­nal grand­father, Mischa Borr, was a vio­li­nist who led a dance orches­tra at the Star­light Ball­room of the Wal­dorf Asto­ria Hotel. The hotel was very grand in those days, and my grandpa was a bit of a cele­brity. The bio­graphy the hotel wrote about him said that, during the Rus­sian Revo­lu­tion, he was on a train coming back from a con­cert with his band. Cos­sacks stop­ped the train, deman­ded everyone’s papers. One of them said to my grand­father, “Oh, you’re a fidd­ler! Play your fiddle. If we like it, we’ll let you live.”

As you can ima­gine, my grandpa pla­yed his heart out and the sol­diers spa­red his life and the lives of his band mem­bers. I always thought that was some PR story the hotel made up to make him sound exo­tic. But I lear­ned last sum­mer, from the son of my late grand­pa­rents’ best friend, that the story was indeed true. And that many of the other pas­sen­gers on the train were shot or behea­ded that night.

When I was a little girl, my Rus­sian grandma used to tell me, “remem­ber dar­ling, you are an aris­toc­rat.” I had no idea what she meant until I lear­ned more about his­tory and about what she and her family lost when they left their village in Rus­sia to start a new life of free­dom in the Uni­ted States.

All these years later, I know that what she was really telling me is that I am a sur­vi­vor. And that means I have to remem­ber what is beau­ti­ful, and hold dear the love in my life. It’s my heritage.

[B.L. Och­man, @whatsnext, is publisher of What’s Next Blog http://www.whatsnextblog.com , co-founder of Pawfun.com, the pet lover’s site http://www.pawfun.com and is Mana­ging Direc­tor of Emer­ging Media for Proof Inte­gra­ted Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.]

[The “Remem­ber Who You Are” archive is here.]

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