Billionaire's Second Chance

“It is remarkably peaceful here,” Lilah remarked as we strolled through the Zen garden.

We paused to watch an old, Japanese man painstakingly raking sand into a number of intricate patterns. Then we strolled across an ornate wooden bridge that crossed over a koi pond.

“The patterns in the sand will be destroyed in a few hours,” I said. “All of those hours of intense concentration and work will be erased.”

She looked surprised. “That's . . . kind of tragic,” she remarked. “It will all be lost?”

I nodded. “All of it. Nothing will remain. This is the nature of Zen Buddhism—there is no attachment.”

“How do you know so much about this? You've spent the last hour telling me all sorts of things about Shinto, Buddhism, and now this.”

“I took an extended sabbatical from the company several years ago. I felt I was losing my focus. I had been struggling to come to terms with the loss of my grandfather and there were other . . . family matters, on top of running the company and trying to get it to the top.

“So, I left it in the control of my grandfather's second-in-command—a close family friend who had been with the company and my grandfather from the beginning and came out of retirement for that short time to assist me—and I traveled for a few months. I spent time with an old family acquaintance in Japan at his remote mountain residence.”

“Oh, wow, maybe you are Batman,” she joked. “Seriously, though, that sounds like quite an experience.”

“It was. During the second World War, my grandfather served in the Pacific and he saved the life of a high-ranking Japanese Naval officer, Colonel Tanaka, who was about to be wrongfully executed for crimes he didn’t commit. He and my grandfather had become fast friends, and he told my grandfather he owed him a great debt that he was determined to repay.

“We visited the colonel a number of times when I was a boy. He lived in an old manor in the mountains which had been in his family for many generations. According to the stories I was told, he was the descendent of a prominent line of samurai warriors and, like his ancestors, he had maintained the traditions of the samurai.”

“Wow! That sounds like a movie.”

“It was kind of like a movie. I mean, the place looked like it must have been built 200 years ago, with a few modern conveniences thrown in of course. I loved going and staying there as a boy. My grandfather taught me to speak Japanese as a kid. I was pretty good at it, actually. I still try to keep it sharp by watching Japanese movies when I can, and I do have a few business contacts in Japan.”

“Nice. I speak Spanish pretty fluently myself, and I could survive in Italy if I had to.”

“Excellent. Everyone should try to master at least one other language besides their mother tongue, I think.”

“Agreed. Anyway, tell me more about your time in Japan,” her eyes lit up as she insisted I continue. It was endearing.

“Yeah, well, like I said, it was great for me. Colonel Tanaka, while in his nine

ties at the time, was still a skilled martial artist. Oddly enough, he really was a true master in the ways of the samurai. Ways that had been passed on to him from his father and his father's father before that. I told him I felt as if I'd lost my way, and that I needed to find my focus and drive again. I’ll never forget the smile that came over his face when he told me that the time had finally come for him to repay the debt he owed my grandfather. So, he took me in and trained me as if I was one of his own grandsons.”

“Trained you? In what way?”

“As a samurai.”

Lilah's jaw dropped, and I did my best not to laugh at the expression.

“No way. So, you’re telling me you lived in a Japanese manor that was a couple hundred years old and trained as an actual samurai, under a genuine samurai master?”

I smiled and nodded. “I did. Every morning I'd be up at 4:00 to meditate in front of the shrine for an hour. Then I'd spend the next three hours completing grueling, menial tasks, during which I wasn't allowed to speak a word or display any emotion. After that, I'd begin weapons training, which was followed by more meditation, and in the afternoons we'd perform hand-to-hand combat. The evenings were spent writing old style calligraphy with ink and brushes.”

“I don’t even know what to say. Wow just keeps coming to mind. This is totally not something I'd have expected from a . . .”

“A what? Someone like me? A financial mogul? A billionaire? Or let me guess, a playboy billionaire? I mean, that is the rumor, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied, with a subtle blush coloring her cheeks.

“Well,” I said with a conspiratorial smile, “you might want to learn to expect the unexpected from me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she offered, smiling softly. “So how did it all end up then?”

“Well, I’m here now, so I found my focus. I found my way. I bolstered my discipline and became, in mind and body, a warrior. Colonel Tanaka truly did repay his debt to my grandfather in full. He saved my life, without a doubt.”

“Saved your life? How so?”