Mambrino's Helm (II)
It was one of those marketing networks that were born on the other side of the world, where you negotiate with adrenaline surges that are suffered at certain ages and are sold mixed with illusions in packs of five, and then auctioned in the market of those who are dared.
While it is true that the quality was rearing its head over the wall of the average of the product, but the success was based more than everything, on the claws and the beak of the new breed of harriers that was being born. So very soon he realized that the heart of the matter was duplicating those small groups of gladiators and some clients.
The first two years were a mixture of discoveries and challenges because it is impossible to continue putting tea, in a full cup, if they are on the verge of spilling, and you have to unlearn at the same speed that you learn. Then a simple and humble philosophy led him to understand that first you have to be, then do and finally have the things you want, and his willingness to change glasses to look at business and relationships with his colleagues grew.
He knew that it was essential to convert those of command and order, in cooperation and agreements. At the same time, his health improved, and his income grew with each step of the residual compensation and the volume of organization that was doubling almost by inertia.
Now he constantly traveled to meetings and unsuspected places to go proclaiming the advantages and benefits of his products and a new way of business inherited from the bowels of capitalism that, nevertheless, it seemed fair to him to give to each according to his abilities.
And helping others became his main style of work, while helping himself, with all the human gears that this paradigm requires. And if before he dedicated three-quarters of his days to the job of hospitality manager, now he used hours and hours to talk little with many people and work with whomever he wanted, and then they would give him four in the morning reading books that explained how eagles they smash their beak against the cliffs and then pluck the old feathers so that the new ones allow them to keep flying, not at ground level, but as high as they want, for the rest of their lives.
The sled of his finances slid wonderfully on the trust of the clients and his wife had already recovered her calm, the children began to seem more like their time and less like what he wanted, because without realizing it, again I had left them running on automatic pilot, crushed by the loneliness of the meetings that did not stop, by the mystery of not understanding what work is that so evil that it swallowed the father while they slept and vomited him if anything on Saturday afternoons, lethargic and absent, unable to play football for a while or tell them a story about Snow White.
That is why when the mysterious old man crossed his path and told him that afternoon at the gas station that, if he allowed him to clean his windshield, he stared, because he could not understand why someone had to beg to eat at those years.
- What paths have we taken so differently? He asked.
Then he was struck by the slow tone of the old man's voice and the hint of a smile that did not fade.
- And what makes you think that we are so far away? He answered asking without insolence.
"Well, I'm going in Mercedes and you ask for alms", he said without fuss.
-Invite me to a coffee, and I'll see if I can do something for you to understand, finished the old man smiling.
Then they were sitting at a bar, the longest half hour in the life of the millionaire cook and probably also the most productive. The old man asked him the questions that had always haunted his head like bumblebees, but never faced in the spirit of finding answers.
Almost when he was leaving, he recommended that he recount his years and while he was grasping the fingers of his left hand with his right, he was saying what each jump in time was for.
Suddenly the cook would see where the old man's game was going and perhaps that of his life, he was coming closer to the shadow of a thousand-year-old cedar, seeking to rest his bones in order to continue the journey.
He got up that day without haste and instead of reviewing the planned tasks, he began to listen to his wife about the oldest grandson who had won a soccer game in the school championship. He told her that next Friday afternoon would be the playoffs and that she would go with her daughter to support him. Right there, without saying anything, the meeting place was put on the agenda.
In the afternoon he went to visit the parents who began to tell him how slow the recovery of the mother's hip replacement was going and about a budget that the dentist made for the father for two implants. He was a bit surprised to see that more and more events were appearing on his calendar in light green, which was the color assigned to personal matters.
And the nuance of his occupations changed with the days and weeks, and he came to think that he had captured very well the message that The Universe had put in his path that Sunday afternoon. Months passed, and he discovered things that were always in the open, edges of his personal life, he recovered forgotten friends and talked with them about inconsequential issues, without making judgments about the paths that their lives had taken, without feeling the need for others to know how well he had done everything.
Little by little, he acquired the skills to ask questions of his children that showed his sincere interest in their affairs, he gradually armed himself with patience and was attentive to that loving space that we are allowed to take, between each question and its answer, between each circumstance and how we interpret it, between each thought and the emotion it triggers.
He spent much more time with his wife, and suddenly he dared to deepen his interests, he knew that while he was in that slumber of masked absence, she had been aware of everyone: that if the youngest of his daughters needed help to finish He had a master's degree and had no one to leave the youngest with, there she was, the oldest had certain couple conflicts and wanted to discuss it with someone, but Dad was abroad, and although he preferred a male opinion, unless it was her.
She even took care of his family, her sister-in-law who had little income and especially the in-laws whom she visited frequently, always finding justifications for why her husband did not come. One day the mother-in-law, who was the one who least sweetened the words, told her: your husband is driven by the wind.
Suddenly it was clear that he had now made the most revolutionary adjustment to the sails of his life, he prepared to continue down that path and knew that it would not have been possible if he had not sown before. Then he seemed to understand what the old man had said when he took the little finger of his left hand and said that the rest of life after his age was a gift, that he should not be foolish and accept it.
And he felt himself relieved to carry a bundle, he could clearly look at the carrot that mysterious wisdom had been in charge of keeping in front of his nose, but...
Another strong voice rose whimsically inside, a hungry cheetah claim that wants to continue hunting in the plains, a pennant stuck in the side that kept pushing it into the ring.
Because he always wanted to help the weakest, train them in the art of overcoming difficulties, and he missed looking into people's eyes and making them understand that if he could, anyone can. So deep did he have that need to deal with what is, to find something that was not right, something that was missing so that every minute of his life was a magnificent stage for a new battle. And he did not stop teaching his children, nor did he give up showing them the path where he had traveled.
One afternoon he went to visit his eldest daughter and something turned his guts when he realized that they lived declining small wishes, that they adjusted everything to the possibilities of a salary, they deprived themselves of trips, and they sold very cheaply the best moments of their lives to He exchanged a few coins to keep crawling through the days and his breathing shortened with each thought.
Until he couldn't take it any longer and went out onto the balcony with his eleven-year-old grandson to call his attention to the things he had in mind. She told him almost rudely that she expected something different from him, that she couldn't let him down like her mother did. And then the kid looked at the grandfather for a few seconds that seemed to him eternal.
-I believe, grandfather, that we are comfortable with who we are, while we love what we do. And he stayed as if a father of ours had prayed.
Right there the cook got stiff, because the words of the grandson slipped through a crack of his arrogance, with the innocence and astonishment of that stage of the first finger. And that afternoon he sat in a park for several hours, watching the autumn leaves fall effortlessly, while inside, to the beat of silence, he thought he saw the peace he longed for in the eyes of the smiling old man.
