For the last year and a half he had attended a most unique gathering of personalities on Thursday mornings.  What began simply as a self-interested attempt to network for employment led him down an entirely different path than expected.  More than a job, he found life.

Most groups and organizations he had joined were disappointments.  But try as he might, it seemed he couldn’t avoid joining groups altogether.  Hypocrisy acting as the evicting agent, he left nearly every organization he ever joined.  But this one?  This was different.  This group offered nothing more than literal time and space to improve a particular life-skill.  Each member joined in order to improve their ability to speak publicly.  He found that hidden within an improved ability to speak publicly was the ability to communicate.  Unexpectedly, he learned that lurking within communication was being.

He didn’t doubt that in the organization someone somewhere hungered selfishly for more and more members–humans-in-group will never satisfy their need to evangelize.  Yet, for this group, any recruiting efforts more than admitting existence proved silly.  Ultimately, convincing someone that they should face their largest fear and, over time, dis-cover who they actually are–all while in the presence of others–was not possible.  Like the horse that can’t be forced to drink, people had to want to join.

While Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” was a chapter essential to telling the story, the time had come to turn the page.  Experience illuminated that he ‘was not’ without other people.  Therefore, the next chapter began, “I communicate, therefore I am.”

Are you?