from “The Humor and Logic of My Son”

My 4 year old son Nick and I have been having some interesting discussions lately and learning a lot. We’ve been thinking about friends. We were at the kitchen table just before bed while Nick was having his routine snack, when I started, “Does it bother you when mommy and I fight (i.e., resolve conflict)?” “Yes,” he said. I said, “Sometimes friends bother each other. You know, like when your friend Noah bothers you at Montessori? Aren’t you going to be friends tomorrow?" I asked. "Yes," he said. "Sometimes friends bother each other, but good can come of it. Let me show you.”

“Do you know where pearls come from Nick?” He said, “What’s a pearl?” I explained to him that they are beautiful white round balls. Pearls are only found deep in the ocean by divers. They form inside the oyster when a grain of sand gets inside and bothers it. I took a box of mussels out of the freezer. I found two halves and put them together. We looked at them closely. I said, “Friends can be like that grain of sand to the oyster. They can bother each other until something very beautiful comes out. I don’t know anything more beautiful than friendship, do you?” He said, “Love.” I said, “yes, love.” He smiled brightly and said, “Dad put your hand up to my hand.” I did. Our hands together looked just like to two halves of an oyster! I asked him, “Do you see something beautiful in there?” He smiled and said, “No… it’s invisible. It’s love.” “Do you feel it? I asked. He said, “Yes.” Where? He smiled again. I pointed to my heart. I said, “Some things that are real are invisible. He grinned and said “yeah” as a matter of fact and looked back down at his snack.

I said, “Look at the power of magnets. You can’t see the power but it’s there.” I asked him, “Do we have any magnets around here?” “Yeah,” he said and he bolted upstairs and collected all the magnets in the house. We looked to see how the magnets come together even though they are not touching. Sure enough, the power is there but you can’t see it.

That night, I work up at 3:00 AM thinking about my conversation with Nick. I thought what if two people put their hands together another way, like a hand shake but with one closed hand interlocking over the other. Then it dawned on me that it would look just like the ying and yang symbol! Maybe friendship is like a firm and balanced holding, with tension, between two people. As long as the friction isn’t, “I don’t like you or trust you” maybe something beautifully polished and pure can come of it.

Valentine’s Day is coming up soon. I thought, what a good time to dive deep and look for pearls.

©2004 Paul Esch. All Rights Reserved. Paul Esch is President of Breakthrough Business Success, Inc. He works with business owners and executives to improve sales, marketing and management systems. To publish this article please call 651-501-7979.