Who is Josh S. Cansler? Where is he now, fourteen years later after he flew from Portland to Detroit? Along the way, he read Krandall Kraus and Paul Borja's It’s Never About What It’s About: What We Learned About Living While Waiting To Die. Josh used his June 4, 2004 boarding pass on now-defunct Northwest Air 812 as his bookmark. When I bought the used book eight years later, his boarding pass was still intact, but his story, his life, his history stayed unrevealed to me.
Was this a one-way flight or round trip? Did he finish the book? Did he forget the boarding pass was in the book when he sold the book? Did he realize the pass would stay in the book, unnoticed and untouched, as it made its way into the online used book market? Why did he choose this particular book to read on that long flight beginning at 8:35 a.m.? As he sat in seat 8A, Business Class, was he contemplating his own mortality, his illness from cancer or HIV, his career, his future, his relationships with friends or family or lovers, ancient hurts, future fears? As he soared at 35,000 feet, did he read a few more pages, then look up occasionally to rehash arguments in his mind where he had exploded over trivial things, masking the true reasons for the disagreement, revealing that it’s never about what it’s about.
I had purchased this book to give to a friend for I mentioned the concept of “it’s never about what it’s about” to him when he called one day, wanting advice about a recent volatile argument between him and his wife. I had remembered this book and this truth from reading it years ago. Their disagreement was ostensibly over his unilateral decision to buy new smart phones with ultra-texting capacity that would be “good for work" and good for their own closer communication. But as I gently reminded him that it’s never about what it’s about, and likely her real issue was not his purchase nor smart phone texting, but rather a gut reaction to her three years of unquestioning, unflagging support while he worked on and completed his Ph.D. She minded the kids, carving out work space and time for his classes and research, sacrificing other financial plans while they paid expensive graduate school bills, letting long-term demands of work and career advancement trump short-term gratification. So when he announced, blithely and happily, and cluelessly, that he’d purchased smart phones, without consultation, and “good for work,” her three years of “sacrifice” (willingly, yet still a huge emotional investment while he Ph.D’d), seemed overlooked, unappreciated, diminished. And if now they might find themselves growing closer without a dissertation always hanging over their heads, here he was buying smart phones and texting capacity because it would be “good for work.” When does he start thinking about what would be “good for us”?!? No wonder there were harsh words and hurt feelings.
It’s never about what it’s about, I told my friend, and explained to him the origin of this phrase, and this book I had once read and remembered so vividly. He wanted to read it too, so I bought a used copy that was shipped to me from an on-line used book clearinghouse in Kirkland, WA. It came with a yellowed and aged boarding pass for Josh S. Cansler tucked in its pages. It’s an intriguing journey this book has made, from Kraus and Borja’s living and writing and publishing this book in 2000, to my reading it for the first time soon after, to Josh S. Cansler’s acquiring his copy of the book, then reading it while flying in 2004 from Portland to Detroit, and likely back to Portland, so that the book ends up with a used book seller in Kirkland WA about 200 miles from his home, then again travels cross country to me in Largo. I read it once more before I gave it to my troubled friend for Father’s Day, 2012.
Google research reveals that there is one Joshua Cansler, a HR/Talent Acquisition Specialist at LRS Architects in Portland, Oregon, who graduated from Chemeketa Community College and Western Oregon University. Is this our Josh in the Pacific Northwest, and what would he make of this book’s journey? What advice would he offer as friends fight over smart phones when they really are fighting over something much bigger, their own marriage and commitment to one another? What lessons did Josh learn when he read the book 14 years ago? How did he apply, or not, that wisdom in his own heated disagreements over something trivial that represents something much, much larger?
WWJD—what would Josh do—to learn about living while waiting to die? What hard-earned wisdom across the years and miles can still be ours today?
Ben Wiley, one of our Creative Loafing film reviewers, is also an advocate for paper and print. Dead trees, if you will. He volunteers at a local library bookstore and enjoys engaging with readers and their books. Our series BookStories will highlight some of these Ben, Book & Beyond encounters.
This article appears in Mar 22-29, 2018.
