The WOW! Buzz

A few years ago I was visiting with a former employer from the Boston area.  I had called him because I had heard that he had been diagnosed with some pretty serious health problems  that ultimately took his life several months after our conversation while he was still in his sixties.  I was his employee for almost 8 years at a Boston telecommunications concern of which he was the majority owner. Our friendship had extended beyond that initial experience, and we had continued to communicate from time to time on both a professional and personal level.

During this particular conversation (our last, as it turned out),  he had expressed gratitude toward me for the professional help I’d given him over the years–for the exciting things we’d been able to do together, and my role in making that happen.  I also expressed my gratitude for extending to me those opportunities, and for a myriad of smaller favors he’d done for me over the years–hiring my children to work as interns as they came of age so that they could learn something of the business world.

I felt a “jolt of joy” in this conversation–one which could have been rather difficult under the circumstances.  While we worked together, we had a great working relationship, but perhaps as in any human interaction and particularly in a small company, we had the occasional opportunity as well to have unenthusiastic feelings about each other.  As we expressed our gratitude for one another in that conversation, it became clear to me that what I was experiencing here was grace–pure grace.  It wasn’t that we had forgotten each others faults, but what it did mean was that we were able to look past those and see only in each other a certain earnestness and real intent in our actions as we had worked together those years ago.

He had forgiven me for being a nuisance (of a kind that only technical people can be), and not expressing myself always as well as I could have done.  Instead, he remembered the earnestness and creativity in finding solutions to problems the company faced at the time.

As we approach this Season, I hope that we all have an opportunity to “Celebrate with Grace”, perhaps even in the manner that I’ve described here with this experience.

Let us see in one another the positive, energetic, and “intent full” selves I truly believe us to be.  Let’s give one another the benefit of a doubt as to the intent behind any perceived action, when in our busy daily lives it would be so easy to impute something that is not intended.  Let us cut each other a generous amount of….well, grace.  That says it as well as any word can.

Until next time…