I'm ready at my desk at sunrise, a half an hour early actually, my
IBM
/ Lenovo L14 Gen 1 Windows 10 laptop computer
in front of me,
its Zoom app open fullscreen, a revolving circle confirming I'm
connected
to Zoom while waiting for him to log on. Then the revolving circle
disappears and his face comes into focus ... gradually.
At first I conceptualize this as our digitalconnection.
But it's not. It's our
connection
- period. For me it's simply a privilege to be here
connected
with him like this. I don't envision a "tell me about / how
to"connection,
rather a "being in the
presence
of / speaking and listening"connection.
That said, it's "speaking and listening" that gives "being in the
presence
of". And it's "being in the
presence
of" that's the
source
for me, the osmosis. It just takes being in his
presence
to get what a master is - said more pointedly, to get who a master
be's (you don't get this sort of thing by reading a
textbook).
There's a certain quality he has about him, a certain je ne sais
quoi, a certain something I'm
present
to and have been
present
to for forty five years every time we've interacted. It's something
he's never without, no matter what he's doing. At work or leisure, it's
always
present,
a constant true north of being.
That's the quality I'm enamored with, one I admire greatly - revere, in
fact. And this time I get something about it that's truly profound.
This time I even get something about it newly. What I get is this: this
particular quality's not a "je ne sais quoi" after all.
That's French for "I don't know what", and I do know what
that something is he's never without. I do know what it is (not
knowing's got nothing to do with it). But until now, it's been
the backgound
- like air for the bird / water for the fish. And this
time, I get it sharper, more urgently than I have ever before, enough
to discover it for myself clearer than ever before.
And what it is, is this: being a master is not a part-time job.
You can quote me on that. It's a total, all in, 1,000%
full on
way of being,
24 / 7 / 365.
Being at work or at leisure's got nothing to do with it. Once a master,
always a master. It really is "always". That's what I got
newly about this quality he brings: it's perpetual. It's not part-time.
It's a full-time job. And if my calling it a "job" makes too much of
the doing of it, then I'll rephrase that as: it's a
perpetual, full-time,
24 / 7 / 365way of Being, the difference between them being that "doing"
evokes all things we do, and it's "way of Being" that evokes all we
are.
Around him ie when I'm interacting with him, there's no lapse in his
integrity.
Not once. Ever. And if there's a lapse, he clears it up even before I
register it as a lapse. Nothing gets stepped over. Nothing gets swept
under the rug. He be's that
integrity
is the context for it all. He is that. And he never lapses
into
gossip.
Ever. And if I myself lapse into
gossip
around him (as I'm wont to do from time to time) he either doesn't
respond to it at all, or if he does respond it's with a knowing smile
that says "I'm not touching that", leaving me on the verge of
the inquiry
"He didn't touch that, but I did. What's that
all about?".
Gossip
isn't innocuous. It can hurt. In the context of conversations for
transformation,
gossip
is petty, time-wasting small-talk contradistinguished from the
bigness
that's possible with
language.
And he's living proof of the
bigness
that's possible with
language
(around him, it's perpetual, full-time,
24 / 7 / 365).