At the hospital during his first heart attack, the doctor used defibrillators for the first time. The paddles had arrived in the mail that day. The doctor took them out, read the instructions, turned them on, marveled at the electric whir in his hands and let ‘em rip.

The paddles left burn marks on Mr. Lewis’s chest.

Two nurses, despite the hopelessness of the situation, performed CPR on him for twelve hours. Twelve. Hours. I sometimes wonder what they were thinking. Not so much why they did it–they obviously committed themselves to it–I wonder more about the thoughts that went through their minds during those long hours.

Did they think about husbands and boyfriends? Their kids at their mother’s house? Was this job a way out of their mother’s grip? Did this dying man remind them of someone famous? Someone they wish they knew? Someone they knew and wished that they didn’t? Did they think about food? Johnny Carson? Their sister’s hot tub in Phoenix?

Did the nurses team up together for this, or did they tag team? Did one of them get jealous when the other was performing CPR? Did they even like each other or was this just a job? Was this one of those shared moments in life that forced them together? Forced them to bond, to make make a sinewy connection that neither of them would be able to break for the rest of their lives?

Were they guilty/happy/sad most of the time?

Whoever they were, whatever they thought, they saved his life.

After dying the first time, Mr. Lewis was honest about his heart condition. He knew what was up. He had a broken heart and a lot of people, including himself, wanted to fix it. Thing is, you don’t really fix a broken heart–not this kind anyway.

I like to think that it was his intimate knowledge of physical imperfection, of being broken, that made him gracious. When he looked at you, he looked at you with this knowledge: he knew that there was something about you that you knew was broken. Not only did he look at you and talk to you and listen to you like it’s okay to be messed up, he understood that it’s supposed to be like that.

No judgment. No I’m-the-wise-man-listen-to-me routine. Together, you were just two broken people laughing and loving and supporting each other.

People were drawn to him for this reason. They somehow knew this about him. It wasn’t confession. It wasn’t patriarchal like that. It was relief. This feeling you got when you were around him made you feel worth it.

And that’s what I learned: figure out a way to be the type of person that makes other people feel worth it.

Worth love. Worth affection. Worth others and work and laughing and yelling and crying. Worth the air and music and pancakes and pie. Worth mountain tops and open lakes and packed theaters. Worth the critics and the admirers. Worth the talent. Worth the shortcomings. Worth twelve hours of CPR with nurses we’ll never know.

Lesson no. 1 from Mr. Lewis, my grandfather: you’re worth it.

I’m a little sorry to say that the first time I heard about this, I tried it. Sorry because I’m really easy to influence. I probably read about it in a magazine and tried it that night. Doesn’t take much. Unfortunately, I was still in high school (and so was she) so I didn’t discover anything juicy. I found out that she thought she had acne, chewed her vitamins, used men’s razors, a pink deodorant, and obviously had a nervous habit of collecting hair scrunchies. See? Nothing juicy (except for maybe the bit about the men’s razors–that might have something fun to it).

So, I’m not sure it really works, but I love the idea. This idea that you can look at a slice of someone’s life and figure out who they are: the books they read, the music they listen to, the crap they keep in their car.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can apply this experiment to my own life. Figure out my personality. Figure out who I am and what I want. It’s a little frustrating. This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I feel like I’m always trying to figure out who I really am. Can’t I just observe something in my wake and draw some conclusions?

Well, sort of.

Personal cataloging is one of the side effects of the web. I bookmark stuff that’s helpful or interesting to me on delicious.com. I’ve been doing it for a few years now, so I thought maybe this would give me some direction. My theory was simple: if you are a combination of what you want/like and what you actually do from day to day, your bookmarks should reveal something about you. I logged in and pulled up my tag cloud (list of categories) for my bookmarks, and here’s what it looked like:

So, what did I find out from my digital medicine cabinet?

I dig writing, design, running, and photography. Lifehacks? I like learning new things and figuring out unconventional ways to grow, I guess. I like to inspire or be inspired–or at least think I do. Despite my efforts against it sometimes, I apparently think collaboration is important.

Any surprises? Not really. But it did have a calming and focusing effect on me. For every item in this list I have another five that I think about or consider doing. After all of the circling and wandering, I come back to the same things that are most important to me. That’s good to know. It tells me what to write about. It tells me what to talk about.

So, who am I? I guess I’m someone who likes to communicate. Am I any good at it? Doesn’t matter.