‘You might as well enjoy life’: B.C. senior inspires smiles by walking for blocks with big teddy bear

Adam joins a woman clutching an unusual prize—and learns about the adversity she has overcome.

Before she began walking with a very big stuffed bear in her arms, Lisa Weiner was wondering about an unexpected phone call.

“I thought, ‘It’s a scam. I’m not picking it up.’ So, I didn’t,” Lisa recalls. “And then today, I got the same phone call and I thought, ‘Well geez.’”

She thought it might be important, so she answered it. The voice on the other end of the phone told Lisa she’d won the contest she entered last month.

“I was so elated,” Lisa says. “I don’t care if I win a pair of socks. It’s exciting.’”

So, she decided to walk over to collect her prize, before discovering just how big it was.

“At first it was, ‘OK, here we go. Do I have the nerve (to carry it home)?,” Lisa says. “And then I realized, who wouldn’t want to see a stuffed bear?”

After walking a whole bunch of blocks with the bear, Lisa’s found it inspires all sorts of people to smile.

“It’s been delightful,” Lisa smiles.

Especially because Lisa knows what it’s like when you feel like you have nothing to smile about. Like when she was living in San Francisco during the ’80s and lost so many male friends she had to stop counting.

“I lost my reason for breathing, quite frankly,” Lisa says.

Until she found that how she responded to tragedy was a choice.

“Well, you can either stay stuck and life gets worse, or you can carry on,” Lisa says. “Everybody has that decision at one time or another.”

It wasn’t easy, but Lisa decided to keep living life to the fullest, by choosing to face adversity with fun.

“You might as well enjoy life,” Lisa says.

When she struggled to figure out who she was after retiring, Lisa decided to pick up an instrument she hadn’t played since she was a child and joined two community bands.

“Oh! It was wonderful,” Lisa smiles. “It was a gas!”

And then—while enduring debilitating cancer treatments—Lisa strived to focus on making her health-care team laugh.

“I’m convinced laughter is a good medicine,” Lisa smiles.

And now that she’s also learned big bears make everybody seem to feel better, Lisa’s planning to present it to one of the little people in her life.

“I’m going to send it to her,” Lisa hopes it will feel just like unexpectedly winning a contest you forgot you entered.

“She’ll love it!”