Since a holiday blog wasn’t readily coming to me this year I had decided to pass – that is, until shortly before Christmas, when something totally unexpected happened to me that renewed my sense of trust in both myself and my fellow man. Without providing the identity of either the country or individual involved, for reasons that will become apparent, I’d like to relate this little episode in hopes that it will resonate with you as well.
The story goes like this: in a country I have had frequent occasion to visit, I have had the same driver every time I showed up. The more I got to know this man, the more I got to admire his ambition and enterprise, and wanted to give him a chance to go into business with me. So we formed a little joint venture, in which I put an initial $10,000. to be used as the down payment on small homes that we would then resell – something we managed to do very successfully on two occasions.
Now, I really didn’t pay much attention to the financial details, nor did I monitor the bank account. In fact, I really kept this little enterprise just between us, making a point of not telling any of my friends or associates in this particular country because they pretty much went along with its class system in which such a business relationship would have been out of the question. In that culture, you’re never supposed to do business with your driver or anyone considered to be subservient – a system that I have always found disturbing since it runs completely counter to my egalitarian instincts.
Then about a year into this arrangement, I was visiting this country again and he came over with the keys to my office, which I had given him, and in a very sheepish tone, told me that he had to use $2,500 of the money to keep up the payments on one of his cars and that he was very sorry. I told him not to worry about it — I understood, just next time to be sure he ask me first. But in the back of my mind I was saying, man, I hope my friends aren’t right and I haven’t made a mistake Then several months later it happened again – he took another $2,500 for another month’s payment, and felt really, really bad. But this time, I felt I had to call it quits. So we closed the account and that was it. He again told me how really sorry he was, and that he would not rest until he made it up to me. I told him he could work it off by driving me around, and that is what he has been doing for the last two years, during which time I have been keeping track of the value of his services. In this way, he had managed to work off more than a quarter of the amount due, when, during a brief visit I made to this locale just prior to Christmas, he showed up at my door and said he had something for me, then proceeded to hand me the full $5,000. I said, “But you have already worked off more than $1,000.” He replied that it didn’t matter, and when he said he wouldn’t sleep until he had made good on his obligation, he meant it and he would sleep soundly that night only if the debt was fully repaid.
Suffice it to say that this individual has not only helped to restore my faith in humanity, but to vindicate my own instincts about people and my ability to judge character – and in so doing, has made this Christmas season an especially meaningful and memorable one for me.
