SwampFox

Trey's lesson: Take time for more snow cones with those you care for

Submitted by: John Warner on Sep 05, 2011 at 4:17 pm Tagged with: Leadership Source: Swamp Fox

Trey Pennington committed suicide Sunday. He stood outside Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Greenville with a gun and checked out of life.

Trey was well known in the Greenville entrepreneurial community as a passionate advocate of social media. Sunday morning Trey posted 70 photos, and then tweeted "@treypennington: Sure am thankful for online friends who are real friends offline, too. Love you,” Clicking through the photos and reading his tweet that morning, never in my wildest imagination did it seem he had decided that life was too much to bear.

Trey always had a smile and an encouraging word. He was a gentleman's gentleman. He was a doer, traveling the world to promote the social media revolution he was passionate about. Everyone he knew respected him for who he was and the leadership he provided.

How is it possible that someone with so much going for him was in so much pain that he checked out? We are all wounded humans, reacting more to pain in our lives than we are willing to show others or even admit to ourselves. I pause to consider whether I am having the positive impact on others that is my responsibility while on this Earth.

If you know someone fighting their own demons, reach out to them. Listen to them, and let them know you care. Much of the online discussion since Sunday about Trey is what we should have done. What we could have done. But today is too late.

If there is a lesson to Trey's life, and to the end of it, it is for each of us to become comfortable in our own skins. Let go. You are not the idealized version of who you think you are. You are not the demonic version of who you fear you are. You are who you are, and the world is a better place for you.

It is easy to let life to beat us down. Celebrate the successes. Few of us take time to do that enough. Shake off the failures. It happens, and it will happen again. Tomorrow is another day. Don't let suck-ups overly inflate your ego. Don't let assholes ruin your day.

There were lots of things I didn't do well as a dad when my kids were growing up. But there is one day I am proud of me. My daughter was 9 or 10, and had worked her way up to the county swim meet. She dove into the water, swam a couple of the lengths of the pool, and won by a long shot. Mom and dad were elated. Then she got disqualified. I can still see that scene in my mind. Too many times in my life I have let frustrations like this derail me. I've gotten angry and frustrated and lashed out at a world that I couldn't control. People have seen the dark side of me, and thought less of me as a result. I've embarrassed the people I care about most, and it is easy for that to become a viscous spiral down.

On this day though, I kept the world in perspective. I helped my daughter out of the pool. We walked outside, got two snow cones, and and ate them together under a shade tree.

Goodbye Trey. You left the world better than you found it. Well done good and faithful servant. But you should have taken more time to eat more snow cones with those you cared for and who cared for you, rather than letting life beat you down. So should I.