I’ve Never Experienced This Before While Speaking on Stage

I’m here in Charleston, South Carolina, and I just did a couple keynote lectures at a conference called the Low Country Mental Health Conference. (It’s an amazing event. Love coming here. Second time in a row doing it. Love it.) But something happened that was unusual. I’ve never had it happen befored while I was on stage. And, it’s such an enormously amazing thing, or at least it highlights an amazing thing, that I couldn’t not bring it to you, I couldn’t not talk about it.

What happened was, I was up on stage, and I was doing my keynote, and it’s an amazing theater. It has a floor level, and then it has a balcony, and then it has an upper balcony. It’s a theater that you would normally assume opera would take place in. It’s a proper theater, unlike most places where I’ve spoken at psychotherapy events.

So I’m on stage, and I’m a pretty engaging lecturer, and I do my best to be funny, and make sure that the crowd is lively and entertained. So I hear yelling coming from what I perceive as the back of the room. I thought they were responding to my content. As I continue teaching, they continue yelling. And at that point, I thought I had offended or upset someone, as if I’m being heckled.

And I pay closer attention to what they’re saying. And I realized that someone in the upper balcony is calling for a medical doctor. And they’re, “Medical doctor. Medical doctor. Medical doctor.” So it’s kind of faint, and I say (because I have the microphone), “Turn on the lights.” And the audio visual people that were backstage turned on the lights, and I can see commotion in that higher balcony and the gentleman calling for a medical doctor. So someone calls 9-1-1, and within about a minute, literally, the EMT workers are coming into the balcony, and they are going over to the person in the audience that’s having the medical issue.

I’m standing on stage. I don’t know what to do. But they’re up there maybe 10 minutes, giving her attention. I see them stand her up very gingerly, walk her over to the gurney where they were gonna wheel her out. And then they wheeled her out.

It was just impossible to continue my lecture after such an event. So the conference organizer said, we’re going to take a little break. My second talk was the next day. So, they were like, Elliott’s just going to pick up during his second talk. And I was towards the end anyway, I probably had 10-15 minutes left anyway, so they just stopped.

And I was so concerned. I have no idea what. What had happened.

So when the break happened, and everybody went back to their seats after that, I wanted to go see the person that I saw waving, just because I wanted to find out what happened, and how the woman was.

And I go meet this person. And I said, “What happened? What went on?” His name is Tommy, by the way. I won’t say his last name because I don’t know that he wants a whole bunch of attention, but his name is Tommy. And I introduced myself, he introduced himself, and he said, “She was sitting behind me, and I watched her pass out, and realized that she was having a medical issue.” And I was like, “Man, that’s so courageous of you to be observant of that, and then be willing to interrupt the entire conference to make sure she got the kind of attention that she needed.” I went and bought him a couple of my books from the bookstore, gave them to him as a gift.

But later that night, I thought about it, and I was like, if she is sitting behind you, how did you see that she had a medical issue? And secondarily, if you are looking at somebody sitting at a conference, why wouldn’t you assume that she just kind of dozed off? Why wouldn’t you assume that she’s just kind of nodding off because she’s tired? How did you know it was a medical event?

So the next day, I do my talk, and after my talk, they have me do a book signing, and Tommy comes and he brings the two books I gave him and wants me to sign them. So the two questions I had from the day before, I get to ask him.

I was like, “Tommy. Man. That was an amazing thing you did. But how did you know that this was a medical event? And how did you even see it if you’re sitting directly in front of her?” And he looked at me, and he said, “You know, to be honest with you, I don’t know how I saw it. I just happened to turn around at the moment that she went out.”

And I said, “When she went out, how did you know she wasn’t falling asleep, and that it was a medical issue?” And he said, “My mother a few months ago had a similar medical event. So I knew the difference between passing out, losing consciousness, versus going to sleep. And I immediately knew, oh, that’s not normal.” And he was the one that called everybody’s attention to it. He called 9-1-1, and the emergency officers were there within a minute.

I go talk to the conference organizers, and I said, “Is the woman doing okay?” And she said, “Yes, she had a cardiac event, but she is stable, she is alert. And when she got to the hospital, first thing she said she did, she said, ‘Please tell the speaker that was on stage that I’m so sorry for ruining his talk.'” Which blew me away. I was like, wow. “Please tell the speaker who was on stage that I’m so sorry for ruining his talk.”

And I then was like, “How come the EMT guys were here as quickly as they got here?” They literally got here in, like, 60 seconds. Now, interesting the way that this building is, city services is like the next building over. They’re basically connected. Police. Fire department. It’s really right there. So when they called 9-1-1, they were able to get over there, in like 60 seconds.

I sat there and I thought, well, number one, I thought, “Man, you can’t convince me that there’s not a higher power, because so many things had to happen to keep this woman alive. If that guy had sat in any other seat, or if that woman had sat in any other seat. If that guy hadn’t known what the medical issue looked like because of the experiences he had with his mom. So many things.

But what really stood out to me and why I’m talking about it now is, number one, this man is a hero. I’m sure he’s not perfect, has his flaws, has his issues, has his challenges, but he did an amazingly heroic thing. And I’ve spent my entire Solution Focused Brief Therapy career, convincing people that all human beings have heroic-ness in them. And it’s our job to assume that, presuppose that, and conduct therapy with our clients from that perspective. That’s primary, like, number one.
Sometimes we get so blinded by the fact that people have problems that we forget, but they also have hero-ness within them. For the rest of this guy’s life, he’s going to be the person who saved this woman. Forever. He’s never going to be anything other than the person who saved this woman.

And then second to that is people are, we forget this, the world is so crazy with turmoil and tragedy and craziness that I think sometimes we forget that there’s goodness in the world. Not only on the behalf of this guy that was willing to save this woman’s life, but when this woman is having an ultimate crisis, when she literally is in a life or death situation, she showed compassion to the person on stage, and that person happened to be me. And the first thought she had was, “I want to apologize to him.”

So I want to share that story, because I want you to always remember that heroes exist, and they exist in everyday people. And that humans, though flawed and awful and capable of catastrophic things, they’re also capable of greatness. And in this world, we need to never, never forget that.