Dear friend,
The most profound truths of leadership and life are tucked quietly into the folds of ordinary human encounters.
I was recently in Nashville for two weeks, launching Mentora Institute’s Transformative Leadership Academy program for college students. One day, I was ordering my tea at a café there—just a simple moment in between meetings and mentoring.
A woman from the kitchen walked by as I was standing at the counter. She looked up and gave me a polite nod—the kind of gesture that says, We probably won’t speak again, but I acknowledge your presence.
I remarked, “It’s such a gorgeous day today!”
She paused, a smile blooming across her face. “Yes,” she said, “it is such a lovely day!”
A human thread was beginning to weave between us. I added, “Last week was so scorching hot. And now, this—what perfect weather.”
She chuckled, nodding. And we began talking about Nashville weather.
“I tell my children—well, they’re grown up now!—that Nashville has four seasons in one day. You wake up to 30 degrees, and by afternoon, it’s 80!”
I laughed. “Oh really? Is that how your fall is?”
Then I asked gently, “So you have grown-up children?”
“Yes—three! 21, 23, and 28.” Her face lit up like a proud sun rising.
I smiled. “That’s amazing. Because you look like you’re in your thirties.”
Now that made her beam.
“It’s the moisturizer,” she said, almost doubling over with laughter. “Truly, it’s the moisturizer!”
I grinned. “Ah… but I suspect there’s something more at play here.”
She tilted her head, curious. “Oh?”
And so I offered, softly: “It’s the bubbly spirit I see emanating from the very core of your being. The fountain of your youth.”
She sighed. Her smile lingered, but her eyes clouded. “My life has been a very hard one.”
What I thought was going to be light-hearted banter had suddenly struck a deep chord.
Perhaps I should have stopped there, sipped my tea and walked away. But how can you leave when the spirit of a fellow pilgrim on this grand journey of life has just started to stir?
So I nodded—gently, reverently—acknowledging the unseen storms she had weathered. “It is because your life has been so hard…it is because of this that your capacity to flow with joy is so extraordinary.”
Something shifted again. She lit up. It was as though, in that moment, she was giving herself permission to let her joy belong—to let it weave into the fabric of her life story, rather than sit politely on the side as a distraction.
“A wise soul, Yogananda, once said,” I offered, “a smooth life is not a victorious life. By that measure, yours is a victorious life.”
Her smile this time was fierce and beautiful, like that of an Olympic athlete stepping triumphantly onto the medal stand after a lifetime of striving and endurance.
As I left the café, I lingered on a thought that had been marinating in me all week—one of my favorite lines from Rumi:
Be a lamp, or a lighthouse, or a ladder. Make someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your home as a shepherd.
She had been a ladder for me, lifting my gaze just a little higher on that day. And perhaps I had been a lamp for her—not by offering her my light, but by awakening her to her own.
So, here’s my invitation to you:
Today, go out into the world not just to get things done, but to touch someone’s soul.
Maybe you’ll meet someone who looks radiant, and you’ll discover that their radiance was forged in fire.
Maybe you’ll see someone dragging their feet through the day, and you’ll offer a word, a smile, a moment that shifts their story.
Maybe the one soul you’ll uplift… is your own.
Let us be lighthouses, ladders and lamps. Let us be shepherds.
With warmth and wonder,
Hitendra
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