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Last Naked Leader Week for 2004

Naked Leader Week – 84 (w/c Monday 20 December 2004)

This is the last Naked Leader Week for 2004, and I simply want to say thank you for your encouragement, belief and contributions during 2004, and I end 2004 with an extract from NL Experience that is very apt at this time of year.

I said I understood, and touched his arm

 We stood slightly closer. He was crying

 I waited, and would have waited forever

 Telling him without telling him, that I was ready to listen

 and that whatever he told me was fine

 He said it again:

 “I can’t go home”

 “I know” I said – a few years ago I would have asked someone, in the same position, “Why?” and ignited their emotions

 So this time I said, and said again:

 “I know”

And this time he answered the question I did not ask

 Through his tears he said:

 “Because I wouldn’t know what to say to her. We’ve lost our way, 14 years of marriage and we’ve lost it. We can’t speak to each other anymore; we just live in the same house. We exist together.”

 (Pause)

He carried on – “I can’t go home – I wouldn’t know what to say”

 And then I asked him a question, I hoped it was the right one:

 “If you did know what to say, what would it be?”

 He looked at me, and smiled, the first smile in over an hour. He knew what I was up to, he knew the power of the question I was asking.

 He mocked me, in a warm and friendly way:

 “Oh, Mr Taylor, if I did know what to say, I would say it, but I don’t know what to say, so I won’t be saying anything”

 (Pause)

 Total change of state and emotion – a different choice made deep within

 “And if I did know what to say, I would hold her close to me, and I would look her in the eyes and say I love You, and ask her if she would spend the rest of her life with me. And I would tell her my hopes, my fears, and my dreams”

 And then he stopped, and simply walked away. He walked home, and said what he said…

That was six months ago, true story, repeated with permission but no names needed, because it could be anyone who has been with someone for awhile, and lost sight of what it is like to really be with them. And so many people wait until it is too late.

And he said to me a few weeks later:

“If you love someone, tell them, and love them, like it was your last ever day together, because that day will come”

 I wish you a wonderful, peaceful Christmas – wherever you are and whatever you are doing.

David x

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