It all starts with a smile and a wave. – Krista Cupp

Unknowns

It was a vast room. In this room there were faces I recognized and others I did not. I did know the four main speakers in the meeting. I thought.

My eyes naturally began darting between all the people sitting around me; glancing at those I did not know as well as those I believed I knew. There were a lot of people in the room and I began to feel overwhelmed by all the needed relationship building around me. Then, my friend Krista Cupp’s words, from a meeting the day before, sparked in my mind.

“It all starts with a smile and a wave,” she said.

Then the first speaker began her short presentation. She, and the other three presenters, were set to describe their experience and knowledge of one man. Someone, all attending shared a relationship with. I thought I knew him quite well. That was about to change.

Krista’s words sparked in my mind again.

“As one of our local farmers said last week, a simple wave can go a long way! I think our community is known for its friendliness. I think we can lead the way by smiling and waving in a car, on a bike, walking...you name it.”

The second speaker began her presentation. I activated my listening more intently because I was beginning to make a connection between Krista’s counsel and what was becoming the dilemma before me. She told me more and more about the person we held in common. And, the more she talked, the more I realized my relationship our friend in the front of the room was not what I thought it was. I waited to learn more.

The third and fourth speakers continued to teach me more of what I didn’t know. They spoke of the small details of their personal relationship. Details I knew nothing about. Things I didn’t hold in common with them. Those things were revealed as glaring unknowns.

By the end of the meeting, my unknowns dwarfed my knowns.

“It all starts with a smile and a wave,” Krista said.

And now, I realized that’s where my relationship with our friend at the front of the room had started. And ended.

My eyes were darting between the people in the room again. They were glancing between the people I didn’t know and the ones I only thought I knew.

“It all starts with a smile,” I said to myself.

So, I began to smile at everyone in the room, including the man I once thought I knew so well.

Offering a smile was a start. A foray into the unknown. Perhaps it is necessary to look at one’s own cup before beginning or building any relationship? After all, it is impossible to add more to an already full cup. So, maybe it’s important to let go of what we think we know about someone, so we can discover who and what is currently unknown to us.

That smile and a friendly wave are the beginning of the important process and adventure of discovering, the all-important unknowns in others. The things, upon which, inspiring, satisfying and deep relationship are founded.

Bravery of Curtis Sutton

When Life Pushes

I remember the first time I saw Curtis Sutton. It was long ago, but the image has stuck with me for more than forty years. We were both young then. Yet, he wasn’t just young, he was also brave.

He started a family at a young age, when others his age were more likely to be labeled and identified as overly selfish, focusing on only themselves. He knew it would be the beginning of something harder than he’d ever faced before. Still, he proceeded to follow his heart and focus on love. That love stayed at the very center of everything he did in life. It set the stage for all that would follow.

Not many years after starting his family he was involved in a horrible traffic accident. The effect of that accident left him in constant, unrelenting pain. Yet, he persisted in his unyielding efforts to provide for and preserve his family against all odds.

I don’t think he was a believer in the odds. Because when others would have given up he continued forward. Even when things became harder and much was going wrong, I watched as he recommitted to his soul-mate Janae so they could continue their journey together for the remainder of his life. That same commitment to another opened the door for him to follow his heart again.

It was at, or near that moment when he made the decision to broaden the size and capacity of his heart. His heart was already so big in giving, that I wouldn’t have thought increasing its size would be possible. He showed that it was.

He worked with people who had lost everything as a result of addiction and worked tirelessly to give them counsel and hope, when almost everyone else in the world had given up on them. He would never give up in his own life and not in the lives of the others he served.

Tom Ferry, a personal coach, recently commented, “There are two moments in our lives that transform our potential. The first is when we’re very young and we take on either a fixed or a growth mindset. The second is when life pushes us to choose for ourselves.”

Then Tom asked, “Has that moment already happened to you?”

Curtis answered that question over and over again, after multiple, possibly crushing life events. His answer was, I choose who I want to be and what I want to do with my life. I choose love and caring. And, he always did, even when bone cancer replaced all of the bones in his body with its counterfeiting, excruciating theft of his life.

I remember the first time I saw Curtis Sutton living and choosing for himself. It was long ago, but the image has stuck with me for more than forty years. We were both young then. Yet, he was young as well as the brave one. And, now? Just yesterday, he chose who he was going to be, as the last of his life was being stolen.

There are two moments in our lives that transform our potential. Curtis always chose the path of love. He chose who he was going to be, when offered joy and when offered extreme pain. 

He was brave and good, when life pushed.

“Sometimes you have to look for the cake in the boot.” -  Lisa Winters

Cake in the Boot

Lisa Winters understands what it’s like to go through difficult times. That much was evident. The emotion was palpable as she stood, speaking in front of a crowd, of mostly strangers.

“My father suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease for several years,” she said.

Then she went on to communicate more about her experience and why she was spending time as a volunteer to help others who are going through the same experience.

“Not only did my father have Alzheimer’s Disease,” she continued. “He also suffered from diabetes.”

Lisa’s daughter knew how much her grandpa loved sweets and she thought of him as she was cutting her wedding cake on the day of her marriage. One of the most important people in her life wasn’t there at her wedding, sharing one of the most important events in her life. Her beloved grandfather wasn’t there to share celebratory cake with her.

So, she carefully cut a couple of pieces, the ones right in the center, of her cake. Then, she put them on a small plate, covered the plate in a wedding napkin, and set them aside. She had a plan to share this joyous moment with her grandpa.

Right after returning home from her honeymoon she put the next phase of her plan into action. She removed the cake from her refrigerator and drove the short distance to her grandpa’s home, a memory care facility.

“Grandpa,” she said. “I snuck these two pieces of my wedding cake in here for you. Your nurses won’t want you to have it, so you’ll have to hide it from them. Otherwise, they’ll take the cake from you.”

She held his hand as he ate one of the pieces of cake. She embraced him as she left.

“Don’t forget grandpa. Don’t let them find your cake, or they’ll take if from you,” She said with her brightest see-you-later smile.

The next few months were very difficult for the entire family. Grandpa took a turn for the worst, not long after the cake sharing, and passed away a short two or three months later.

Upon grandpa’s death, Nancy and other members of their family all came together in his room to pack their loved one’s things.

“It was a hard thing for us to do,” Lisa said. 

As the packing day went along, Lisa’s daughter picked up one of her grandpa’s boots. She looked inside and saw something crammed in the bottom.

“There is something in here,” she said. 

She reached inside carefully, not knowing what she might encounter, touching something crusty, wrapped in a wedding napkin. Her eyes filled with tears as she recognized the napkin from her own wedding!

“It’s the piece of wedding cake I asked grandpa to hide!”

Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, “A great and eternal beauty passes through the whole world, and it is distributed fairly over that which is small and that which is large; for in such important and essential matters, no injustice is to be found on earth.”

Lisa Winters said, in speaking of this experience, “You can always find things to make you smile, even during the most difficult of times.”

Lisa understands what it’s like to go through difficult times. That much was evident. The emotion was palpable as she stood, speaking in front of a crowd, of mostly strangers.

Then she said, “Sometimes you just have to look for the cake in the boot!”

Watch as I host American Dream TV which will begin streaming on Apple TV and Roku in August 2023

“Today is worth two tomorrows.” – Benjamin Franklin

Two Tomorrows

“I had a senior moment,” Diane said as she carefully lifted her deeply bruised right arm. “Luckily, the back of my shower is slanted. It eased my fall a little bit.  Still, I just really hurt.”

“Today is worth two tomorrows,” Benjamin Franklin once said. And, as I sat visiting with Diane Miller, I could hear Mr. Franklin’s imagined voice utter these very words. Yet, I was unable to imagine what Diane was about to teach as a perfect follow-on to his words.

“Do you remember when we were standing on the road in front of my land last year?” Diane asked with a faraway look in her eyes.

She and her sister own a well-wooded piece of land a few miles from where we were now sitting. On a bright day last year, we were standing just in front of it as she took the time to verbally paint a detailed description of the reasons she loved it.

“I love this land because it rises gently away from the road. It makes it so when a person looks out and away to the west, she has a beautiful view of the surrounding farms that are carved out from the subtropical forest. I treasure the trees that have taken hundreds of years to grow here. Did you know that there are wild blackberries sprinkled all through, below the trees? It’s a place of refuge for deer and birds, and especially for me.”

If we weren’t standing in front of that land, I could have vividly imagined the entire scene she had painted. But, perhaps most importantly, I could feel the love she cradled in her breast for the place.

“Do you know what I remember most about that day we were standing there?” She asked.

There was no need to answer, because I knew she was going to tell me.

“I remember the empathy you showed me,” she said. “Empathy makes a larger impact than most people understand. And, it goes a long way to make a lasting impression; to ease pain.”

As she finished speaking, while looking earnestly toward me, I watched as she trembled and grimaced in pain. So much so that she immediately let out a little laugh as the pain subsided slightly.

“At least I can still laugh, because the pain reminds me of my latest ‘senior moment.’” She explained while moving to stand. “I need to go home now.”

She stood. Then she began to walk slowly toward the door behind her.  She thought of opening the door with an associated gesture, but the pain in her dominant arm reminded her of what she wasn’t up to doing at the moment.

So, I reached for the door and opened it to ease her way.

“I’d shake your hand,” she smiled. “But you understand why I can’t.”

She turned her head to lead her body down the gentle ramp toward the sidewalk beside Main Street.

“Today is worth two tomorrows,” Benjamin Franklin said to me again.

I would have never known that today’s small gesture of empathy would be able to continue to brighten the day of a friend, with accumulated pain, more than one year later. Who would have known that empathy, once shown, would have such power over tomorrow?

Watch my show on American Dream TV, premiering in August 2023 on Apple TV and Roku.

“It took us a while to get everyone in the restaurant to understand the concept of layering flavor, but now that they do, the results are amazing.” - Chef Tyler Rogers

Adding the Unusual

I met Chef Tyler Rogers many years after his humble start, in his new restaurant, “Hail Fellow Well Met!”. I wanted to meet him, learn from him personally, because I’d heard, from a mutual acquaintance, that he was using edible flowers as an ingredient and garnish for almost all of his dishes. It seemed to me as if, perhaps, he had discovered something important about the value of adding the “unusual” to food and to life. After all, his rise in the culinary world could also be described as uncommon since he came from a very humble beginning.

Chef Tyler was raised, in small town America, off Burnt Bridge Road on the outskirts of Magnolia, Arkansas.  He got his first cooking job as a simple fry cook at a local place called Hudgies. Once he’d confirmed his love for the culinary arts, he left his small, home town. That was in 2008. Then he began to work his way through many well-known restaurants in Little Rock, eventually working under Joel Antunes at the Capital Hotel. 

From there, Chef Tyler worked under Thomas Keller at The French Laundry (Three Michelin Stars), voted the best restaurant in the world twice, in Yountville, California. Following his stint in California, he worked under Grant Achatz at Alinea (Three Michelin Stars), as well as Sous Chef under Iliana Regan at Elizabeth (One Michelin Star) in Chicago, Ill. Then, he decided it was time to come home to Arkansas.

Today, Chef Tyler is Culinary Director for Onyx Coffee in Rogers and Executive Chef for Hail Fellow Well Met! in Johnson, Arkansas. And, both have turned out to be an opportunity for him to demonstrate and express his commitment and mastery of adding the unusual as a way to layer flavor.

“It took us a while to get everyone in the restaurant to understand the concept of layering flavor in an unusual way, but now that they do, the results are amazing,” Tyler explained before he took the time to teach me his way of doing so.

“I learned early on that I needed to give diners a point of reference,” he said. “So, I learned how to take a favorite classic and give it a spin. For example, my favorite dish, ever, is biscuits and gravy. Now I make my own version.  Its filled with ingredients others don’t think of adding, but people are willing to try it because they recognize biscuits and gravy as one of their comfort-favorites.”

The process of using classic comfort foods as a foundation caused Chef Tyler to search for combinations of high-quality ingredients that would be fit well together and create explosive flavor.

“It turns out that a guy I know from here is now in New York,” he said. “He met a farmer in South America who was growing a rare type of pork that has marbling similar wagyu beef. Now he grows that type of pork in the State of New York and in an interesting twist he ships it back home, here, for me to use. It has amazing flavor and I love it.”

Then, he brought out a plate, filled with one giant biscuit. It was biscuits and gravy, Chef Tyler’s way, like I’d never seen before. Most importantly, aside from its presentation, it was filled with layered flavors I’d never experienced. Some flavors were from ingredients I would have never chosen on my own. And, when I took my first bite I immediately lost my eyes into the back to my head. It was heavenly!

It took me a while to understand Chef Tyler’s concept of using the unusual to layer flavor. But it all came together for me with a couple of bites. So, I understand now! The results are amazing and I’m looking to expand on what he taught me.

I’m looking at my own classic lifestyle. The life I’m comfortable with. And, I’m thinking of what special ingredients I can add, to change my life from simply comfortable, into something that will flower. Something magical. Unusual.

Biscuits and gravy, anyone?

If you’d like to know more about Mount Olive Farms and Hail Fellow Well Met restaurant, watch as I host this episode on American Dream TV which will be streaming on Apple TV and Roku in August 2023