Worth

My buddy and me

My neighbor and friend, Caity, sent me a message to say that she had a unique experience to share. I had only ten minutes to talk, but told her that I love anything unique.

Caity lives on the corner of Poland and Urquhart and owns a lot on the same space where we have planted trees, hosted volunteers, and where she has kept a garden. Birds planted a mulberry. She had a delivery of sawdust and horseshit for all the neighbors to take from. Not all the neighbors were as happy as me.

They tore that road up, the city did, and put down tar and knocked away banana trees and cassia. But that mulberry they couldn’t get. They left a black Italian fig and the loquat and satsuma and sometimes I forget that I have planted more than I can always remember.

Caity is a nurse, said she just started working for a company that helps vets who have had traumatic brain injuries. Said one of the guys told her his old sponsor used to run something called 9th Ward Festival.

She said, “Zach?” 

“Yes.” 

“I know Zach well,” she said. 

They spoke about the times in his past, how he tried to stop doing everything, alcohol and drugs, even bad choices in men. I told her how Dennis is an important part of my story, how I made him the doorman at the meeting I go to every week. I told her how he would shake people’s hands, his neck straightened, the big brace pushing his chin up and away from his shoulders. I told her the irony in this. I told her why we called the meeting Neckbreakers. 

From a letter written by Bill Wilson that said, “If the newcomer does nothing or argues, we do nothing but maintain our own sobriety, but if he starts to move ahead, even a little, with an open mind, we then break our necks to help in every way we can.”

Dennis would play with the people who entered. He would say things like, “Welcome to Neckbreakers. They take it real serious here.” As though to imply that we had broken his neck. 

She said that she wanted me to bring some meetings to help expose the people she worked with to addiction and alcoholism. She said she wanted to expose the men to growing. She said some had expressed interest in both. She said that they had received a grant.

I told her that what I do to stay sober is for fun and for free. I told her that for a long time I also believed that I could not charge for what I did to help people reconnect to the earth. Then I realized that people get paid for what they learn. I realized people should get paid for what they love. 

I think of a story my friend Devin told me about Picasso and a waiter. At the end of his meal, the waiter asked Picasso if he would quickly draw him a sketch. In a minute. Picasso obliged. The man thanked him.

Picasso said, “That will be twenty thousand dollars.”

“But it took you a minute,” the waiter said.

“It took me seventy-one years and a minute,” Picasso said.

I still struggle sometimes with charging people for my services, but if I can remember that I am selling so much more than what I did in the moment. I am selling my entire lifetime, all that has and has not happened, all the vision, all the failure, all the struggles and success. And so are you. So is everybody. So find what you love and get what you’re worth. Or somebody else will.