The Value of an Empathic Currency Trader

I just had an amazing 25 hour adventure to London and back. The mission was to review a very important document in person with my CEO, and wow, did that project take some work. I want to share the adventure, but through a very specific lens: what made me successful was a mix of a personal outlook I've been cultivating all year, and also my basic belief that empathy and kindness are far more valuable than people tend to treat either.

Here's the Adventure Broken Down Into Bullet Form

• Mission: face-to-face document review in London, because I have to see the CEO's face while he reviews the material.
• Tried to print said document at Staples and had all kinds of problems. No document.
• I ask the most helpful person on the planet to call around London and maybe find a 24 hour printer. Like you do. (Skip lots of misfires and hard work.) The document will be ready for me at 7:30am London Time at a place about 1/2 hour from my hotel. (No idea how far from the CEO.)
• Flew a 6pm flight from Boston that arrived at 6:30am at Heathrow.
• Learned first hand about how crappy London traffic. I call the document people. They're expecting me at 7:30. Traffic says not likely.
• I ask the driver if he can take me there instead of my hotel. No dice. He has an 8am.
• I call the document people and ask them to courier it to me. No dice. Won't arrive until 10am. (I evidently don't have dice.)
• Meanwhile, the driver hears me talking very nicely to very many people, including him. We discuss the joy of small towns and villages over huge cities, how basic human kindness is missing.
• We talk about how in his world, if someone is about to get married, the neighbors come by with bedding and food and things to make out of town guests feel welcome. (I don't ask him, but I suspect he's Pashtun. There's a code called Pashtunwali that would make this true.)
• Time is rushing by. However, this triggers something. The driver's 8am has to be rescheduled with someone else. Suddenly, he has only to drop me off at my hotel, and then has no work for maybe 90 minutes.
• The driver says to me, "You're a very nice man. I can tell you are upset about your document. I will take you to the printer's."
• Trumpets blare. Angels dance around. He and I praise Allah together. I'm Buddhist so I praise anyone's god.
• I message the CEO trying to get a read on where he is. Get this: he's like..3 streets away from the printer.
• We get to the printer's at about 8:15 (which is fine).
• I'm about to figure out Uber when the driver says, "Oh come. I'll take you the entire way. We've come this far."
• I thank him with my words (and quite a large extra tip.)
• Soon, I'm having an iced Americano while my boss digs into the document with me and we spend the next 11 hours working together (with a few breaks).

Empathy Fixed That Problem

If you're cynical, money could have also fixed the issue with fewer steps. Maybe if I'd offered the right amount, the printer would've closed the shop and just taken the documents to where I needed them.

But my story is better. I made friends with the driver. We shared about our families and our goals for the future. We complained about inflation together and talked about amazing foods we love to eat. He felt the radiant glow of being able to truly help someone, to relieve one's suffering, and I got to feel the grace that one must express when being helped (which, as you might know, is almost always harder to receive than you'd ever imagine).

I was back on the plane 25 hours after I landed. My ride to the airport that morning at 3:30am (I wasn't going to let London traffic ruin me twice) was a great conversation about Pashtunwali (both my drivers were from Pakistan), about how my young driver was working to save money and finish university so he could start his own company. We talked about the four languages he spoke and how English was by far the most complicated of them. And we talked about how cities can drain someone of their compassion, and how greed comes from a place of pain more often than not.

I was so very fortunate. My devotion to finding the pluses in every situation, looking for my way through every barrier, and my desire to know and care about as many people as I can before I shuffle on to the next life both served me so very well.

I slept maybe 14 hours (with two brief wake ups) and now I'm ready to work hard again at my desk a few miles away from the ocean that separates me from my adventures in London. But everything feels a little bit closer to me, now that I've gone and shared space with such helpful people. It fills me with the urge to be even more helpful myself, and that's the currency. Empathic money spends a lot more pleasantly than the old fashioned kind.

Have you experienced that?

Chris...