Where Does Your Sole Take You?

Take time to get to know the world around you.

Take the time to get to know yourself: body, soul, and mind.

You, Entrepreneur, you don’t know who you are. You just know what you want. Immaculately manicured and studded with gold rings, your cold hand clasps other cold palms in a rigid alignment signifying a deal, a frigid bargain that is effortlessly broken by the weight of selfishness. You read the black and white newspaper morning after morning so that you’re up to date with the latest trends and gossip.  You push numbers, you exploit the less advantaged life forms below you, and you kiss the ice-cold ass of the powerful giant you aspire to overtake. Your goal is to steal his shoes. Black tie, white shirt, black pants, and your own shoes are unusually spotless because you habitually polish them after every lie you tell. You don’t even know the sole of your foot; you just know it lands where you lay your torrid eyes. A progressive, perpetual motion stipulates the journey you embark on, never becoming intimately familiar with a moment or a scene of true color. You take a breath to quickly breathe it back out, never feeling the life-giving presence of the air in your lungs or respecting the process of breathing in itself as a remarkable phenomenon. You simply use the process to advance forward and up, up, up. I dare you to turn around and look at your footprints. You’ll find that your heel digs too deeply, that your toes pierce and tear, and that you crush the tiny wonders of the world. You say you can’t be blamed, for you didn’t know they were there, in your way, as you trudged tenaciously toward the North Star. Polaris, yeah that’s the one: the stubborn, static one that blindly reveals your demeanor. You’re stuck. You climb without fail. You climb to the top that when you reach it you will discover how bereft of true life it is. You’ll have a title and a lot of wealth, but you will be lonely. Those that you ignorantly clambered by, who were frolicking from cloud to gleaming cloud, will be cart-wheeling through sunny fields of daisies attracting rays of sunlight to the earth with their smiles. They see the earth’s beauty through kaleidoscope eyes, ever-changing and abundant in character. You don’t see what makes them so weightless and blithe, and you don’t understand how you can have it all yet fail to feel the fervor for life that they feel. You will be isolated, having never learned the immeasurable dimensions true love. True love lies in the warmth of a smile that you failed to requite. When you allow yourself to float like a leaf, true love is found in the channel of the wind that carries you to your next endeavor. True love lies in the serenity of nature on a still December night and the effortless descent of a thousand snowflakes silently landing on the ground all at once. It makes known its presence through the texture and scent of an old oak tree – the winding branches tell a tale of the possibilities of love when it is allowed to grow.

You must know, dear Tycoon, that it is not too late to kick off your shiny black shoes and walk barefoot with nature. Slow down and feel earth’s true skin. Allow your own sole to become intimate with the land that gives us life. Recognize that the meaning of life is to love. Realize that the soft embrace of another palm is more fulfilling in your hand than the stiffness of a crisp dollar or the cutting angles of a pristine diamond. Admit that more emotions are stirred from gazing into the eyes of a friend or lover than from seeing yourself with an abundance of material possessions. Believe that life is a product of love, and life’s mysteries are the challenges we face while finding our place in the world. We will rarely foresee their coming or understand their outcomes, so we must be flexible to change and simply enjoy the journey. 




Truth: Society by Eddie Vedder