If your presence doesn’t have impact, your absence will not make a difference
I don’t measure success in digits on a paycheck, or in a title on a business card. Both of those can be lost and gained… I admire you for who you are beyond that, for the desire to learn, the drive, the integrity with which you live every day, I admire how you have heart and emotion and a sense for family, how you laugh and how you are not afraid to cry.
Success to me is a balance, who cares if you are the number one consultant in the history of McK, who will remember that? No matter what we tell ourselves, we are completely replaceable… look at Paco Barnes, he was a Partner, and yet it’s not like the office has even stopped to take a breath and notice he is gone. Success, in my world, is a person who can fend for themselves, who has fought and lost and found ways to win again. Someone who has a family (one that knows him) and friends (who he sees and hangs out with) and a job (which keeps him chllenged and learning) and health (wich he nurtures)… It’s someone who can walk into the corner pub, grab a beer (and know what he is drinking) and get excited over the Jay Hawks killing it (and maybe make a few temporary friends for the night) just as well as he can sport a tux and walk into the Smithsonian on a Gala fundraiser evening, sip a black label and talk about Miro and Vivaldi’s last attempt to find his orphaned grandchild.
He is the guy who everyone talks to, not because he has status or drives a mercedes, but because he is trustworthy and friendly and just simply fun to be around. And its ok if he’s never started a grill, or if he the only difference he sees between red wine and white is the colour, the point is that he is open to learn and is willing to try. And if tomorrow he can tell you about Mahler, about Krapp’s last tape, if his eyes light up when he tells you about the Blue Danube or about the secret passages in the castles of France, the sound of the echo in an underground cave or the beautiful colours of the caravans of Kandahar, it will not be because he is trying to impress you, but because life’s mysterious ways have led him there and he has LIVED these things thoroughly and passionately.
That is why I love you, because I know you are this person. But that is why it hurts so much more to see you trapped in a cage. You think it doesnt matter if you don’t sleep, but you get grumpy, and you lose the colour in your cheeks and the spark in your eyes. And I simply can’t stand by and watch, its almost as cruel as having a wild predator that has seen the savannah locked in a cage for mere entertainment and watching him expire, one day at a time.
