I want to make sure I say these things to you while we are together above ground. Rarely do we get a chance to share our thoughts and respect for another person while we are both alive.
Today, I want to take a moment to honor a remarkable individual who has been more than a friend to me – Pankaj Chand. It’s rare to find someone who resonates with your soul, who stands by you in every phase of life, and who inspires you to be the best version of yourself. Pankaj, you are that rare gem.
Your presence in my life has been a beacon of hope and wisdom. From the fun times where our spirits danced in the light of friendship, to the profound moments where you stood by me, you’ve been my rock. I remember vividly the countless times we’ve been there for each other – me bringing tapes and player to your hospital room, guiding each other through challenging personal decisions and celebrations, or simply being a phone call away in moments of need.
Your support during my business ventures has been invaluable. Who else would have brought me the first hand-held device to run my business on Excel? Or mentored me as I ventured into the complexities of forming a corporation in India? Your foresight and wisdom have always guided me towards success.
But it’s not just in business that your influence has been felt. You’ve been there in my most personal moments – from health emergencies to being a comforting presence during my daughter Mary’s transition from this life. Your empathy and care have touched not just my life but the lives of my family members.
Pankaj, your leadership and vision in business are exemplary. But more than that, it’s your human touch, your ability to connect on a deeper level, that sets you apart. You’ve been a physician, not just in the medical sense, but in healing souls and mending hearts.
Your poem and song for Molly’s and my engagement, and your instrumental role in making our wedding a celebration, are memories I cherish deeply. Your presence at these milestone moments in my life added a special touch that only you could bring.
As you once wrote to me, “You are truly one of ‘Only a Few’.” These words mirror my sentiments for you. You have left an indelible mark on my life and on the lives of those around us. The rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings” in Winnipeg was not just a tribute from you and to you, but a testament to the profound impact you’ve had on all of us.
As we continue on our life’s journey, I look forward to more adventures, more growth, and more shared moments of joy and sorrow. You’re not just a friend; you’re a brother, a mentor, and a guiding light.
Pankaj. Here’s to you – a true embodiment of resilience, insight, and love. May the years ahead be filled with health, happiness, and the continued joy of touching lives as you have touched mine.
Metaverse, NFT’s, Decentraland, dAPPs, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, Open Sea, wallet, dashboards, Covid-19, corporate buyout, pitch deck, body build, help the most around the world. Personal development, change, asking better questions, learning more of what I don’t know, understanding self, facing fears, staying in the now, defining intimacy, exploring the existentialism of death.
These are some snippets of what I have thrown on the wall while making some semblance of where I am at this time in the universe.
Ken Christopher made his transition on March 27, in a hospice unit of Grand River Hospital. Ken had a profound impact on my life. From introducing me to Peak Performance and the Phoenix Seminar to years of mentorship in developing a global Amway business, Ken, along with Mary Elizabeth became lifetime friends and confidants.
I remember sitting in the house on David St, in Elora, ON, and reading Success Magazine. Somewhere in the back advertising space was an ad for Brian Tracy Learning Systems in San Diego, CA. It listed a toll-free number. It occurred to me that perhaps I could sell Brian’s training material in Canada.
Brian’s sales material had come into my life by way of one of my sales reps at Lambda Crystal. A well-skilled sales rep gentleman out of Toronto, named Keith Howard, had loaned me a bootleg set of sales tapes by an unknown speaker.
Keith had been a senior buyer for People’s Jewellers in Canada, and also helped me design and buy a diamond wedding ring set for Molly McGregor – paid $7500, valued at $15,000. The tapes Keith loaned to me were on the Psychology of Selling. I transcribed a twelve tape series on my first laptop during a Montreal Gift Show in a gorgeous hotel in a Montreal suburb in the Quebec lake area, circa 1989.
After applying some of the skills I learned from those tapes, I increased sales in the subsequent gift shows that year by four and five times previous results – from $40,000 to $200,000 in the fall Toronto Gift Show. Molly did the same in Edmonton. The process invigorated Lambda Crystal and sparked 40% growth, year-over-year for many future years.
I learned Brian Tracy was the lecturer on those tapes. Shortly thereafter, I saw a set of tapes on my brother, Mike’s, bookshelf, still in the saran wrap. it was called the Psychology of Achievement on twelve tapes, by Brian Tracy. I borrowed the tapes and began to digest the material back on David St. in Elora.
I remember well the day I sat by myself, listening to those tapes and answering a set of questions, Brian posed, on finding a major definite purpose in life. One question was if you only had six months to live, what would you do? I remember thinking what if it was six hours, what would I do? My immediate answer was that if I was not with my loved ones, I would get to them as fast as possible, or call. It then occurred to me that if that is my value, why am I spending so much time away from my family to build my businesses?
Now back to the Success Magazine and the Brian Tracy Learning Systems. I gathered the courage to call the San Diego office to determine if I could get some Canadian rights to Brian’s material. I spoke to a sales manager. He told me that if I wanted to learn about Brian’s material in Canada, I should contact a guy by the name of Ken Christopher, who lived nearby in Kitchener/Waterloo. I soon called the number given and spoke to Ken for the first time.
Ken introduced me to the Phoenix Seminar by Brian Tracy as a corporate training tool. What separated Brian’s video-based, facilitated, workbook and audio program from other corporate training I had seen was its conciseness, duplicatable, multi-person approach to building the person to foster a more self-aware employee.
I went on to form one of my corporations to sell the program in Canada to corporations, Performance International. I sold over 40 programs and facilitated groups of attendees, including my daughter Mary and step-children Miranda and Michael.
Incorporating the personal development journey throughout my life has been a major focus and joy.
Ken & Mary Elizabeth as change agents
Ken & Mary Elizabeth with Molly & me in Hawaii, Kauai
One day I was at Ken & Mary Elizabeth’s on Beachwood. I noticed a box of Double X on a counter. I had heard of Double X as the Cadillac of vitamin supplements. I asked Mary Elizabeth where I could buy some as I was already taking a daily supplement.
She said to me, that depends. Do you want to pay retail for wholesale for it? I retorted that I avoided retail as much as possible, being in the wholesale giftware business. She said I can get these for you at wholesale. And, that’s how I became an Amway distributor, sponsored front-line to a Diamond.
Not long after, I sold a line of crystal giftware into the Canadian Amway catalog and went along with the Christophers to tour the Amway head office and factory facilities in Ada, MI. As a manufacturer, I was very impressed with their technology, distribution warehouse, and the enormity of their manufacturing capability.
I was there when Ken & Mary Elizabeth made the decision to join Network Twenty-One in Grand Rapids. Molly & I went on to become Q12 Platinum producers for five years running and were recognized in the top 25 Platinum producers in North America repeatedly.
Our business stretched into seven countries and I, along with a couple of close friends helped launched Amway India, but that’s a story unto itself.
Looking back over fifteen years of developing business with Ken & Mary Elizabeth brings only smiles of joy. They lived with us in Fergus while they were between houses. We drove together to Florida many times for seminars and to visit them in their Bradenton house on the golf course.
I am unable to count the weekend seminars we went together to. The weekly open seminars we developed together in several Ontario cities. The hours we spent with them along with other N21 leaders. Whenever Ken & Mary Elizabeth needed our help, Molly & I were the first ones to volunteer to help out. They poured their lives into ours and we poured our lives into theirs. It was always a win-win relationship.
Sayings from Ken. This too will pass. If anybody can do this, you can. You are looking for the people who are looking for you. Never leave the people who don’t need you. Always arrive early and stay late.
My beliefs and philosophy about life have changed over the years. Belief, being defined as the “acceptance of something for which the evidence remains unseen”. Recently, I have attracted the belief that the concept of god, or God, is simply a man-made creation to explain things misunderstood. When I was a child, I had many imaginary friends. Friends that I would tell stories to and about. To continue each story I would simply add, “and then” to the beginning of every new story line.
As I grew up through the influence of the Episcopal church, it was not much of a stretch to imagine many imaginary friends. God and the Holy Ghost were just two of them. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were just more imaginary friends who looked out for me, brought me free presents and who I must satisfy with my behavior in order to receive the valued gifts.
I tried religion for many years. In my forties and fifties, I embraced Christianity to the fullest. Over five years, I read the complete Bible five times; daily section by daily section. Never more than 2-3 days lapsed, and rarely three days, between readings. I had each day to meditate on what I had read. I even memorized passages and used them in my daily life. I joined non-denominational congregations to expand my knowledge and surround myself with like-minded Christians. I took part in church development, met with a minister weekly for early morning breakfast to include a mentor for my beliefs. I was wed in churches, prayed, thanked and ask God to bless my life every day. I spread the word and gave praise to the Almighty. I studied and practiced religion.
I don’t think there was a real turning event, born again, type until I felt betrayed by love itself. As I questioned the results of a life long belief in “love conquers all”, I began to question many of my beliefs. It finally dawned on me that I had entrusted my life to imaginary friends. I kept running into the concept that I should just believe. The most used reason was because I was just a human sinner and God was so much larger than myself and how could I possibly understand with my puny brain. It just smacks of the answers to how does Santa Claus fly around the world in one night and visit every living room.
There were some important people of influence that got me back to thinking, rather than blindly accepting. Sam Harris helped me revisit the understanding that all we have is this moment. We really don’t have the power to know who or what random thoughts are going to appear in our minds that we then think we had the power to create. The idea of free will came into question and therefore we are merely results of cause and effect, stretching back into time.
I arrived at the conclusion that myself, along with most humans want to believe in some external locus of control for our daily living sanity. If you don’t believe in something, you will fall for anything came into question. The essence of original sin that we cannot wash away, the rules and regulations of organized religion, the corruptness of churches worldwide, the killing in the name of some imaginary friend; all came spearheading to a point. The thought that my imaginary friend can beat up your imaginary friend struck a sad but funny chord with me.
The cruel tactics that parents and society put on children, in order to control them is astounding to me. We try to trick children and then laugh at their being gullible. We scare them with the Boogie man, the wrath of our ancestors, the all seeing eye that can punish for thoughts as well as deeds. We entice them with the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny. We laugh at their ignorance and form a group of co-conspirators by refusing to tell other parents children that those imaginary friends don’t exist.\r\n\r\nBut have a child confess that they have an imaginary friend that they talk to and play with, and parents fall back on. No, you don’t have imaginary friends. That’s crazy.
However, the universal connection of souls would have been altered.
How do we value one relationship to another?
Fascinating.
Just a thought!
Never ending Love;
There are loves that are so sweet, that they should never be forgotten, no matter what the initial time continuum.
We need to nourish them, not condemn them, as some assassinators of truth.
If we are truly here for a short time, and our purpose is to experience as much bliss as possible, then, if we do not compromise trust and devotion, then we should be able to contain ourselves, morally, in order to drink in this dimension of time and space.
What fun! What exciting anticipation! Is it harmless? I truly believe it is, in that no harm should come to others, emotionally, or physically.
Spirits can come together and, momentarily, spiral around each other, drinking in the moment.
The times I am going through right now reminds me of my dad, or pop, as we all called him. As a child, I remember him saying that sometimes you have to be “hard-nosed”. I smile as I realize that I thought the saying had something to do exclusively with his nose. You see, my dad had a real schnoz.
I realize also that his hard nose policy got him through many things in life, including a handicapped child, cancer, divorce at 80 years of age. Whether it worked for him in all life situations is a good question. All I know for sure is that I adopted the same method of dealing with difficult situations.
It is in the eyes of the beholder, however, can the beholder trust the eyes only? The first picture appears to be correct with the sky above and the land below.
Or…was this real or simply imagined from a reflection on water, then rotated 180 degrees and cropped! See the edge of lake water line at the bottom. The blue reflection off the water is an incredible reflection.
One of the most important things for me to do is to write. I remember as a young child 7-8 yrso, I would tell stories to myself and write stories all afternoon on a sunny day outside. They most often started with “and then”. Each chapter would continue with “and then”. Even now I seem to receive an enormous amount of satisfaction and increased self-esteem simply by writing what is on my mind.
Due to that compulsion, I have written journals dating back to my early twenties. Every once in a while, I pick up an old friend and languish in the joy and misery of times past. I am often amazed, and amused as well, by some of the nuggets that I have thought to paper.
Here are some samples:
“Safety in a shipwreck can only be appreciated from the side of disaster.” – January 2012
“Happiness is not simply about laughter or sexual release or being fulfilled, or purposeful, or determining why we are here. No, it’s the feeling of contentment of knowing we are being here in the moment, exerting as much focus as possible on keeping love in our hearts for as many minutes as possible; so that at the end of the day we can feel that we have invested sufficient amounts of time and energy to be able to say; “I did my best”. – January 2012
“Love is also fiery with contrast – looking for a new and exciting place to land.” – December 2011.
“Changes are like emotions. They can occur quite unexpectedly, like no rhyme or reason. They take us by such surprise that we are caught totally off guard and simply unsure of the direction to take. All we know is that we have to deal with a new environment that will require the same attention, minute by minute, feeling by feeling, ever mutating to the point of near insanity. Constantly we examine our truth. Being true to oneself can invite the Freudian mind to intercept and pirate our thoughts to less qualified endings.” – December 2011
