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October, 2017
26Scene One - I am visiting with a couple in their small home and have been with them for several hours. They are casual, relaxed, quite pleasant, and I know they have been quietly, in the background, preparing a delicious supper, but I do not feel quite like I belong and that things are awkward and so, surprising all three of us, I think, a little before time to eat I get up, make my excuses, thank them for their great hospitality, and leave.
Scene Two - I am in an upstairs room, big enough for a medium-sized group to meet. I thought I was "in" this group. It has met here several times before, me along with everyone else, all men, but this time a tall, intelligent looking Jewish man arrives and begins leading several of the men present in setting the room up for a very formal, structured service of some type. They even mark off the carpet, measuring its spaces into pre-arranged geometric shapes for which they tag the main demarcations with heavy chaulk (chalk) or other marks at the points of imagined angles of these shapes, which are like large mental triangles. The men in the service will evidently sit in organized ways consistent with the perhaps religiously meaningful but artificial shapes they have created on the floor. I start to leave, realizing this is not my thing and heading down the stairs. The tall Jewish man nods to me in an understanding, friendly way, as if to say "You'd be most welcome to stay, but I understand if you'd feel better leaving." He gives my shoulder a soft fist bump as I go. I have the impression that shortly after I'd gone those remaining will have passed out little Jewish caps to put on their heads before starting their service.
Scene Three - I am in a large college campus type area. I am evidently a continuing education student here. It is a time when regular classes are not in session, and, though I see people going here and there, I do not feel part of their activities, do not feel identified with any of their endeavors. I am with one or two other fellows, and suddenly we see three or four young men pushing a wheelchair rapidly toward the ramp access to an upper room. They are pushing a man in the chair, and the friend of mine next to me and I realize at the same time who it is. He says something to me like "Now that would be worth attending!" I decide to see if I can join those with the man, Warren Buffett, in the upper room. It is big enough for maybe 20-30. My first direction (route) there turns out to be wrong, but then I find the way upstairs and in through the back and just step over the back of an empty movie theater type seat and sit down next to another older gentleman to my left. We are in position, along with several others in nearby seats, to be quite close as Buffett arrives and smiles at the gathering and is about to begin speaking and taking questions. My new neighbor and I smile too in anticipation, as if to say to each other, "Now this is what it is all about, and aren't we lucky to be in exactly the right place for it!?"
[Of Warren Buffett, I'd say he is a philanthropist, a mentor, highly intelligent, a superb teacher, a good analyst and writer, a value-oriented investor of great success, a moral leader, an excellent manager, and knows and practices extremely well the art of winning friends and influencing people. He is also self-deprecating and has a great sense of humor.]
