Eighteen years ago today, I was sitting at a much larger
computer terminal on New Year’s Eve frantically corresponding with a Managing
Director at Banc of America Securities in Palo Alto, California. Three hours behind me, it mattered little to
him that the first New Years of the new millennium would be spent with me negotiating
a credit agreement to provide capital to my company to cover the bank’s own
reneging on its capital and business commitment weeks earlier. After all, my midnight would pass and he’d
still have three hours before the champagne corks would be launched. And on that night, I made a promise. For as long as I ran M·CAM, my last act on
the last day of each year would be to write an homage of gratitude to those
who, in the preceding year, had made my year wonderful. I think of this the Incarnation of Gratitude
Litany.
As if to test my resolve, my morning this morning included an
invitation to be lured back to the table of re-trading against myself and my
values. The difference between now and
18 years ago is a simple one. It came in
my understanding of a moral riddle given to me in the Golden Pagoda (Kinkaku-ji) in Kyoto long ago.
Impassioned to convey sage wisdom into my life, an aged monk
grabbed onto my coat and motioned for me to sit beside him.
“Turn the bamboo for your omikuji,” he said handing me a
large bamboo section with a small hole drilled in one side.
I rolled the bamboo and, after a few seconds, turned it to
one side allowing a strand of wood to slip out of the hole. On the strip was a series of kanji
characters. Handing it to the monk, I
watched as he took it and melted into an expression of sheer amazement.
“Ah, this omikuji hasn’t been drawn before. It is very special,” he said as he shuffled
over to a wall of tiny cubby holes each containing a miniature scroll. “We’ve heard about this scroll but I’ve never
seen it. You must listen very carefully as
what I have to tell you is very important.”
I sat as he relayed the following story.
A great hunter always provided food for his village. When he would enter the forest, he would find
deer, rabbits or birds, shoot them with his arrows or catch them in his snares
and bring them back to the village so that all were provisioned. In the forest, there was a line. Before that line, hunting big game was appropriate
as it could be carried back to the village without any concern of
exhaustion. Beyond the line, the hunter
should only pursue small game as dragging a deer back would require too much effort
and, as such, neither he nor the village would benefit. He and his village thrived. Then one day, he went into the forest to
hunt. Deep in the forest, he had seen
nothing. No tracks in the snow; no hide,
hair, or feather. And then, standing on
the line of demarcation he saw them: a deer and a rabbit.
“You know what to do,” the monk exclaimed. “You’re the great hunter.”
“What’s the punchline?” I inquired. “How does this end?”
“Right,” he replied, “You know!”
2018 taught me that I misunderstood hunting as a
pursuit. The reason for my struggle with
the omikuji was up until this year, I thought that the hunter had the next
move. His wit, his cunning, his aim, his
strength. But what I learned in 2018 was
that the deer and the rabbit were not prey.
They were not provision. They
were seduction into the reflexive illusion of “choice”. Was the hunter going to be trapped into
expending every last bit of energy to haul the deer back? Was the hunter going to start collecting
rabbits and birds for their portability?
Was the hunter going to be wise enough to invite either the deer or the
rabbit (and any other woodland creature, for that matter) to follow him back to
the village? Was the hunter wise enough
to turn away from the hunt and teach the village to become self-sufficient? Was the hunter thoughtful enough to realize
that he wasn’t provisioning but rather enabling dependency?
So, in keeping with my year end tradition, I honor and
celebrate my dear friends Bob Kendall and Amanda Gore who stood with me once
more as steadfast, intrepid allies in my mission. I honor Cody Lloyd for giving me a father’s joy
on January 15 of this year when he sent me a letter I will cherish for the rest
of my life in which he informed me of his abiding love and passion for my daughter
Katie. I honor my son Zachary for his
embrace of living that involved joining the team at M·CAM. I honor Nicolas Wales for his relentless pace climbing actual and metaphoric hills and inspiring the same in me. I honor Dex Wheeler, Pam Cole and Dylan
Korelich who struggled mightily across the year to help the entire team at M·CAM
thrive and achieve unimaginable successes.
I honor community that has formed around the Breathing Enterprise’s Gatherings
and the persistent value of family that they have manifest in my life. I honor my beautiful wife Kim for her
persistent, generative passion. But in
this end of 2018, I will, for the first time honor one more person. Someone who has never featured in any of my
gratitude posts over nearly 20 years. As
the sun sets on 2018, I honor my resolute passion to be the very best of
humanity! I honor my unflagging generosity
and loyalty. In short, I honor me. I’m grateful to finally sit, puzzle solved,
and watch the deer and the rabbit make THEIR next move.
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Beauteous. Thanks
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