One Man's Search for Meaning

15 years ago, Marco was hit by a drunk driver.

You cannot tell by looking at him. But it changed him forever.

“I am a student of fear,” he says matter-of-factly.

Successful in his industry — one that is based on keeping information secure — Marco has found himself at a standstill. Stalled out.

He’s come to me to help him ignite the fire of inspiration again.

“I don’t want to just be a student of fear,” he says. “I want to also be a student of compassion. What else can I be a student of? I don’t want to live life on accident,” Marco says.

Or, defined by an accident.

“What am I doing here? What do I really, really want?”

He has a 100-year-old house in which he has a created a home that people often describe as “peaceful” and “harmonious”.

He had planned to tear it down and build a new, architect-designed house on the river.

It would be a beautiful home for him, his wife and four children, a gift for his and his family’s sacrifice to build his business.

But also, it would be “proof” of his success, a symbol that his leap to leave his corporate job a few years ago was the right thing to do.

After all, he’s got a lot to be proud of. He got out of debt in three years and bought outright the beautiful 30 acres of land on which he lives. He’s also saved a fair amount of cash for the new house.

But when the bid for building the house came back three times higher than he’d saved for, his disappointment threw the vision to a halt and into bigger questions of Why.

This is when Marco called me.

As a life coach for high-achievers, I suggest that he take an inventory of sorts to look at what he has right now.

This means opening the cupboards of the heart and soul to see what’s there.

I ask him to find some old photos of himself.

Marco’s stories began with bullying and demons of supernatural kind — how he chased them down and faced them.

Marco shows me a photo of him as a little boy with spiked hair and a neon shirt. He’s around 8. There’s another one of him wearing the costume of a man with a mustache and glasses. It is poster-size, proof of his parents’ adoration.

When I ask Marco to describe the personality of the boy in the picture, he doesn’t hesitate: courageous, fun, friendly, adventurous, exploratory.

In this place, life is mysterious, intriguing, full of wonder and magic.

For years, he’d been focusing on the randomness of the accident, but never on his unique decisions after the accident. But now, as he toggles the switch by looking at the courageous, adventurous little boy in the photo, a lightbulb snaps on: He went against the doctors recommendations for surgery.

“I made a decision that wasn’t even on the table.” He said No to surgery and instead dedicated himself to physical therapy exercises, “that I still do to this day.”

His decision not only worked out, but showed him he could trust himself.

He allowed what could have been a devastating injury to be one of the most positive life-changing moments of his life.

This is part of Marco’s Great Story, that he ushers into the light.

We come back around to his business. How to scale it. And again, what really, really matters.

Marco was on the fence about hiring someone, until we clarify what an employee will afford him: Freedom. Freedom to ride his bike, drive his sports car and spend time with his family.

He also wants to be able to take vacations, like the three-week road trip he recently took with his family to Southern Utah.

“It is magical here,” he says from his spot in Utah.

One night, he, his wife and four children lay out under the stars. Laying himself on the skin of the earth, facing the stars with his family, Marco led them on a silent meditation.

“How can you remind yourself of this perspective, this feeling of all being right?”

After looking around his desk for a moment, he says, “I know. I’m going to swim to the deepest part of the river and pull up a small rock from the bottom. I will keep it in my pocket throughout the day to remind me.”

I picture Marco diving into the deepest part of the river on his paid-for property, pulling up a perfect stone. This is a life well-lived, a life lived on purpose.

And, yes, he might still build a beautiful house on the 30 acres he owns. But this is no longer necessary to prove his worth.

If he does it, it will be an act of expressing who he is, from the inside out.

Sometimes it takes an accident to start living life on purpose.