Coaching Voodoo

My friend called me last week. His name is “Snake Eyes.” He’s a good guy. He’s also a killing machine. I don’t think he’s ever actually killed anyone. I’m pretty sure his friends have. They were in special forces. Who knows with these guys anyway? If they’re bragging about something as dour as that you have to question their credibility. Not that I’ve ever heard them bragging about it. In fact I’ve never talked to any of them directly about. I’m afraid to ask. Partially because I don’t want to know, and partially because I’m afraid they might jump out of their seat and give me a fatal RKO through the dining room table for asking too many questions about it.

But I digress…

My friend is a martial artist. He studies ninjitsu. So that makes him a ninja. And he’s a black belt, so I think he can probably kill someone pretty easily if he wanted to. At least I imagine he can. We joke about it. I secretly hope he doesn’t kill me.

Request The Wind

“What’s new?” he asks.

I rattle off a list of meaningless nothings. I have little in the way of substance to offer in answer to his inquiry. There is, for all intents and purposes, “nothing new” in my life at the moment.

There’s an awkward pause. In it I feel the ramp up to a request. My friend wants something from me. I can tell before the words leave his lips and dissolve digitally into the cellular wind-waves meant for my iPhone 3Gs. I perk up and make myself alert. It’s not like him to ask; he’s pretty self-sufficient. In fact, I’m even a little nervous. He has my attention.

He has a concern. A woe. A worry. He finds himself in the precarious position of wanting motivation. This person, who has taken himself from a bad situation growing up in a filthy excuse for a suburb outside of Boston and carved himself out of granite into the model of a man, is in a confusing spot. It happens. And me being a well-worn traveler in the land of “no motivation” understands not only does that place suck, it can also prove fatal for one’s interests and projects. Apathy is unacceptable. We must stomp this out before it spreads.

Specifically he is concerned about his business – a consultancy of sorts. His creation stands before him like a monolith refusing to budge.

He is, as he put it, sitting on a sailboat without wind, motor or oars. Adrift on the motionless waters of life he turns to his trusty cell phone for help. Perhaps, in the magic that exists between friends who know and understand each other well, he can summon the winds to move his tiny boat again toward the promise land of a business well-built and hell-bent on helping people in the best way he can while making a decent living.

So he needs wind in his sails. No problem. If there’s one thing I’ve got plenty of it’s wind, even if it is in the form of blowing hot air. (NOTE: This is not a reference to flatulence. It’s an idiom. And it’s used sarcastically in a self-deprecating way. And if I really needed to clarify that for you try to keep up, will you?)

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