Breakfast for champions (revised)

A new colleagued had just arrived at the firm I used to work for and I had lobbied hard to get him an office right next to me. He didn’t know much about economics and financial markets at that time but he was superb at marketing, so I had high hopes that he would put our group’s insights on the map for all the investors at our firm. He also had a passion for geopolitics which in the Trump era had important implications for economies and financial markets as well. I had high hopes that collectively we would get much stronger and more effective in our operation.

At our firm we were surrounded by amazing art work, and I always took a careful look at every piece of art that each colleague would end up choosing. The painting that arrived in his office was interesting. It depicted a rough sea with a boat drifting in it. It was quite impressionistic in nature so we could read a lot into the images of the boat the rough sea. Some colleagues had gathered in front of his office to welcome him and once I mentioned that amazing painting we all collectively looked for the implied message in it. Someone saw eggs, another saw bacon, and that’s when our marketing colleague coined the title, ‘Breakfast for Champions’ after the famous US cereals commercials. “Great”, I thought to myself, “a little storm is coming our way but we are prepared to face it; the eggs and bacons are coming our way!

Well, it didn’t quite pan out that way. Our group got pretty much dismantled in an organizational shake-up a few years later, and I mentally filed the ‘Breakfast for Champions’ prophesy as one of the few misunderstood Signs along the Way. You can imagine my surprise though when I met the colleague for lunch around the time when my second book, ‘The Way of the Meister’ was published. He mentioned that his wife does video trailers for authors and I was delighted to work with together with her. In hindsight the message of the ‘Breakfast for Champions’ painting was as valid as promised. There was a bit of a story sea but boy, did I receive a yummy breakfast. The Way just needed a little extra time to prepare it for me.