Just One Person

Weekly wisdom to bring you home, in 3 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

This past weekend, I went on my annual retreat of silence and contemplation at a monastery in Big Sur.

In a world that so often controls the conversation—our attention, our pace, even our sense of reality—I’ve always found that silence brings me closer.

As I look out at the horizon across the Pacific, I use it as a kind of companion: a way to sense the inner horizon I’m being pulled toward in my own life.

On this particular trip, I came across a story about the Dalai Lama that brought me an unexpected comfort.

At the height of his global fame, someone once asked him: What is your greatest achievement?

He told a story about visiting South Africa. He met a man who told him he had no hope—no education, no possibility. The Dalai Lama sat with him for an hour, simply talking. And at the end of that hour, he felt this man had somehow found a sense of hope and confidence.

“And that,” he said, “is my achievement. Just one person.”

It made me think about the way we often touch and help others—not through grand gestures, but by responding with the fullness of our heart. Maybe affecting one person’s life is just as meaningful as making a piece of art that reaches millions.

If the Dalai Lama feels that… then surely any of us could, too.

Where in your life are you being asked to show up with a fuller heart?

A POEM

“The Journey” by David Whyte

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

Grateful,

Michael