It's the same you who shows up
Divinity in all People
[Note: In a previous essay I wrote about the Sikh perspective that All is Divine, and how it shaped my observations and experiences while traveling in Spain. I experienced divinity in three elements—in nature, in people, and in moments. Below is my final essay from Spain on seeing and experiencing divinity in all people. In this essay, my friend Omar.]
Omar is a friend--thee friend--I travel with. He is a high-achieving polymath, a multi-faceted bright light who thinks lucidly both five years in advance and five inches in front of his face. Omar overflows with intelligence, ambition, perspective, empathy, and presence of mind. By checking many boxes, he creates his own. There is Omar the investor, a savvy thinker who tinkers at the intersection of technology, culture, cash flow and valuation. There is Omar the philosopher, a student of life asking the big and meaty questions about how to live well. And there is Omar the human being, an in-good-faith soul who can talk to anyone, a caring brother and son, and a generous friend who shows up, in ways big and small, when we explore the planet together.
Though a close friend today, our friendship was in its earliest form when we met for tea on a frozen January Sunday in 2023. New York City was blisteringly cold, and the holiday cheer had given way to the holy-shit-the-sun-sets-at-4pm-and-we-have-3-months-til-April sense of dread. Inside a warm fireside lounge in Meatpacking, jazz music played and there was barely a seat in all the house. Big snow jackets lay strewn everywhere. Waiters in crisp white shirts glided by. Beanies revealed messy hair. Glasses and silverware clinked. In the depths of the plush green sofas and purple chairs next to the fire, friendships strengthened and romances explored. The house was vibing, cozy and giddy with optimism of the New Year. January may be a barren tundra, but in Manhattan life nevertheless always feels warm and divine.
Omar and I took two of the royal-looking chairs by the fire. Two teas please. On a late afternoon Sunday in early January, drinking anything else would have been sacrosanct. I did not yet know Omar well, but he did not strike me as one content with small talk and pleasantries. The precision in his words, the pace of his speech, and the visible wheels turning in his head suggested a horsepower and an interest in something far beyond I’m good-how-are-you.
When he asked, I shared that my life was, on balance, feeling increasingly good, but the multiple facets of my life felt disjointed at times. The various parts of my self—professional ambition, a commitment to close friendships, a growing love of writing, and an expanding spiritual curiosity--weren’t feeling entirely cohesive. How could I better orchestrate these parts to create a more symbiotic whole? How could investment in one area of life be accretive to the others? Could I fuse these together to create momentum? Or did I need to make tradeoffs? Was I spread too thin?
I sought Omar’s perspective. Having briefly met him a few times prior, I had a reasonable sense he spiked high, or aimed to spike high, in multiple areas of his life.
“How do you pull off being good at, or just simply being, many things? How do you tie it all together?” I asked.
When I posed these questions to Omar, I suppose I was on the hunt for a time management tip or productivity hack.
Omar offered up a simple and profound consideration:
“It’s the same you who shows up in the various parts of your life. Instead of feeling like you’re toggling between parts, can you instead see these multiple parts of your life as outputs driven by same inputs?”
He continued. What if life is built on a shared foundation of inputs that impact most, if not all, of the outputs? While the experience of our careers may differ from our personal lives, both require similar inputs for the right outputs. He chafed at the concept of work-life-balance, or at least the modern cultural implication that one should toggle between the work self and the life self. The two appear more alike than they are different, he observed.
We riffed on the multiple elements of what makes an experientially rich life—career, family, friendship, romance, community, recreation, creation, exploration, movement, purpose, and wellness of body, mind and spirit.
We then volleyed back-and-forth a list of common inputs required across these arenas of a rich life—strategic thinking, tactical doing, time management, discipline, follow-through, accountability, teamwork, creativity, selflessness, balance, optimism, rest, and faith.
Wherever we are in our lives, aren’t these inputs more or less a constant ingredient for success and satisfaction?
Goosebumps. Goosebumps from Omar’s perspective made the hairs on my neck stand up—insight as smart as it was approachable. Focus on the inputs that impact all life’s outputs. Bet on the one-to-many. There is elegance in its simplicity and excitement in its leverage.
How can we see the commonalities in everything we do and learn to pattern match? How can being a high achiever at work help us become a better friend? How can a mindful approach to distance running improve our presence of mind as a spouse? How can creative techniques in writing make one a better parent? How can our observations while traveling abroad make us more observant in the minutia here at home? To borrow a concept from elementary school math, where are the least common denominators in our lives? Goosebumps.
Goosebumps from Omar’s perspective. Simple and profound.
As we spoke, the goosebumps grew. Beyond the wisdom in Omar’s perspective was an ever-visible texture of the magic of this moment itself: this was serendipity, right? Serendipity in being the chance beneficiary of someone else’s rich life perspective at a time when I wanted it and needed it. Serendipity in participating in a conversation that became a catalyst for a close friendship. Serendipity in stumbling upon, and co-participating in, an extraordinary moment when we least expected it. We were safari-goers who turned a blind corner and came upon a lion resting under a tree. The moment suddenly dazzled. And we experienced it. We created it.
Omar and I were not yet close friends at the time. We were hardly friends, and in the frenzied pinball machine of New York City, we could have easily kept it surface level, enjoyed our tea, and ricocheted off one another and onward into the world. Had we done so, maybe I don’t walk home that night with a mental model that has been with me everyday since, in moments big and small. Maybe we don’t end up traveling to Spain together. Maybe we don’t build a close friendship. Maybe I don’t get goosebumps re-living the moment as I write about it now.
Is a chance encounter with profound insight, especially one that ignites a friendship, anything short of divine? To momentarily experience the profundity of another person is perhaps what it may feel like to one day reach Outer Space, turn around, and look at Earth. The mind is tickled by grandiosity and tipsy from a shot of wisdom. For a moment we sip the divine. A divine perspective in someone else, a divine moment we co-create, while the world spins on.
I once read somewhere that we experience moments that divide our lives into before and after. I think we experience people too. Moments and people. Moments with people. Tea with Omar on that cold January night was one of those moments. Our conversation was a divine moment of alchemy, a payoff from an unspoken gamble to plunge beneath the surface and into the depths of a more meaningful conversation. Two people, not yet really friends, organically feeling and finding their way toward a divine perspective in him that had a divine impact on me. And catalyzed a divine friendship between us.
Divinity in all people.