The gleaming, tightly-woven wool of the man's tailored blue suit formed a striking background to his reddish patterned tie, as he faced me in the conference room.  His silver pen tapped an impatient rhythm on the oak table as we sat, alone, waiting for the others to arrive.  Likely in his low fifties, he had the tall, lean wide-shouldered build of a much-younger athlete.  The gold watch beneath his left shirt cuff was further confirmation of the success suggested by the shell cordovan leather of his black and shining monk strap shoes.   Steely blue eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses were framed by the graying hair of age and significance.  He answered my questions politely but without expression, as I offered small talk to stave off the silence with which he seemed unusually comfortable.

He had more than one title, I discovered.  President of one division, Vice-President of several more.  He had been to more foreign countries in the last two weeks than most would see in a lifetime.   He had finished the Iron Man triathlon in Hawaii.  Twice.  When I had picked him up from the airport less than an hour earlier, I was directed to a small glass building away from the main terminal, to which his company's shining white Gulfstream jet had delivered him - and only him - moments after my arrival.  His efficient movement and confident economy of speech belied a man of consequence.   I was in my late twenties.  My wide eyes weren't yet surrounded by the lines and creases of experience.  My cheap suit hung like a costume, the fabric a dull gray, the boxy cut revealing an origin some distance from Sevile.   I don't remember if I wore a watch, but if I did, it was from the house of Casio.  Rubberized model.  There was no question I was outclassed.

And now, in the conference room, I was running out of questions.  

"How did you arrive at your current position?"  

     "Started right out of college, worked hard, never said no."    

"How much of your time is spent traveling?"

     "Most of it."

His eyes darted to his watch, then to the folders in front of him.  His impatience was growing.  Whether it was because he was being peppered by a young know-nothing, or because my bosses were late, I couldn't tell for sure.  I suspected it was a little of both.

"If you had it all to do over again, would you change anything?"  

It was really an unintentional question;  a poorly-phrased way of trying to ask what a guy like me needed to do to become a guy like him.  

His eyes fixed solidly on mine.  His pen stopped tapping.  

     "I would change all of it."

Not knowing how to respond, I didn't.  

     "I've missed most of my anniversaries, and most of my wife's birthdays.  I have a son who is in college.  He played several sports in high school.  I never saw a single one of his games."

     "I'm still married.  It's convenient for both of us."

     "My son doesn't speak to me much now.  I don't think he hates me.  Sometimes I wish he did.  You can work with hate.  You can't do much with indifference."

I'll never forget the deafeningly-uncomfortable silence after he stopped speaking.  And I'll never forget those words.  I don't know why he chose there and then to reveal his thoughts, especially to a young and naive guy like me.  Probably because I asked.  Or at least he thought I did.

But that exchange is something I still think about today.  It haunts me a little.  As I think back on it, he revealed a deeper question than the simpler debate of whether chasing riches is worth the sacrifice:  If succeeding wildly didn't merit a life's worth of time, then what did?  

Our lives don't span a thousand years.  Or even, normally, a hundred.  Ads on television and in print idealize the beauty of youth, and offer countless ways to regain or maintain it.  But despite the newest running shoes, we ultimately get slower.  Despite the nicest clothes and the biggest houses and luxurious car seats donated by the finest of cows, we still watch any real satisfaction slip away between our fingers.

Is it any wonder, then, that when we reach our thirties, we begin to experience vague feelings of displacement, followed often by unanswerable questions in our forties and fifties?  Why are any of us here?  If nothing lasts forever, is any of it worthwhile?  If life is a scramble for identity and success, followed by a realization that it was all largely a waste, followed by a slow decline into obsolescence, then what is the point of it all? 

Is it possible we've overestimated our own importance?  That perhaps our desire to gain for gain's sake, to prosper so that we might have more comfort, to leave our mark so that we might be remembered in a favorable light, doesn't just seem futile, but actually is?

Consider your own worries.  There are those that arise from the human condition of uncertainty, and are common to all of us:  Food.  Health.  The future of those we care about.  But what do many of us, at least in the western hemisphere, allow to consume most of our thoughts?  Our own busy-ness.  A manufactured construct, consisting of gaining, maintaining, and gaining some more.  Gaining an image.  Another possession.  A lifestyle.  A title.  A social calendar.  But we find the only thing that is more work than gaining these things, is not losing them.  We are constant and unwitting contributors to our own exhaustion.  

What if there were a solution, though, that consisted not of will, but of surrender?  Not of an additional checklist, but of the wholesale rejection of list keeping?  Not of ceaseless striving, or clouded thought, or anger or jealousy or a sense of failure, but of peace?

The irony, of course, is that we know this solution exists.  We know the answer is not to gain more, but to want less.  Not to add-to, but to subtract.  And this is precisely why we rarely accept it.  To do so would be to give up control.  To trust in that which we cannot see.  And that thought offends all sensibilities.  It makes all of our work seem meaningless.  It takes us out of the driver's seat of a moving bus.  It feels neither natural nor logical.

And if we were to simply stop working, stop pursuing, stop hoping, it would be meaningless.  To leave off the rest of the equation is to kill our spirit.  It is not giving up that frees us.  It is giving to.  Giving up is failure.  Giving to is freedom.

In the words of Augustine:  

"God, you have made us for Yourself.  And our hearts are restless til they find their rest in you."

We can deny, fight against, and refuse to acknowledge the idea that we are not our own.  But it is a truth indelibly etched onto our souls - one that finds us in the quiet of the evening.  

We need only to pause, and read what is written there.  And see that the power and majesty and glory that we have sensed but could never feel is real and present,

in the letting go.