The Direction of Intention

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John is very present with me today. I haven’t seen or talked with him in years yet I feel as if he is sitting in the room with me. It’s odd. John is one of my heroes. I met him when he was 15 years old and he already knew the direction of his life path. He was going to direct plays and movies. He was fearless and capable of moving through obstacles with ease because he did not treat obstacles as reasons to stop; for John an obstacle is spice, a reason to engage.

John is dyslexic and as a young boy he was treated as if he were somehow deficient; he was placed in the “slow learner” classes and felt as if he were dying. One day he refused to go back to school until he was placed in the mainstream (whatever that means) and allowed to succeed or fail based on his work and merit. I’ve never known a harder working person.

When John was in his early 20’s he played Hamlet for me. I will always remember him, hours after rehearsal, sitting at a desk in a dark room illuminated only by a desk lamp, working with his script. For hours after the other actors had gone home, John was working his words. Years later, if I needed to know the worth of a script, I’d ask John; like Beowulf’s bees he’d transformed his nemesis dyslexia into his ally; he could see the structure of a script like no one I’ve ever known. He could see beyond the words.

The capacity to turn an obstacle into an ally is a skill all of us possess but few of us exercise. John has been a great teacher for me and I’m delighted that today he’s dropped in for a visit.

Filed under: Heroes, Truly Powerful People |