Jason Schechterle -Making Coffee

I was at my internship at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center yesterday and busy at work when my Outlook Express popped up with a message of "Speech with Jason Schechterle 12:00 p.m." I had a lot to do and wasn't going to go, but both my boss and my boss's boss came to make sure I was going to join them. I wasn't sure what to expect because I was not in Arizona when Jason's accident occurred and I was not really in the mood for another sad story.

Our CEO Larry Volkmar introduced the speaker and out from behind the wall comes a very tall man-an obvious burn-victim with a huge smile on his face. He raised his large, damaged hands in thanks and to stop the clapping and began his story. I sat and listened in awe as this man told the horrific story of how everything happened for a reason the night of his accident and every little miracle was so perfectly planned out somehow. He went on about the recovery process (which will probably never end) and his family who stuck with him through it all. It was an unbelievable story, from beginning to end. He was a police officer just trying to help another unit out when he was struck by an epilectic taxi driver and severely burned, blinded and morphed for life-in more ways than just physically.

Obviously anyone who lives through such an experience and can come out and speak about it has something amazing to say and is inspiring, but Jason had more to say than his life was a miracle. After years of piecing together the broken puzzle pieces of that night, Jason sees the accident as him doing his job to save other lives because that cab driver could have hit a mother with her children or anyone else who probably wasn't strong enough to survive such a trauma. He told jokes and shared the amazing experiences he had that scared him shitless, like throwing the first pitch at the D-backs season opener with his disfigured hands and walking the Olympic Torch in front of thousands of people.

He concluded his speech (for lack of a better word because that makes it sound boring and mandatory) with a small story that a woman wrote to him during his recovery. Here is a short version:
What are you carrots, eggs or coffee beans?:
A daughter was complaining to her mom about what a bad day and week she was having and how everything was going wrong and on and on. The mom put three pots of water on the stove to boil one had carrots, one had eggs and one had coffee beans. After her daughter was done with her harangue on life the mom told her to empty the pots into bowls and asked her which are you-the carrots, the eggs, or the coffee beans. The daughter was annoyed with her mom and said she didn't get it, to which her mom responded:
"When the water got hot and hard to tolerate the carrots got soft and flimsy, the eggs hardened inside, but the beans turned their water into coffee, and the hotter it got the stronger the coffee was."
We all sat in silence and Jason said "I've learned that life is 10% what happens and 90% how you react." This hit me. Hit me hard and I never wanted it to stop.
Life is hard, and rocky and sucks sometimes, and Jason knows that everyone has problems and he wasn't telling us that our problems are minute-he was just saying that we decide how to react and what to make of them.

So instead of telling a story of a survivor, Jason was telling a story of life and lessons that come with it. He used his story to back up what he believed and it was an amazing one. We asked if he does inspirational talks for other burn victims or Iraqi soldiers and he hesitated. He said that everyone comes from a different story and past and he can't stand in front of a 24-year-old soldier with missing limbs, who doesn't have a wife and kids yet and is half his age and tell him that it all works out in the end. Everyone's story is unique, and he knows that other victims of terrible traumas would look at him like "you have no idea what it's like to be me, because your life is so different." Jason knows what hurt is, but he knows what strength is too, Jason is making coffee.

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