THE NEW BEGINNINGAll of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between the average person and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this and stays alert, deliberately waiting, so that when this cubic centimeter of chance pops out, it is picked up.”— Carlos Castaneda I had never felt so much pain in my life. My right hand was quivering uncontrollably, and blood was spilling all over my crisp white shirt. It was a Monday morning, and the only thought filling my head was that this was not a good day for me to die.
As I lay motionless in my car, I was struck by the silence of the scene. No one in the truck that had just crashed into me even so much as twitched. The onlookers who had gathered at the scene looked horrified. And traffic had come to a complete standstill. All I could hear were leaves rustling in the trees that lined the road next to me.
Two of the bystanders came running over, telling me that help was on the way and not to make any movements. One of them grasped my hand and started praying: “Lord, help this man. Please protect him.” Within minutes, a cavalcade of ambulances, fire trucks, and police cruisers surrounded the accident scene with sirens blaring. Everything seemed to slow down, and a strange sense of peace passed through me as the rescue workers methodically began their work, shining examples of grace under pressure. I felt like a witness—almost as if I were watching the entire scene unfold from a high perch above.
The next thing I can recall is waking up in a hospital room that smelled like fresh lemons and bleach. I’ll never forget that smell. My body was wrapped in various bandages, and both of my legs were in casts. My arms were covered with bruises.
I was greeted by a pretty young nurse. “Mr. Valentine! I can’t believe you’re awake! Let me call the doctor,” she said while frantically dialing the intercom stationed next to my bed.
When she got off the intercom, I croaked out, “Call me Jack,” attempting to be casual in what I knew was a serious situation. “Where am I?”
“You’re at Lakeview General Hospital, Jack. This is the Critical Care ward. You had quite an accident last week. To be honest with you, you’re very fortunate to be alive.”
“I am?” I asked sheepishly.
“Un-huh,” the nurse replied with a forced grin while she looked at the charts at the foot of my bed. “You fell into a coma after a pickup truck crashed into you. The paramedics who brought you in here couldn’t believe you survived the crash. Anyway, the only thing you need to worry about now is healing those nasty wounds and your broken legs. You’ll be just fine—as I said, you’re an incredibly lucky young man.”
Lucky was not a word I would have ever associated with myself but, under the circumstances, I could see her point. I was blessed to be alive.
“Why am I all alone in this room?” I wondered aloud as I looked around. “I wouldn’t mind some company.”
“You’ve only been awake for a few minutes, Jack. Relax and give yourself some time to breathe. Be still. Your doctor will be here shortly—he was extremely worried about you.”
As the hours of that day passed and the barrage of doctors and nurses probed, checked, and encouraged me, I began to fully appreciate how serious my accident had been. The driver of the pickup truck had been killed instantly, and my doctor candidly informed me that he thought I’d never regain consciousness. “Never seen a case quite like this one,” he stated matter-of-factly.
But I had a knowing within me that this had all happened for a reason. Everything happens for a reason, and there are no accidents in life—I know you’ve heard that before. But I’ve personally come to know that this breathtaking universe of ours is not only strikingly intelligent in its operation, it’s also a very friendly place. This world wants us to live great lives. It wants us to be happy. And it wants us to win.
A quiet voice inside (which first appeared in that hospital room but would go on to comfort me during my most difficult and vulnerable times) informed me that something big was about to happen and that what I’d experience over the coming days and weeks would not only revolutionize my life, it would affect the lives of many others as well. It told me that my best was yet to come.
My guess is that many of us fail to listen to this quiet yet wise voice within us. There’s a place deep inside every single one of our hearts that knows all the answers to our biggest questions. Each one of us knows our truth and what needs to be done to create extraordinary lives for ourselves. Most of us have simply lost the connection to this natural source of pure wisdom because too much noise and clutter dominates our days. But I’ve found that when I’ve made time for silence, stillness, and solitude, the voice of truth begins to speak. And the more I’ve trusted its guidance, the richer my life has become.
It was about 9:30 that night when an orderly wheeled another patient into my room. I was grateful for the company and immediately raised my head to catch a glimpse of my new companion. He was an elderly man, probably about 75 years of age. He had thick silver hair that was slicked back in a stylish way and brown spots over his face from what appeared to be many years of sun exposure. I detected from his frail appearance and his labored breathing that this man was quite ill. I also noted that he was in some pain—he kept his eyes closed and moaned softly as the orderly transferred him into his new bed.
After about ten minutes, the visitor slowly opened his eyes. I was spellbound: His eyes were dazzling blue and revealed a clarity and brilliance that sent a shiver up my spine. I immediately felt that the man before me had a depth of wisdom that was rare in this world of quick fixes and fast lives. I felt I was in the presence of a master.
“Good evening,” he softly whispered in a dignified way. “Looks like we’re in here together for a while.”
“Yes—it’s not the greatest place to spend a Friday night, is it?” I replied with a warm smile. “My name’s Jack,” I said, raising my hand as a greeting. “Jack Valentine. I was in a pretty serious car accident about a week ago, and the verdict is that I’ll be in this bed for a while. I’ve felt alone all day, so I’m glad to meet you, sir.”
“Good to meet you too, Jack. I’m Cal. I’ve been in this hospital, in various wards, for the past seven months. I’ve been tested, treated, and tracked more than I ever could have imagined. I’m afraid that the way things are going for me, I’m never going to get out of here,” he offered quietly, his eyes darting up to the ceiling. He paused for a moment. “I came in here with a stomachache, which I thought was caused by something I ate. Six days later they had me in chemotherapy.”
“Cancer?” I asked, trying to be as sensitive as possible.
“Yes. By the time the doctors detected it, they saw that it had spread throughout my body. It’s in my lungs, it’s in my gut, and it’s now even in my head,” he said as he shakily passed his right hand through his mop of hair. “Anyway,” he continued in a reflective tone, “I’ve lived a pretty great life relative to most people. I grew up dirt poor, raised only by my mom. And what a noble woman she was.”
“Same as mine,” I interjected.
“I think about my mother every day,” Cal replied. “She was sensitive, feisty, and strong as freshly forged steel. She believed in me like no one else I’ve ever met and encouraged me to set great goals and dream big dreams. Her love for me was truly unconditional—and that’s the only kind of love that’s real, Jack. Makes me think of what Victor Hugo once wrote: ‘The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.’ And boy, did I feel loved by that extraordinary woman. You don’t mind if I share my story with you, do you?”
“No, not at all,” I replied. “Actually, I’m intrigued.”
“Good. Well, my childhood was simple yet fun. Summers spent skinny-dipping at the swimming hole and winters spent in front of a roaring fire telling stories and reading great books.
My mom taught me to love books.”
“I love books, too,” I offered. “I really didn’t enjoy school that much, but I cherished my books.”
“I was a lot like that. As the great thinker Judah ibn-Tibbon observed so wisely: ‘Make thy books thy companions. Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure grounds and gardens.’”
“Lovely words, Cal.”
He continued. “School bored me, but I found great stimulation from books. I’ll never forget my mother saying that one idea read in one book had the potential to transform my life. The real thing, she said, was that we just didn’t know which book contained that one idea that would lead to our awakening! My duty, she would tell me with obvious love, was to keep searching for that book; once I found it, I had to have the personal courage to act on the idea so that results were brought into my life. Jack, since you love to read, too, I’ll share a another quick quote on the power of reading with you.”
“By all means.”
“‘The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish.’ It’s from A. Edward Norton—had to learn that one in high school,” Cal mentioned as he repositioned himself in his bed.
“Anyway, once I got a little older, I went off to a military academy for further education and training. Mom never wanted me to leave, but I received a scholarship and it really was my ticket out of the poverty that I grew up in. After that, I went to college, and there, on my very first day on campus, I fell in love with an 18-year-old sweetie with golden hair and ivory skin. I met her in history class, and it truly was love at first sight. I just knew we were meant to be together. My God, I loved Grace—she was so innocent and kind. I couldn’t have imagined a more splendid person for me to journey through life with.”
“My mother’s name was Grace, too,” I remarked.
“Beautiful name, isn’t it, Jack?”
“Yes, it is.”
“After Grace and I were married, we had a child, a boy. I loved that kid so much. It was a very special time for us. We had fun, laughter, love—the best stuff of life. About that time I also decided to try my hand at business, starting a lumber concern that supplied many large contractors. It was during a time of great economic prosperity, and the construction boom was upon us. Over a period of years, I made a ton of money—millions of dollars, in fact—and the life that Grace, our son, and I began to lead was something right out of a storybook. Pure fantasy, I’d have to say,” Cal noted, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
“But, as I made more money, I became more consumed by work. I grew distracted and less attentive to my family. It’s been said that as we move through life, we have to juggle a number of different balls. Some balls, like the one that represents career, are made of rubber. If we drop them, they have the ability to bounce back. But some balls are made of glass—family is like that. If you drop that ball, it doesn’t come back. That’s the mistake I made. Money just complicated things for me and sent me down the wrong path. I lost sight of my deepest values and my truest priorities. I moved farther away from my family rather than closer to them. The richest person in the world, I’ve since discovered, isn’t the person who has the most but the one who needs the least. It took me a long time to get that lesson. And boy, did I pay a hefty price for it.”
I listened intently, engrossed in the story of this man who was sharing his life’s experiences so openly with me. I had also grown up without a father, so I was fascinated to hear Cal’s perspective on the importance of a strong family life. I longed for a connection to the father I never really knew and had always felt that a big piece of my life was missing because of this incompleteness. I also felt some sadness surfacing due to the fact that although I was a relatively young man, I still hadn’t met a woman I felt I could share my life and start a family with. It was a longing I hadn’t detected before.
“Anyway,” Cal continued, his enthusiasm flowing, “hard times hit our industry, as they always do, and I lost every penny of my fortune. I’m not saying I lost some of the money and some of our belongings, Jack. I’m telling you that we lost it all in a matter of weeks. Grace took it very hard and worried endlessly about our dire straits. But we were strong people, and together we tried our best to rebuild.
“The business was scaled down considerably, and Grace and I retreated to a much simpler lifestyle. It was also a time of great internal reflection for the two of us. Failure often does that for people. It reawakens us to who we really are and to what we truly want, and it shakes us out of our complacency. And so, even though we were uncomfortable from an economic point of view and our relationship still faced its challenges, I grew immensely as a human being. In fact, the distress of that period started me on a path of self-discovery and personal growth that I still travel on this very day. It totally changed my life.”
“So what happened next, Cal?” I asked with genuine interest, unconcerned that it was getting late and the lights in the hospital had all been turned off.
“I became a philosopher,” came the straightforward reply.
“A philosopher? What about your business? And what about Grace and your son?”
“Philosophy simply means ‘love of wisdom.’ What I’m telling you, Jack, is that I came to love wisdom just as much as I loved life itself. I’d spend entire days pondering life’s meaning and meditating on its deep issues. The things that I used to spend my days focusing on began to look trivial. Sadly, Grace and I began to drift apart even further and eventually we separated. Some people believe that relationships come to us as assignments. Some last for weeks, some for a lifetime—but they all come to teach us big lessons that are meant to spur our growth as people. All I know is that I learned so much from the time we had together. Unfortunately, she took our boy with her, and I never saw the two of them again. That crushed me,” Cal said, his voice trembling. “A piece of me died when that happened. I still have trouble forgiving myself over what I did to destroy my family life. And God, how I missed that child.
“Last I heard, Grace moved across the country and tried to raise our son with the limited resources she had. I tried to remain in contact with her and help her out, but I knew her heart had been broken, and proud as she was, she’d have nothing to do with me. It truly was the greatest mistake of my life, losing my family. My wife and son brought me such extraordinarily happy moments, which I didn’t see until it was too late. But our greatest mistakes also carry our largest lessons. I’m wiser now. I guess the real trick in life is to turn hindsight into foresight that reveals insight.”
“Nice way to put it, Cal. What I really hear you saying is that it’s important in life to let our past serve us. Is that right?”
“Very well put. That’s it exactly. There’s nothing wrong with making a mistake—that’s how human beings grow. We’re designed to make mistakes, for mistakes carry growth. We just shouldn’t keep repeating the same one. Turn a wound into wisdom, or, as you said, let your past serve you.
“Anyway, after Grace and our son left, I, in turn, went even deeper into myself, closing myself off from the world for a period of years, and becoming deeply involved in self-examination and internal questioning. My passion became my quest to discover who I was as a human being and why my life had unfolded as it did. In a world where most people live on the outside, I lived within. In a world where people run away from their fears, I ran toward them. And what I saw within the deepest parts of me was incredible.”
“Can you share what you saw within yourself?” I inquired eagerly, hanging on Cal’s every word.
“I’ll let you find that out for yourself, son,” he replied, deepening my already burning sense of curiosity. “You know, we all have to do our own interior work. It’s our highest responsibility. To examine yourself and get to know the real you—your true self—and all you are as a human being is the central aim of life. To know more about yourself so you can be more for the world is the ultimate journey. Genuine success in life is an inside job, you know.”
“I understand completely.”
“What I’ve found is that the best treasures a person will ever discover are those hidden within their heart. The greatest gifts of life are the inner gifts that are only revealed to those with the courage to look beyond the surface of their lives.”
I thought about what he said for a moment. “Unfortunately, Cal, I’ve never been one for personal development. I work for an ad agency, so I spend my days in the corporate world. It’s all about making money and looking good. I’m not proud of the way my world operates, but I’ve learned to play the game. And I play it fairly well. I’ve got a slick car, or at least I had one. I’ve got a hot apartment and cool friends. But at the end of the day, I still don’t feel happy. Something’s missing. I really get what you’re saying about success being an inside job. If I felt good about myself, I know I’d feel a lot better about my life. So where could I start with this ‘interior work,’ as you call it?”
“You can begin by connecting to your mortality, Jack. Thinking about death is very life affirming, you know.”
“Really?”
“Sure. It’s only when we deeply and emotionally connect to the fact that our lives are short and our hours are limited that we can fully live, and give every bit of ourselves to our waking moments. If you had only one year left to live, I bet you’d live very differently than you do right now. You’d make certain that you lived without regrets; you’d take chances; you’d risk opening your heart for love; and you’d live with total passion, great gusto, and a lovely focus on the worthy.”
“What do you mean by a ‘focus on the worthy’?” I asked.
Cal slowly sat up and reached for the pencil that rested on the table beside him.
“Live like this pencil and you’ll have a fine life,” he offered in a confident tone. “Too many of us live our lives like a rounded edge. We need to sharpen our focus and live to the point—just like a pencil. This is how you design and then build an extraordinary experience of life for yourself. The writer Michel Eyquem de Montaigne put it this way: ‘The great and glorious masterpiece of human beings is to live to the point. All other things are at most but inconsiderable props and appendages.’ You see, Jack, most of us live our lives as if we had all the time in the world. We deny ourselves our passions and we postpone our dreams. But life really is a fragile gift, and it needs to be lived right now. Neither of us knows how many tomorrows we have left. Please trust me on this one.”
“I will,” I said sincerely, sensing how important this lesson was for my new friend.
“Focus on the things that truly count in your life. Now that I’m older and wiser, I’ve discovered that the things I once believed to be the big things in life are actually the little things. And all those things that I believed to be the little, insignificant things early on have turned out to be the big things—the things that actually matter the most.”
“And how would I go about connecting to my mortality?”
“Ask yourself The Final Questions,” came the clear reply.
“The Final Questions? I’m not familiar with these, Cal. What are you talking about?” I sat up in my bed, completely transfixed by what I was hearing from this unique and somewhat mysterious man.
“When you lie on your deathbed taking your last breaths, there will be only three questions that will be at the forefront of your mind. These are what I call a person’s Final Questions. And since they’ll be the most important considerations at the end of your life, why not exercise the personal bravery to make them your most important considerations today.”
“And the questions are?” I asked, sensing that what I was about to hear just might change my life.
“They’re simply: ‘Did I live wisely?’ ‘Did I love well?’ and ‘Did I serve greatly?’”
“Could you please explain each of these?” I asked eagerly. “I know it’s late, but this information could really change everything for me.”
“Jack, even though I need to get some sleep, I appreciate your enthusiasm. There’s no doubt in my mind that you and I have been brought together for a reason. That’s just the way the world works. Everyone who enters your life comes to you at precisely the time that you most need to learn the lesson they’ve come to teach.”
“I believe that.”
“Our world is a very wise place, and our lives unfold according to a series of natural laws that are nothing less than brilliant.
We human beings think that our lives are governed by random events and that the people who enter and exit do so purely by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s no chaos in our world, only order. There are no coincidences—ever. Our lives aren’t run by good or bad luck, but by an intelligent process designed to help us evolve into our best selves.”
“How do you know this?”
“I just know. And so will you,” Cal stated with certainty.
“Interesting,” I replied, deep in thought.
“You were born to present your gifts to the world. But the way it’s set up is that before you can shine as a person—and I mean really shine—you must do that interior work I spoke of earlier. You must get to know yourself; you must look at your limiting beliefs and recreate them. And you must analyze the false assumptions you have about what you can be, have, and do as a person and then set about correcting them. You need to become aware of your historical patterns of reacting in the different scenarios of your life and re-create them. And you must tackle your fears and move through them. Then you can open up your heart and be more concerned about the happiness of other people than about the happiness of yourself. And once you do, ironically, you’ll become happy.”
“So it’s all set up in a very methodical way,” I said, summarizing the knowledge I’d just been exposed to. “The world has a grand design and order to it. I guess the first thing I must do is understand the natural laws it’s governed by?”
“Yes, son,” Cal replied, clearly pleased by my openness to his philosophy on life. “Once you align yourself with these laws, you’ll access your authentic power. You’ll become a force of nature, and your life will move from a place of struggle into one of ease and flow. All that you’ve ever dreamed of being you will become. You’ll naturally draw into your life all that your heart has ever desired without effort. Your life will begin, to work, almost as if guided by magic.”
I absorbed what he said for a moment, and then said, “I’m wondering exactly where I should start, though. I’ll confess that this is a time of genuine struggle for me. I don’t really know who I am anymore, and I’m just itching to make my life better. I recently ended my relationship with my girlfriend. I can’t stand my job. I never have much money at the end of the month, even though I make a good salary. And I seem to have this deep ache within me that never leaves.”
“Trust that ache, son.”
“What?” I asked, unsure that I’d heard him correctly.
“Trust that ache,” Cal repeated. “I’ve learned from my teachers that only when we go into the feelings and longings that most of us run away from will we find our greatest answers. Our feelings grant us immense wisdom and carry the knowledge of our subconscious minds. And our subconscious minds are our link to the wisdom of the universe. Our conscious thinking is so limited, but our subconscious thinking is infinite.
“You know, most of us deny our feelings. Society has taught us to do that. From a young age, we divorce ourselves from the way we feel. We’re told not to cry, we’re told not to laugh too loud, and we’re told that it’s wrong to feel sad or even to experience our anger. But our feelings are neither right nor wrong—they’re simply our feelings, and an essential part of the human experience. Deny them and you begin to shut down parts of yourself. Keep doing that and you’ll lose the connection to who you truly are. You’ll begin living completely in your head, and you’ll stop feeling.”
Cal stopped for a moment and looked me in the eye. “I’d be willing to bet, Jack, that all you do, all day long, is think, think, think. Your mind is a nonstop chattering machine, and you have no inner peace. You’ve stopped living in the present moment and feeling what it’s like to be fully alive—you’re too busy living in the past or in the future. Did you know that the mind rarely lives in the present moment? It’s always worrying about the past or thinking about the future. But that stuff isn’t real. All that’s real is the moment right in front of you. Don’t miss that moment, because that’s where your life is.”
“So true,” I remarked, letting out a deep sigh. This man’s words reflected the truth—I felt it in my body. “This is all starting to make perfect sense,” I noted. “I wish more people would hear the wisdom you’re sharing with me and open up their eyes to it. The world would be a better place.”
“They’ll get it when they’re ready to get it. As the old saying goes, ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears.’ You can’t push the river, you know.”
“I guess there’s just too much cynicism in the world today,” I answered. “We don’t believe in the great dreams we had as kids anymore. We don’t believe we have the power to create the lives we want. We don’t think that we can really make a difference by the things we do.”
Cal nodded. “And that’s exactly why so many of us are stuck. We have phenomenal power within us; we’ve just lost our connection to it. Part of the reason for this is fear. The possibilities available to us in our lives are truly miraculous. The wonders we have the potential to create in our lives, once we align with the force of nature, are astounding—they really are. But all this potential also brings with it certain responsibilities . . . and this frightens us. So we don’t believe in ourselves. We deny our power and set up blocks to the achievement of the extraordinary lives that we’re meant to lead.”
“It’s almost like we sabotage ourselves. We run away from the very thing we want the most.”
“That’s exactly what we do. We pretend we don’t matter, and we act as if we’re not special. We close our eyes to the way the world really operates, so we don’t trust in these natural laws that govern it. And these laws only come alive in your life once you invest every bit of the trust you have as a human being in them. They don’t work if you don’t believe they will work. To access our best lives, each and every one of us must make some fundamental shifts of the mind. Maybe even more important, we each must make some fundamental shifts of the heart. And that begins by trusting these laws of nature I’ve been telling you about.”
“So first I should trust that these laws work—and then they will?”
“Correct. It’s set up a little like a fireplace. You need to put the logs in before you get the heat. Sitting in front of a logless fireplace just doesn’t get you any warmer. Most people don’t trust—they have no faith in the brilliance of the universe and their lovely role within it. That’s why there’s no magic in their lives. It’s because they fail to understand the way the world operates, and it’s also because they’re no longer leaders.”
I was puzzled by that remark. “What do you mean by that?”
“The starting point of enlightenment, a goal that every person should strive for, is inner leadership. Leadership is far more than something businesspeople do at work. Leadership is all about personal responsibility, self-discovery, and creating value in the world by the people we become. Too many people spend their time blaming others for all that isn’t working in their lives. We blame our spouses for our unhappy home lives; we blame our bosses for our distress at work; we blame strangers on the freeway for making us angry; we blame our parents for keeping us small. Blame, blame, blame, blame. But blaming others is nothing more than excusing yourself. Blaming others for the current quality of your life is a sad way to live. In doing so, all you’re doing is playing the victim.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. Because, in living like that, what you’re essentially saying is that you’re powerless to lead your life. What you’re saying is for your life to change, your spouse must change or your boss must change or the strangers on the freeway must change. That’s a very impotent way to live. Where’s the leadership in that philosophy of life?” Cal observed, his voice growing louder as his intensity increased. “The only way to lift your life to the next level is to act like a leader and assume real leadership over your life. The moment you look in the mirror and say to yourself, from the deepest place within you, ‘For my life to change, I must change’—that’s the moment you’ll grow up and walk through a doorway that will lead you to your best life.”
“Why is that so, I wonder?”
“Because, Jack, that’s when you’ll take your life into your own hands,” Cal said passionately as he raised his hands into the air with dramatic flair. “You’ll assume responsibility for the destiny that has been presented to you. You’ll stop resisting your life and accept what is. You’ll align yourself with those immutable laws of nature that I’ve been sharing with you, laws that have always governed the way the life works, from the beginning of time. You’ll get your power back.”
Cal stopped and looked deep into my eyes. “Point your index finger at me, son,” he said.
“What?”
“Just do it,” he replied firmly.
I raised my hand and pointed directly at my uniquely eccentric roommate.
“What do you notice?” he quizzed.
“My skin seems to be peeling,” I replied honestly.
“No, son. Think more deeply, which is something we all need to do more of as we journey through life. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, you know. Okay, so you have one finger pointing at me, but who are the other fingers pointing toward?”
I was struck by Cal’s simple yet powerful demonstration. His point was clear: for every finger we point at another, we have three pointing back at us. I shared this realization with him.
“Now you’re getting it!” he exclaimed joyfully. “Stop blaming others for everything you dislike about your life. Look in the mirror and regain some accountability over your life. That’s how personal change and life leadership begins.”
I smiled at him. “Okay, I see where you’re coming from.” I took a moment to let Cal’s wisdom and lessons integrate. Then I said, “You don’t think like most people.”
“I know. That’s because I see more than most people. And it’s not because I’m better than anyone else—it’s because I’ve been taught by the best,” Cal responded humbly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, it makes me think of what the father of classical physics, Isaac Newton, said: ‘If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.’ You see, I’ve been blessed by having some extraordinary guides in my life. The wisdom I’m sharing with you isn’t mine.”
“It’s not?”
“No, not really. I learned it from my three teachers, three extraordinary human beings that transformed my life. I owe everything to them.”
“Can I meet them?” I asked excitedly.
“Of course you can—sooner than you think, actually. They’ll be the ones to explain to you the meaning of the Final Questions I alluded to earlier. They’ll be the ones to really give you the answers you’re looking for. They’re the best resources I know of on what it means to be a true leader of your life and live congruently with the natural laws of the world. They’re the masters. I’m only the student.”
Just then, Cal began to cough. It started off in a mild way but quickly grew acute. His face became red, and a line of sweat drizzled down his forehead.
“My God, Cal! Should I call the nurse?” I asked with concern.
“No, I’ll be okay,” he replied, wheezing and looking deathly pale. “I really think I need to get some sleep now. I promise that tomorrow will be a very big day for you—it may even be your biggest day yet. It just might be your new beginning,” he added with suspense, his blue eyes sparkling like stars on a cold winter’s night.
“It’s been really great meeting you, Jack,” Cal continued. “As I say, it was meant to be, this beautiful connection we’ve made. We entered each other’s lives tonight for a reason. That’s just the way the world works,” he said with a smile as he rolled over and pulled the covers over his shoulders, chuckling to himself. “That’s just the way the world works,” he repeated. “Life truly is beautiful.”
The room was silent for a moment.
“Oh, and by the way, son,” he added gently, “I love you.”
