I wish I could have a video recorder with me all day and capture moments in conversations…
I take for granted the amazing conversations that I find myself in, and the understanding that they give me about the concept of harmony. When I get to share those lessons with someone new – who has a deep hunger for it, but hasn’t discovered these concepts yet… it is such a rush.
Today, I had the pleasure of meeting an amazing man and a dear friend for breakfast.
I worked with him over 20 years ago. He is the “salt of the earth”.
I have been in awe of him from the first moment I met him.
He is a mountain of a man. He is crazy intelligent and passionate about his craft. He is entrepreneurial and has an integrity to what he does that is contagious. He loves his profession.
I have always admired his intelligence, his passion, his integrity…
I love him. I love him like a brother despite the fact that I have only seen him probably 4 times in the past 20 years and probably combined for no more than 8 hours.
Ayn Rand writes that we all have a “sense of life” about us – and it is our sense of life that reacts to someone else’s sense of life. A sense of life, being the summation of all that you are, of all that you believe showing up in your “energy” in your gestures, in your tone, in all aspects of who you are in every moment.
So, this man has battled and lost and battled and won.
He has been through a divorce because he worked so hard that his wife drifted away.
He raised his children.
He built his company through sweat and pain and difficult times for over a decade… battling every step of the way even collecting unemployment at times while he still paid his staff and raised his kids.
Over the past 15 years he has been very successful. He has made millions – though that was never his intention, nor his motivation. And, his money has been largely used to set up trusts so that his family will have security going forward.
He drives a modest car, lives a modest life.
His mission is to do good work and take care of those who work with him.
He battled cancer – a very aggressive cancer – and won. And, now the radiation has weakened his heart and so much of his body that he doesn’t know how much longer he has to live.
He remarried and his new kids have serious health issues.
He has battled and lost and battled and won… and battles on…
But he is anxious and concerned about so many things. He feels responsible for everyone that has ever worked for him, for his family, for things that haven’t happened yet… for things that already past…
He is a warrior… a relentless warrior… everyone that works with him loves him and appreciates him deeply.
But he has been carrying the battle with disharmony all by himself!
He has been battling his anxiety with his health, with the future, with all of the unknowns for decades.
So, as always… why am I sharing this?
Because despite his amazing character, intelligence and success… my friend suffers from so much disharmony…
You can be successful without harmony, but it never feels like success.
You can be extremely wealthy without harmony, but you never feel like you have made enough.
You can be many things without harmony… but its really hard to be grateful, deeply grateful… and its almost impossible to be happy.
So, I told him that I loved him, and I told him he was the “salt of the earth”.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Because you are pure… you are motivated by the most sincere integrity to help those around you and to provide value with everything that you do.”
He is a religious man. He has faith. He has provided so much for so many, and I know that deep down inside, he questions his contribution every day.
He said to me, “I envy you, and envy is not something that I am supposed to feel as a Christian. I envy because you are happy, you have always been happy and full of energy. Your life is enviable.”
He told me that he thought I was smarter than he was.
NO WAY!!!!!!
I question my happiness… and there is NO WAY that I am smarter than he is.
I told him, I am not smarter… I have just come to understand things from a different perspective.
This is a man that is so very powerful, so very intelligent, so completely capable, and so unaware of the limiting energy from disharmony.
We had a fantastic conversation. He was inspired and excited and refreshed. I hope like crazy that I can help him find a way through… and I believe I can.
It requires embracing his absolute truth…
He has built an amazing and reputable business.
He has provided magnificently for his family.
He has earned significant wealth.
His company is in a state of transition.
His health is weak – but he is still very capable.
It requires him stepping into the reality that he wants…
He needs to focus on making his business more profitable, and stopping unprofitable work.
He needs to engage his team and his leaders and empower them and inspire them to lead his company in the right way.
He needs to take away the tone of entitlement that he has given his team and instill a tone of action and growth and entrepreneurship.
It requires him staying in the moment and not becoming anxious and consumed by problems that he has not yet encountered.
I am fortunate to know him.
It amazes me and fascinates me how close you can feel to someone you barely know and yet know so completely. I think it is the absolute truth of shared values and a mutually shared admiration for the others' sense of life.
I love how close and connected we can be to other people so immediately... even before we can describe why or how. Our brains work on so many dimensions...
He is in so many ways exactly the kind of man that I aspire to be.
What is amazing is that over the past decades I have perhaps become in some ways the kind of man that he also aspires to be.
You can be successful without embracing harmony… but it will never feel like success.
You can live your life with the greatest integrity and sincerity… and still be consumed by the forces of disharmony.
I am fortunate to know this man. I am in awe of him and admire him in so many ways. Hopefully through our conversations I will be able to help him find a little bit of harmony in his journey and allow him to embrace the amazing truth in who he is, what he has built, and the moments that remain to be enjoyed.
Yours in harmony,
Nestor