Oh What a Night!
I know what you’re thinking and you are wrong. This story is NOT about the election that was held across the country yesterday. While many pundits are saying that Democrats are thrilled to have held off the infamous red wave, I feel that there is simply too much to not be proud of in our national state of political play to crow about too much this morning. The only comment I saw that resonated a little with me was the one that implied that yesterday was a good day for democracy because voter turnout was so much higher than normal, implying that most Americans still feel that the democratic process of casting their vote for what and who they believe is best for the country is alive and well.
However, what made my night so special was what happened between the moment I woke up until about ten o’clock last night. That constitutes the night that was “Oh what a Night” worthy. To begin with, for the first time in a long time, I did not have the time all day long to turn on cable news once and I also managed to avoid reading much of any headlines or news stories all day, mostly because I had heard enough about the pending election and preferred to simply wait to hear the eventual outcome of what the people of our fine and powerful country had to say via their most important civic duty, their right to vote their minds. This absence of political, economic and social inundation from the media was not unlike a cleansing fast for my mind. But I did not accomplish this marvelous zen-like state by simply chanting or meditating throughout my day. I had a whole lot of help from the best sources I can imagine, my dear friends.
And I want to be holistic here for a moment. We all have lots of friends and we benefit in countless ways from them all in many ways. Not all my friends interacted with me yesterday but I honestly felt the collective presence of the full body of my friendship universe through the day even though the most impactful presence came in the form of two couples who are visiting us for a few days. I have mentioned in my last few stories that we have a full week of people coming through and interacting with us for various reasons this week. It sort of happens in three or four waves during the week, so I expect this feeling of friendship immersion to continue for another several days at least. I want to capture the fullness of the feeling that built to a crescendo last night, so bear with me.
I started my day on a 90 minute call with my expert witness partners who live in Palermo, Sicily and Lisbon, Portugal. I only met Damiano and Sergio in 2019 and since then they have become very close business colleagues who I trust, respect and like a great deal. Damiano sends us a wonderful Holiday Basket each year with pistachio panettone and other favorite Italian goodies that my whole family enjoys. We had the opportunity to see them both with their families this year during our visits to Rome in March with Gary & Oswaldo, our dear friends from West Hollywood, and then visit with Sergio in Lisbon last month when he hosted me and a subset of my motorcycle group for dinner after our tour of Spain and Portugal. What resplendent and friendship-filled nights both of those were, where no business and all socialization was the order of the evening. My call yesterday was on a case and while the specifics don’t matter, what does matter was the collaborative effort and friendly helpfulness and attitude we all had about doing a valuable job for a worthy client in a professional and compelling manner. All business should be conducted like this and it started my day with a very warm and collegial feeling.
I then spent the rest of the morning with friends Terry and Paula, talking about the states of our respective worlds and our mutual hopes and dreams for our lives in retirement. Terry has been and remains my business partner for the past twenty-five years. I explained how much we liked living on our hilltop and how happy I was to have only one home to worry about (as of November 1 when Ithaca has gone by the wayside) for the first time since 1987 (I have had from two to five homes at a time during those 35 years, and I am very happy to be back to just one). I listened to Terry and Paula, who lived most of their lives in one home on Central Park South and have now blossomed in retirement to a home in Croton, a pied-a-terre on Fifth Avenue and an almost completed home in Palm Beach Gardens. No two people deserve more of the good things in life, but they too have come to realize the burdens of multiple home ownership and are seriously wondering how to de-escalate to a simpler for carefree lifestyle of one home combined with lots of world travel. These are the conversations of meaning and vastly outvalue any discussion of markets or politics.
And then we all enjoyed the arrival of our Sonoma contingent, headed by my faithful guru of thirty years, Frank. Frank is a Marshall Scholar and nothing defines him more than that appellation. He is a wise and pleasant man of years, who’s wisdom comes out of every pore of his being in a more and more pleasant way as he is less and less involved in the business side of life and more involved in the process of enjoying the fullness of day-to-day life. He and his lovely and sweet bride, who’s humility does not allow her the comfort of any mention by name in my writings, have been dear friends for years and I can honestly say that my hand is squarely in the mix by virtue of having pushed the two of them together twenty years ago as both of their prior spouses have gone on to their respective rewards. There is no finer feeling than to see two people whose lives have been made better by your interventions (a bold, but confident statement to be sure). They brought with them a gift for Kim and I in the form of a piñata of Donald Trump, perhaps the most worthwhile and symbolically important gift we have ever received at a moment of truth in life in these United States. We all laughed and shared life updates for the afternoon with not a serious thought or concern in the room.
We were building to a crescendo for the first of our two day series of course lectures, first on the topic of business ethics. While Kim practiced her voice exercises for her evening of choral rehearsal to include her solo for Friday and Saturday nights, the rest of us got our game faces on for the evening. Uncharacteristically for San Diego, we had a thunderous rain storm with buckets of rain coming down and slowing traffic to a crawl as the locals don’t seem to know what to do on the roads when the sun doesn’t shine. Regardless, we took it to an early dinner at Fleming’s Steak House where we had a near perfect meal, well-served with nothing but great camaraderie and no politics at the dinner table.
As Kim headed off in the storm for her theater, the rest of us went to the University to set up the lecture. This is when the marvel of the night took hold. Paula has two degrees in philosophy and one in education and she had prepared a moving lecture on the business of ethics in business revolving around the notions of individual liberty versus the common good and whistleblowing. What a marvelous experience listening to a certified ethicist talk about such important concepts with a group of seventeen young people from all around the world (my class is quite global). My psychic adrenaline was pumping as the evening went on and the discussion raged. Oh, what a night!