Pt. 2: Passion, Love, and Sacrifice

I have experienced deep passion and love. In those moments, I have been willing to sacrifice all for those feelings.

Experience 2:

My passion for being a religion teacher had left me.

Almost at the moment I lost it, deep seeded layers of latent desires emerged.

I wanted to go out into the world, and be a management consultant. I also wanted to be in the media. I wanted to talk about the future.

It was as crazy as it was interesting.

Because I felt it was so extraordinary, I was a little slow in accepting it as a possibility.

It wasn’t until I became depressed about my present situation that I had a profound religious experience.

After the experience my depression left me.

The experience was a moment of irony. What I believed so deeply was now affirming that I was going on a different venture outside of religion.

I let the future come to me. It was as though I was sitting outside my body observing the unfolding of my new life.

The experience was so extraordinary that my passions mounted. How could something so unbelievable be happening like this. I would die rather than betray what I had experienced.

Consulting clients seemed to pop up from nowhere. Broadcast executives offered me opportunities to go on the radio. I would make more money in one month than I would by teaching an entire year.

I became so passionate that I fell in love with what I was doing. I made a business out of doing these things. I was letting something happen rather than making it happen.

I even started receiving awards for what for I was doing, the majority of which were broadcast awards. I spoke on social, political, and economic trends, but most of the awards were given for creating high moral content in my radio commentaries. This came as a surprise. I thought I was talking on trends. However, to the listening audience it came off as possessing moral value, at least to those who issued the awards.

I am not prepared to explain with certainty how these things happen, although I have tried on occasion. However, I can definitely describe what happened. As time passes, the details fade a bit and the meaning changes. For example my feelings thirty years after having the experience are different. I look in retrospect and realize how extraordinary this experience was.

But this entire miracle didn’t happen without the opposite occurring. Two years into my new life, a big client suggested (I thought) that my consulting contract might be cancelled. I fell into the darkest hole I had ever been in. I had a terrible anxiety attack. I was in no way prepared for this turn of events. I would wake up at night completely wet from perspiring. More than once I would have to take a shower, put on dry pajamas, and change the sheets on the bed.

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My anxiety turned to panic. I felt like I had put myself and my family at terrible risk. I wanted to go back to where I had been. I didn’t have what it took to be out in the world. I felt like my life was coming to an end.

Then, after about six weeks, the depression started lifting. My contract was renewed, and never was in the jeopardy I thought it was. (I look back on this time with a little bit of amusement. After having consulted for close to thirty years, contracts come and go. That’s the nature of management consulting.)

The financial rewards for the type of consulting I did were handsome. My lifestyle picked up. I found myself loving the lifestyle. I didn’t feel guilty about it. I had always been critical of affluent lifestyles when I was a religion teacher. But to my surprise, it made me happy.

I had become a passionate defender of the events I had experienced. I loved the lifestyle that came with it. And because business is so tough to maneuver in, I was willing to fight and sacrifice a great deal to keep it. For example in large corporations, different groups emerge at the top of the executive power structure. It’s common that these different groups fight it out for supremacy. As a consultant I would often find myself emerging with one of these groups. The tension would be immense. While the fight was going on, everyone makes lots of money and gets lots of perks – limos, private jets and helicopters, best seats for the best shows. Unfortunately, there are winners and losers. I have been on both sides of that situation. You learn to fight and you learn to adjust if you lose the fight. But, you willingly make whatever sacrifice you have to in order to reach a point to participate in the fight. You leave fear behind, and you bring your best. It’s adult time.

Hard nose business is the greatest teacher of all. You fight for what matters most in business, money. In the process, jobs are created, services are given and products are made; taxes are collected; roads, schools, hospitals, homes, recreation spots, etc. are built. It’s raw boned capitalism, and it drives a country forward to greater wealth.

I have stayed in consulting because I love it. My gratitude is off the charts. I am the guardian of the special experience that propelled me into this life. I am the recipient of its wealth that keeps me investing.

Over thirty years, I have added to my management consulting skills. I have made personal investments in start up businesses. All together I have created four companies: two consulting firms and two businesses. Together with my son-in-law and my wife, we created a construction company. And with my two sons and wife we created grënx, the maker of GreenTeaHP.

All four, in one fashion or the other, still exist to this day.

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You love what you make great sacrifices for. My physical and mental health have been challenged more than once. Each time I have seen my way through and have continued on. My passion and love run deep. As one famous religious leader put it; had I not experienced it, I would not have believed it.

Would I recommend this as a model to follow? No. Each person will be guided to their own experience. Each person is capable of having their own extraordinary experience. I believe this. I have experienced this.

To Be Continued…