2026 will mark my 31st year working in the media and I am as giddy today as I was all those years ago when I started in this field. I have been fortunate to been a part of some huge stories and events as I look back. The main thing that stands out as I look back is the relationships I have been blessed to cultivate through all of this. One very successful businessman was asked the key to his good fortune and he said, “Along the way, build relationships with as many people as you can as often as you can.”
One of those relationships that I have been fortunate to have is with Olympic Gold Medalist and Nashville resident, Scott Hamilton. If you have spent any time around him, he just oozes sincerity and is one of the most genuine people I have ever come across. You might not know this, but he survived a very difficult battle with brain cancer. Now he is on a mission to help those who are in the same fight he was.
He came on my radio show recently and we had a great discussion about life and I was talking about Nashville traffic and the red lights and rush hour and how it is just horrible and everything that goes with that. As I was just yapping on and on, he started laughing at what I was saying. He looks at me, smiling and said something to me that has stuck with me ever since. He said it with so much honesty and purity that it is burned into my memory.
“After surviving brain cancer, and chemotherapy and days when I thought I was going to die, I am not about to let a three minute red light ruin my day.” In my faux rage of first world problems, here he was putting everything into a perfect place. “I am not about to let a three minute red light ruin my day.” We chuckled and went about our interview and it was great.
Later that night, I was listening to the podcast with Scott and that part came up and this time, it hit me. Hard. Here I am complaining about traffic sitting next to a guy who fought his tail off every day for years against cancer. That saying of “It really put things into perspective,” rang true in every way possible. He was not going to let something so simple and trivial as a red light ruin his day after what he went through.
I have thought about what he said that day many times since then as when we think we got it tough, we usually don’t, someone is taking sitting at a red light for granted. God works in amazing ways to calm our soul and He has just done exactly that with what Scott said. May we always be listening when God is talking to us, no matter who it may be.