In a lifetime, how many opportunities have you missed to listen to a potential friend, or at least a possible interesting acquaintance, because you stopped at “how you doing today?”
This thought became real to me recently while listening to a marvelous book, Theo of Golden, by Allen Levi. It is Levi’s first novel. He described it as an “experiment,” but friends who read pieces of it implored him to try to get it published.
The story is about Theo. We don’t know his last name until the end. He flies alone on a private jet to a university town named Golden, ostensibly attracted by 115 portraits drawn in pencil by an unknown artist, displayed in a local coffee shop.
Theo buys all of the art pieces anonymously. One by one he writes handwritten letters to the particular subjects of the portraits and invites them to meet him near a prominent fountain in the center of town to receive their portrait as a gift.
Over the course of the book, we learn about many of the people as Theo graciously meets them and thoughtfully brings out their “stories.” Invariably they want to know why this kind old man with a foreign accent wants to bestow a gift on a stranger, but slowly and often reluctantly they reveal a heart-rending story to Theo.
The book has an underlying plotline, but the essence of the novel for me is that every person has a fascinating personal story to relate if we take the time and show real interest in hearing it.
When I consider the gifts I have given my children over the years that have shaped their lives, it isn’t money or physical things that mattered but memories. Stories I’ve told them have had the most impact.
My children gave me a poster on my 80th birthday with memories that stuck with them. The things that remain in our hearts and brains are the stories we have shared.
The simple acts of kindness that Theo offered by gifting the portraits helped build a network of friends in the city of Golden, a place he had never visited before he was 86.
For me, the columns I’ve written over 25 years have built a network of acquaintances who feel they know me.
I wish you, my long-term readers and new discoverers of Swarf, would write to me or call me so we can learn each other’s stories.
In the machinery business, I’m planning to take more time to develop personal conversations, not about the attributes of machines or asking prices, but about who the folks really are.
People often say they don’t have the time, but I’ve learned that if I have the time to listen, they have the time to talk.
So, what is your story?
Question: What’s a story your parents told you, or one you love telling your kids?
1 Comment
I got paired with a young man in a golf tournament. I asked him “what is your golf story” Well… he started hitting a plastic ball in the yard at 3, then got some real clubs at 5 or so. Once his dad took him to a golf range he was hooked. He played in HS, his dad hooked him up with a golf pro (our connection) he spent a month our two at St. Andrews in Scotland at a international golf training camp. He played a couple of years
of collage golf down south then became a teaching pro out west somewhere. He tired of that and is now an
electricians apprentice working on installing solar farms. He won the IBEW’s golf tournament this year and had the hat to prove it.
So in your business I think asking “what is your machining story” could open up some conversations.