Be Interested

The taxi driver in front of me is driving so slow it’s frustrating. I overtake him. Then just a few minutes later another car in front of me brakes suddenly. I brake too and scream to myself.

Arriving at work, a container truck has parked sideways blocking my entrance to the carpark. I can’t believe his stupidity, so I get out, and shout at the driver. He looks at me without much emotion, slowly reverses and lets me come in.

It’s Monday Again.

The same corridor, the same forced smile to the receptionist, the same tug of heaviness in my chest. The air smells of my office having just been cleaned, and the first whirring of the air conditioner. The light overhead is too white, too harsh.

Papers waiting on my desk. Many emails waiting to be answered, and tasks lined up for the rest of the day. And I’ve got three meetings that await me.

It feels like I’m walking into a prison. Of course, of my own making.

I sit down in the chair that knows my back too well, the seat that has both warmed me and imprisoned me for the last thirty years.

The serenity and contentment within me from my time in Paros, Greece for my summer holiday has now left me completely. That life that I dream of living — one where I only need to watch the sun set, with a journal and a cigar in hand — temporarily vanished.

Back to the mundane reality.

The end of the good life as I’ve always envisioned it.

My 10am one on one is about to walk in.

Heat surges from my lower back to my neck. I feel a tightening in my chest. I feel something that is not rage exactly — more like a quiet, corrosive resentment.

Why am I not in that villa right now? Why did I have to come back home and to work? Will I be able to keep doing this grind for the next three, five or seven years?

“What’s one thing you were proud of in the last few weeks,” I ask the manager I’m meeting. He tells me that he was happy that we had zero wrong supplies and I drift off, not even hearing his story about the one they nearly got wrong. I smile. I perform, hoping he didn’t notice how disengaged I was.

Of course, my anger and resentment is not about the driver or the fact that I have to go to work.

I’m reading John Gardner’s speech at Stanford, The Road to Self-Renewal. In it he says that “Perhaps they were pulled down by the hidden resentments and grievances that grow in adult life, sometimes so luxuriantly that, like tangled vines, they immobilize the victim.”

I think about that, and how at 58, I will have to get on the road of self renewal.

What am I holding onto for so long that it has become so immobilising?

The dream I have, the one that my stay in Paros echoed and has made it all the harder to get back into the groove is perhaps a mirage. Would I be content just watching the horizon, smoking a cigar and writing? Or would I miss the feeling that people and products give me while running my company?

I’m thinking of Gardner’s eloquent words here: “So you scramble and sweat and climb to reach what you thought was the goal. When you get to the top you stand up and look around, and chances are you feel a little empty. Maybe more than a little empty. You may wonder whether you climbed the wrong mountain.”

My 10.30am walks in. We discuss a problem with a leaking tap. I’m immediately animated and formulating the email I need to send to our supplier.

Gardner says, “But you can keep your zest until the day you die. If I may offer you a simple maxim, ‘Be interested.’ Everyone wants to be interesting but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out.”

Products make me interested. That interest makes me come alive. All of a sudden there are new possibilities. There are two areas at work that keep me buzzing. It’s people and products. Perhaps focusing there will keep me interested. But at what cost to the company? Perhaps it’s time I tested that realisation by somehow reducing my operational duties.

My 11am walks in and discusses an issue with one of his team members. I notice that the tightness in my chest has eased and that I’m asking him questions and actually interested in the answers.

When we are done, I wander out of my office towards the new product that has arrived in my absence and I like what I see. This time around I smile at the receptionist and ask her how her last few weeks were.

I think of the future. Maybe I could transition my life from a businessman to a writer. It’s never too late. Even at 58. Or is that another mirage that I’m creating?

There will be many Mondays waiting for me.