Dave Brisbin 9.13.26
Years ago, a co-worker became a good friend—a man from India with very dark skin and big, white teeth. When he smiled it was exactly like snapping on a high-powered flashlight. And he was always smiling. I liked him immediately, and we’d go to lunch and meet after work hours as well. Just one fly in the ointment…he was always late. Not just a little. Sometimes an hour or more.

I was developing an appropriate resentment, so I knew I had a choice to make…somehow grin and bear the tardiness or end the friendship. Neither was acceptable, so I found a third door. Without even telling him why, I’d always ask to meet at my apartment. That way, I just lived my life until he showed up, which was then always at the right time, often with homemade Tandoori chicken and the smile. He marched to a very different drummer and was always exactly himself, which is what I loved.

I didn’t have vocabulary or concept for it then, but Chinese Daoists call it ziran, “self-so.” Means living or acting authentically, without constraint or ulterior motives, just as we naturally are and exist to be. My friend flowed to a different sense of time and lived accordingly. I could accept that and flow with, or not. But I couldn’t change him even if I’d wanted.