You don't need to die for a great story

I’m at home, getting ready to leave for the hospital. And I think it might be my last day alive. 

It’s a fairly routine procedure, but there’s something in the pre-op instructions that sends me down a dark hole: 

“For the rest of the day, don’t drive, don’t operate heavy machinery and don’t make important decisions.” 

I guess those are fairly standard guidelines when you’re going to be sedated, but now I’m thinking, 

“Isn’t there a chance that something bad could happen? I mean, it’s a general anaesthetic, those go wrong sometimes, right? What if I go under… and never wake up?”

So I sit in front of the computer and start an email for my wife with the subject “If I die.”

Then I think that might be jinxing it, so I change it to “If something happens.”

I make a list of everything I can think of that Patricia might need to know about: life insurance, bank accounts, investments – but that’s not enough. 

I tell her how to handle our property, our taxes, who can help her with the legal stuff – but that’s not enough either. 

I try to help her navigate this nightmare while juggling endless financial balls that were never her responsibility – and the list just gets longer and longer. 

But then I realise I need to leave, and I haven’t even said the most important thing. 

So I tell her how I feel. About her. About our life together. I tell her how lucky I’ve been, and what I’d like her to never let our girls forget. 

I apologise for leaving her alone, and I ask her to be happy. 

I dry my eyes and schedule the email for a few hours later. If something goes wrong, she’ll know for sure by then. 

I leave the house, then immediately come back because I haven’t said goodbye to our cat. I scratch her back, try to kiss her, and she gives me a look of absolute disgust – and that feels just right. 

On my way to the hospital, I ditch the politics podcast I was listening to for something more upbeat. I don’t want to feel more worried about my family’s future than I already am. 

***

I arrive at the hospital, sign all the waivers, and by now I’ve half-convinced myself something bad is going to happen. 

Patricia meets me in the waiting room, and I try to keep things as light as possible. 

I get changed and, when they are wheeling me out to the operation room, I just smile and say, “See you soon.” But I’m not sure I will. 

The doctor fits the needle on the back of my hand and tells me, “You might feel a burning sensation in your hand and arm, that’s normal. Then you’ll feel sleepy.”

I’m looking forward to the high of the anaesthesia, but as soon as he presses the plunger of the syringe down, all I feel is pain. My hand is on fire. It starts moving into my arm and–

***

I wake up. My mouth is sticky. I feel like I slept for hours. 

Patricia looks up from her phone and says, “Welcome back. The nurse told me to wake you up, but you were really gone there.”

“How long was I out for?”

“5-10 minutes? It wasn’t long.”

“Ok.”

On the way home, I tell her about the email. She thinks I was overreacting, but appreciates the gesture. 

“It might be good to have that info anyway.”

So I send it to her – but only I after I delete the last part. You know, the emotional stuff. 

I think it might be awkward to read that now. Maybe I’m a little embarrassed of how dramatic I got. 

Or maybe I just know that if I tell her how I really feel… 

It will come back to bite me in the ass 😅

Not all spoilers are the same 

If someone told you the ending of The Sixth Sense, it would ruin the movie for you. The same is true for almost every murder mystery out there. Once you know how it ends, the story loses all sense of tension and excitement. 

But not all stories can be spoiled like that: I mean, you know I didn’t die. It’s pretty clear from the start that I was overreacting. The real surprise would have been if something wrong actually happened. Getting inside my head and seeing my neurosis play out is where the fun is. 

Right now I’m reading a work in progress by one of my favourite storytellers, Matthew Dicks. He’s dropping a chapter every day about a time when some anonymous people tried to get him fired and essentially ruin his life. 

I know they didn’t succeed. He’s still teaching in the same school, and his life is going great. But I still want to know how it happened. I want to see all the twists and turns, and I really want to see those jerks getting what they deserve. 

A useful cliché

A definition I despise about stories is that “they’re something with a beginning, middle and end.” Gee, thanks, that’s super useful 🤦‍♂️

This is a much more useful cliché: it’s about the journey, not the destination. 

Because often, in order to tell a good tory, all you really need is to work on the middle. How you start doesn’t matter too much, we might already know what the end is, but how you got there is what counts. 

Tell us your thoughts. Tell us your fears. 

Share all the things you thought were going to happen and didn’t. 

You don’t need to be about to die to tell a good story…

Thinking you might is more than enough🤘

-Francisco 

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Getting clarity through your story to stand out from all the other coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs out there 

2. If you dream of speaking on the Red Dot, take this Scorecard and instantly discover how likely your idea is to be accepted by a TED-style organizing committee

3. If you (or your team) got any storytelling challenges, I’m sure there’s something we can do together ;-)

Thanks for reading! Reply any time.