Clff Notes

We all want the Cliff Notes in life, just the bottom line. Don't ask me to put in the time, all that work and study...for what? Just tell me! “So after all those years you've spent meditating in a cave, what's the one most important thing you learned?” “How to make a million dollars in less than 90 days.” The top five makeup essentials? What is the master gardener’s secret to growing huge tomatoes?

Hey, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, so don't expect me to learn by trial and error. I'll just take your word for it.

My father was top of his class at Johns Hopkins and Harvard law. Phi Beta Kappa. Growing up with him was like having a walking dictionary in the house. He was the flesh and blood version of that immense Oxford English Dictionary that he kept on its own wooden stand in the living room next to his Tropical fish tank. Dad rarely interacted with us kids, there was no throwing of the ball out in the yard. His job was to pay the bills,\. Mom was in charge of the kids. So I was understandably stunned as a young teen when Dad looked up from his New York Times crossword puzzle as I was walking through the living room one day when he said to me: “Hugh, I need to speak with you.” It was as if I lived near Mount Rushmore and was used to those faces dominating the landscape and one day George Washington decided to speak...directly to me. Stopping in my tracks, I sat down in a chair across from Dad and braced myself for something epic, the pearls of wisdom that I was about to receive from this man who was all about the intellect. So many years of study served up from master to son. What is the meaning of life? What is the essence of vital understanding that he was now ready to pass to me? In his normal, rather somber way, Dad looked directly at me, all my senses on high alert, ready to catch every nuance, each inflection or hidden meaning.

My father said to me: “Don't pick your face.”

Like any normal 14 year old, I guess I had been doing some work in the mirror.

Ten years later, I learned a similar non-lesson from the Tae Kwon Do master at the Karate school where I ran the business end of things. As you may guess, he had been studying since he was a small child growing up in Korea. The roots of his knowledge stretched back through many generations. Mr Park was the absolute, unquestioned boss...the master. But like Dad, he rarely spoke to me much, or to anyone else for that matter. So on the second Christmas of my employment there I was quite surprised when Mr Park indicated that he had a present for me. My imagination ran wild as he handed me a long, flat box wrapped in gold paper. Was it his first brown belt, earned when he was just a kid? Maybe an ancient piece of parchment that touched on the genesis of Tae Kwon Do itself? Perhaps some kind of Korean certificate of achievement that was only awarded to special insiders?

With great care and respect, I unwrapped my present in front of Mr Park, prepared to see a first ever warm smile of pride for his number one student. Inside the package, nestled in white tissue paper, lay a large pair of stretchy black business socks.

So among other life lessons along the way, I learned from those moments of potential epiphany, that although we may expect the clouds to part and allow the sunshine to illuminate essential truths with crystal clarity, that the ultimate answers we all seek, may come to us in unexpected ways. Perhaps the lesson is still there, but it may well look like a large pair of black business socks.