This is an article written by James Nason for Subtext Magazine. I love it and wanted to share it as sometimes I have thoughts that come out when I am being interviewed that I am not sure come out when I’m simply having a conversation.
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Pain and trauma are catalysts. Events happen in peoples’ lives that challenge absolutely everything about their situation, and change everything in an instant. A great friend of BassBus, Jim Button, of Village Brewery, Circle Carnival and Best of Calgary, has recently endured just such a traumatic change. A few years ago he was given a terminal cancer diagnosis, and for a relatively young man with a young family and years of life ahead, it must have hit like a ton of bricks.
Photo by Ewan Nicholson
Whatever that personal journey and discussion was after the fact of his initial diagnosis four years ago, it is striking to speak with him now and see the reaction to his personal trauma. As a person who spent years and years building up community at every turn, spending time and resources to develop positivity and connection immediately around him, that exact spirit of giving and contribution led to an effort that will be his legacy: funding a $5 million research chair at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary. Its focus will be Pediatric Psychosocial Oncology and Survivorship, and Jim and his family are dedicating their every connection, relationship and asset towards that lofty goal, after decades of healthy, thriving presence in the Calgary business and creative community.
Your second mountain becomes pure joy. Your joy comes from seeing others do better, feel better, and quite often people that hit this catastrophic scenario start climbing the second mountain.
- Jim Button
“In talking to [the team at University of Calgary] there was a gap in the research in terms of pediatrics and in large part our goal is to create a research chair so we can hire a big brain researcher who would hire a bunch of other big brain researchers to do the appropriate research to create the appropriate programs to help children and their families that are surviving and dealing with cancer.
“We just started thinking about whether or not this was the right project but it was pretty quick when we thought of kids with cancer, and the ordeal we’ve gone through, [psychosocial supports] have helped us out a lot and are quite impactful. The idea of as a parent seeing a child have cancer, we can quickly get from A to B to understand the trauma of that and the need to have programs and resources in place all built on solid research to help those kids and the families and friends and siblings of those kids cope with, well, basically, cancer never goes away. Even if it does it’s still always in the back of your head that it can come back again. Just imagine being a parent of a five year old and watching that child lose two years of school and the means in which they become debilitated because they had brain surgery and they’ve got a big scar on their head and they’re bald or they’ve deteriorated a lot of their other functions, stuff they’ll live with forever. So how do you deal with that? How do you feel good about moving forward? You need psychosocial support for that and in order to do the right programs you need to do the right research.
Since Jim and Tracey have begun this philanthropic journey, they’ve collaborated with Benevolent Artists National Coalition (BANC) to raise $121,000 at Hotel Arts at an event called Unbuttoned, put together a modest little horse race fundraiser at the St. Louis Hotel, and generally found every possible angle to talk about their cause. Shaw staff jumped on board, too, and held a live and silent auction and raised $75,000, which Shaw executives matched to raise the total to $150,000. Altogether, of the $5 million the research chair needs, about half (or $2.5 million) is either confirmed or promised to the cause.
Jim and Tracey Button and family support a $5 million Chair in Pediatric Psychosocial Oncology and Survivorship through the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary
Impressive execution thus far, and a lasting gift for families moving forward. Jim is highly philosophical about his motivations for this cause, which is understandable for a man with a terminal diagnosis. We kept chatting with him to hear about where this all started for him, on a spiritual level.
“When I was given my terminal diagnosis three and a half, almost four years ago of a year to two years, it was quite traumatic when the oncologist said, ‘Get your affairs in order.’
“What was beneficial along the way, obviously we have a great network of family and friends but the other thing we tapped into was the psychosocial supports through the Tom Baker Cancer Centre and Wellspring Calgary. We did counselling for individuals as well as for the whole family. We did mindfulness programs, Qigong, Tracey has gone to caregiver support groups, and those are all tools that have come out of the psychosocial world that have been a great support for us.” The research chair would be able to design and implement similar programs tailored to the needs of children and their families in their time of need.
Jim speaks of his illness with grace and full openness, so a full circle spiritual philosophical underpinning soon became evident. The purpose and conviction in him speak to a frankly positive tone to his whole demeanour, one that makes a deeply philosophical conversation possible immediately, despite this being our first ever conversation.
“The day Tracey and I were given the terminal diagnosis we were in the oncologist’s office, we eventually came home and while we were at home talking about it I got a text from a friend named Avnish Mehta and Avnish in his text said, ‘You kept popping into my mind so I took you into a healing session and I spotted a bunch of dark clouds over your lungs. They look serious enough you should go get them checked out.’”
“So the same day that the oncologist says I’ve got fifteen lesions in my lungs, is the same day that someone who has no clue I’m going to see the oncologist tells me I’ve got dark clouds in my lungs. It was at that point there that, I’ve always been very spiritual since Tracey, and studied it in university a bit, and that closed the deal on the fact that we’re all part of a shared experience. The reason we’ve gone through the process of doing what we’re doing is because of that shared experience and we’re all responsible for each other.”
“While I go through this there’s a really great energy that comes back to Tracey and I when we’re being purposeful. We’ve known that ever since we’ve been together, we’ve been married for 22 years, we’ve always been very involved in our community, and once you get sick you realize how big your community is and how much they support you. Having that knowledge and that experience and having been people that have always been engaged in trying to make a better city or community, in a moment when time is seriously precious we are investing time into this because it’s good for us in many ways. In large part because we get back way more than we give.”
Such an attitude in the face of so much sadness and confusion is both heartfillingly comforting, and absolutely fitting. It speaks to an authentically positive character one would hope and expect of a person who had dedicated real, substantial resources, financial, emotional and otherwise, to especially community focused endeavours.
It’s easy to see the all around positive impact too. After all, Jim’s outlived his initial diagnosis by a long shot, so every day is a precious gift -- just like always, really, right?
“When the time came and I got the diagnosis, I kind of went, ‘You know, I feel good about what I’ve done, I’ve left a good impact and I’m raising two good kids who get to see what comes back when you give. I completely felt along the way that it wasn’t as devastating as it might be for someone who didn’t spend time climbing that second mountain.”
A quick diversion into what Jim is alluding to here. On his blog, Jim shared a piece by David Brooks called The Moral Peril of Meritocracy, that a friend had sent to him. In it, Brooks talks about the value of exactly what Jim has been speaking about: giving unconditionally to the world.
“If the first mountain is about building up the ego and defining the self,” Brooks writes, “the second is about shedding the ego and dissolving the self. If the first mountain is about acquisition, the second mountain is about contribution.”
Image by Antoine Maillard
What Brooks means by the first mountain is a journey most people in Western culture will find familiar. It is the satisfaction of material things and earthly accomplishments. Jim explained it to me: “The mountain you’re climbing is you’re getting a job, you’re graduating high school, graduating university, you’re getting married, you’re getting a better job, you’re getting a house, you’re getting a bigger house, you’re getting another car, you’re chasing all these things that fulfill you, yourself.”
“But then a catastrophe comes along whether it’s a divorce, or a bankruptcy of your company, or the death of a sibling, or a terminal diagnosis, and you fall off the mountain. All those things that were once important, no longer become important to you. The car, the house, all that stuff. The ostentatious aspect. You need a spot to live and you need a car to get around, but you don’t care about all the other trappings of capitalism.“
After reading the Brooks article, it is evident to me that Jim has always been a second mountain person, finding validation and contentment in life from the support and promotion of the people around him. That’s probably why he was able to so gracefully recover from his fall and keep climbing his personal second mountain. “The first one you’re chasing happiness... and your second mountain becomes pure joy. Your joy comes from seeing others do better and feel better.”
Jim and Tracey speaking with Globe & Mail about their cause. Photo by Neil Zeller
It’s not a stretch to imagine the positive feedback loop that would happen here. Not only has Jim, his family, and all of his business and community ventures been outwardly focused to better his immediate surroundings, now in the face of a scary and traumatic situation, this one specific hugely positive and helpful goal must be creating more health and more vitality for him to keep fighting his illness. Life begets life, and a research chair for, as he puts it “big brain researchers” to determine the most beneficial policies and programs to help vulnerable kids.
“You always get way more than you give,” he continues. “If you’re open to it, you can see that a lot. And that’s what the mindfulness does. It can open your mind to see things that you might have just forgotten before or just let pass by. I talk with kids with cancer all the time. The gift of time with a terminal diagnosis is you start paying attention to the things that matter. You have conversations that would probably just kinda say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get to that conversation and tell her I love her tomorrow.’ Or get back to somebody that you had a dispute with, that you hadn’t talked to about something really petty.”
Speaking with Jim, especially in his position, is an enlightening privilege. Such grace and positive forward momentum is inspirational for many reasons, not the least of which is the raw power that genuine, unencumbered positivity can have. Even though most people will not need the research Jim and his compatriotes fund, the very fact of knowing that people who need psychosocial supports in pediatric oncology will have those programs, and that it has been funded by the most selfless of motivations and acts, is a wellspring of hope and joy in a world that sometimes lacks just those things.
Read Jim’s thoughts over the past few years at his blog, Gather With Jim.