Lung Chi & Burglar Alarms
Hello and good day!
Our team swept and mopped the chocolate shop floor.
They wiped down the counters with warm soapy sponges.
They cleaned out the hot chocolate machine and put away the sample jars.
One team member prepared the cash deposit and took it to the ATM in the bank next door.
Meanwhile, the other two team members stocked the shelves and hand washed our tongs, knives, and cutting boards in the sink.
In all, the closing routine takes about 40 minutes and on the night in question, the team did an excellent job.
The shop was spic and span and ready to open in pristine condition the following morning.
It was nighttime outside, and the center parking lot was dark and mostly empty.
Everybody said their goodbyes in the cold and thanked one another for the hard work and a job well done.
It had been a long day, and the goodbyes were quick.
Nobody cared to linger, and all were looking forward to being home.
Several hours after the team had left, my wife and I were getting into bed.
You know that moment just before your head is going to hit the pillow and you can feel how wonderful it will be to close your eyes and drift off?
The sheets feel cool against your skin.
You snuggle in.
Sleep is just moments away and few things are more pleasant.
We were all bundled in when my wife’s phone flashed red.
It was the alarm system.
“Adam! Get up! Somebody is robbing the store!”
I sat up and we looked at her phone together.
“Turn on the camera,” I said.
She turned on the security camera and we could see that the store was empty.
Through the window, we saw the headlights of a car parked out front.
The shadow of a person crossed through the headlights, darkening one, then the other.
The car door opened, the person got in, and the car drove away.
The alarm company called us. My wife answered.
“Should they send the police?” she asked me.
“I guess they better. I’ll meet them there,” I said.
I got out of bed, put on my shoes and a jacket, went downstairs, grabbed the car keys off the hook near the door and drove to meet the police.
Goodbye sweet sleep.
This is the life of a business owner.
When I got to the shop, two young police officers were there.
One was tall and bald. The other was short and had a headful of thick black hair.
They had already gone in and investigated the scene.
“Looks like somebody forgot to lock the door. The thief was probably walking around pulling on door handles. Thankfully, it looks like the alarm scared them off. There are no signs of theft,” said the short one.
“Go in and take a look around. We’ll wait here,” said the tall one.
I checked it out. Nothing appeared to have been stolen.
We dodged a bullet.
It takes 40 minutes to prepare the shop for closing and just 3 seconds to lock the door.
But locking the door is probably the most valuable part of the whole thing.
An unlocked door could cost you thousands of dollars.
Little details matter.
When we export cacao from Peru to Switzerland, it is essential that we hang bags filled with moisture absorbing pellets from the container’s ceiling.
The container sails up the Peruvian coast, through the Panama Canal, and through the Carribean Sea, before heading towards the North Atlantic.
That is a couple of weeks sailing through the tropics where it is hot.
We dry cacao to a certain moisture level in our processing facility and we know that the heat of the sea voyage will continue to dry the cacao.
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In the enclosed container moisture has nowhere to escape and will bead on the ceiling as dew.
The dew will then drip back on the cacao and turn it moldy.
We do 3 months of difficult backbreaking work to get that cacao into perfect condition.
The flavors we’ve developed during our meticulous post-harvest processing would be ruined if we didn’t know to spend 20 minutes hanging moisture absorbent pellets before the container is sealed.
By the way, few other chocolate companies go down to the port to prepare their own shipping containers.
Three months could be ruined by neglecting a 20-minute ritual.
Many years ago, I was a dedicated vegetable first vegan.
I was strict in my diet for two years and on the whole I felt great.
Around that same time, I sold my car and decided to ride my bike everywhere.
I was in the best physical condition I’d ever been in.
However, during most of that period, I suffered from a chronic, dry, nagging cough.
I couldn’t shake it and it was a real detriment because my job was to be on the phone talking to restaurants and chocolatiers about buying our chocolate.
I’d be telling them about the thought to be extinct variety of cacao that we’d rediscovered and then I’d break into a hacking fit in their ear.
I went to several doctors and specialists.
I took pills and tried inhalers.
I had my lungs x-rayed many times and one pulmonary specialist told me that I had the biggest, cleanest, most beautiful lungs he’d ever seen.
“You have opera singer’s lungs,” he told me.
For the life of him, he could not understand the cough.
After two years of trying to get rid of the cough, I went in for acupuncture.
The acupuncturist was a petite Chinese woman.
She interviewed me before laying me down, inserting the needles, and telling me to nap while I listened to new age music.
One of the questions she asked me was how much I slept per night.
At that time in my life, I was working very hard, and I didn’t sleep much.
4 or 5 hours per night at most.
When I woke up from the nap, she told me that she knew my problem.
“Your lung Chi is low,” she said.
In Chinese medicine your body’s Chi is its vibrancy, energy, and power.
“Your lung will cure itself if you restore the Chi to it.”
“How do I do that?” I asked.
“Sleep 7 hours per night.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Funny that no other doctor asked me about my sleep.
I started to sleep more, and the cough went away.
My lung Chi has remained strong since then.
A strict diet and a lot of exercise weren’t enough to keep me from sounding like a dying man on the phone.
The simple and obvious remedy of getting enough sleep is what cured me.
There are many of these little details in life that if overlooked will derail all the hard work in the world.
You can be a faithful and sober spouse, but if you don’t smile at your beloved and tell them how much you care from time to time, the flame will extinguish.
You can spend time with your children for many hours every day, but if you don’t tell them how proud you are, they won’t know.
The paychecks for your team might clear every two weeks, but you still need to let them know how much you appreciate their hard work.
I am going to keep my eyes open for the little details that matter today and make sure that I take care of them.
Thank you so much for time today.
I hope that you have a truly blessed day!
Adam