Wait a Minute
A few weeks ago I went to lunch with someone I had only met via email. Our relationship was at best tenuous. He had come on like gangbusters. I had made it clear I wasn’t going there.
Over time, we started over and ended up at the same table. We talked for over 2 hours and I found a person quite generous and charming, who knew what his passions were.
Since that time we’ve been able to do each other a favor and add a couple of mutual friends to the conversation. At one point, we talked about what happened when we first met and how I used to the same thing — come on too strongly and too much in my head. “Head and heart,” I told him, “when you have them together you are so charming. Let the world see you.”
I hadn’t thought much about that second conversation, until last night when I went visit a pair of friends for the holiday. While I was there one of them mentioned that the young man in question had called her. My firend said she was tired of his attitude and jwas about to hang the phone when he stopped and said, “Someone told me this isn’t the way to be. I’m sorry. How are you? What are you doing?”
My friend’s face softened noticeably as she related the story.
She said, “I was ready to hang up and then he said that. So I told him what I had been doing. We had a great conversation. I so enjoyed talking to him.” She was smiling.
What a star! What a charming man she met. He reached out and told her the truth about what he was feeling. He simply said, “I need to start again to let you see me.” Then he did.
He changed the world by his truth and humility.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Morning Liz
Thoughtful ponderings for a bank-holiday.
I know someone who’s filled with humility. So much so, nobody notices him the first many times they meet him. That hurts him, because he has so many true things to give.
I can’t tell him to be less humble, can I?
Karin H.
Hi Karin!
Maybe it’s not humility. Humility doesn’t mean that you make yourself invisible. Humility is raising others higher, valuing others more — not devaluing oneself. I’m going to write a post on this.
Hi Liz
Exactly as my dear friend does. Maybe it’s just me who wants him to ‘shine’ more in the spotlight. Where he just wants to do what he does best: raising others higher.
So I need to stop and start over in this case 😉
Karin H.
Hi Karin!
I don’t think that you could be too far off, if your observation that it hurts him is so.
Hi Liz
No, it’s the other way round I just discovered (you made me stop and think – again).
It’s me who is hurt that others don’t really see – or notice – who this humble person touches everyone around him with special blessings.
Not him.
So I stand corrected and will better myself. (And still care deeply for him, in my own way ;-))
Karin H.
Ah, Karin,
What wonderful things that says about you. You’re a giver to want the light to shine on the person next to you because you think he is so much more than people se. 🙂
He is
(And I’m very, very rich I know him)
Karin H.
And you share the wealth every time you tell us something wise he’s said. 🙂