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
