I am reminded of a man I once knew. Eventually, he would make me a partner, but first he was my boss. Like his father, Geoff improved on his good fortune. He was talented, intelligent, successful, immensely likable and rich — very rich. His homes, cars, clothes, offices, sailboat, choice of restaurants, wines and liquors and vacations— everything about the man was expensive.
One year, I stopped by Geoff’s office to say Happy Thanksgiving and asked who was doing the cooking at his house. No one he replied, we’re eating at the same place we eat every Thanksgiving. I’d known the man 15 years and had no idea where he spent Thanksgiving. It just never came up.
Turns out, Geoff and his family spent Thanksgiving day working in the kitchen of a shelter in skid row (downtown L.A.). Ever since his father came to America, they’d never gone anywhere else for Thanksgiving — and Geoff continued the tradition.
Geoff paid for the turkeys, but that was not enough. Tzedakah (justice) requires us to work with others , so Geoff and his family helped cook the turkeys, serve them, clean up and put things away. They left home at 5:00 in the morning and rarely returned before midnight — sometimes it was already light outside when they got home. Geoff’s children, grown by then, would fly home from all over the country to go with their parents to work in the skid row kitchen and help serve hundreds of hungry people a real Thanksgiving dinner.
After that I paid much closer attention to Geoff and discovered there was far more to him than his possessions. His possessions had blinded me, not him. Geoff gave anonymously. I heard him take a museum director apart when he discovered his name published on a gift. We often talked about our various efforts to keep our faith. Such conversations violated anonymity, but kept us focused. Just as Geoff’s possessions had blinded me to him, I found a whole lot of things that my ego, my need for approval, validation, love and so on blinded me as well. Once I learned to know myself,I stopped tripping over myself.
As they say, don’t judge a book by its cover.
