Ten Minutes and Seven Sticks of Dynamite

I was invited there to do deliver a seminar. I spent the weekend delivering my lecture to a number of friends, colleagues, and guests who are truly some of the most stellar beings I’ve ever met.  

On Monday afternoon I was to meet with my host and interpreter downstairs in the lobby at the hotel I was staying at.

We would then walk five minutes to the nearby subway station and take it downtown where I was giving my seminar.

When I came down the elevator and walked outside, there was a frenzied kind of electricity in the air.

I wasn’t sure what it was but I would soon find out.

Before I tell you what occurred that day, I want to tell you that the seminar I delivered was to help the Russian people become more successful in both their business and personal lives.

I was there to help them with their marriages. I was there to help them with their kids.

I was there for one purpose:

To help them better their lives.

Since this was one of my humanitarian projects I do not get paid. I go and do this because somewhere in your soul, at some point in your life, you do these things because it’s part of who you are to help others.

Across town in another hotel and coming down a different elevator was Akbarzhon Jalilov.

He, too, was getting ready to get on that exact same subway, but had a different purpose than mine.

He had no desire to help anyone.

In fact he had a contrary purpose to mine.

His purpose was to destroy the lives and families living in that city.

I know that sounds a bit harsh.

But where I carried a briefcase with my seminar notes to my destination, Akbarzhon enroute to his destination carried seven sticks of dynamite strapped to his body under his coat.

I am highlighting these opposites because the simplicity of it is this:

There are people in this world who have fallen down the rabbit hole so far that their intentions have become inverted.

Like turning over an hourglass when the fine sand has run all the way through.

Except Akbarzhon’s intentions contained in that hour glass were not sand, but poison.

And the direction Akbarzhon was headed was towards destruction.

Nothing and no one would stop him.

So, you have someone that intends with every breath and step that they take to do harm. 

Destroy as much as they are capable of.

And that’s just the is-ness.

It doesn’t need a political explanation. It doesn’t need debate. 

It’s like drinking too much alcohol.

If your intention is to keep drinking, eventually you get drunk.

But on the other side of the city was me.

My intention was to help the people of St. Petersburg that day.

Akbarzhon got to that subway just ten minutes before I did.

Ten Minutes.

And Akbarzhon did what he intended to do that day.

And yes, I found out what that frenzied electricity was all about.

I was ten minutes from taking that subway.

And that subway was blown off the track along with others’ lives.

So in an instant I got the full picture.

As I met my host and interpreter outside the hotel, they pointed urgently to a local bus as they spoke rapid-fire Russian which I did not understand.

But I understood their concern and their intention.

A being’s concern for another is universal.

There is no need for a translator for that.

We jumped on the next available bus and were crammed in like sardines. Every single Russian had their cell phone glued to their ears listening for the update on the subway explosion.

Just as my interpreter was.

When my interpreter took his phone from his ear, he looked at me and said in broken English,

“It was a terrorist attack.”

There is nothing, and I repeat nothing that brings you into present time faster that knowing that ten minutes earlier and we could have been part of the body count on the news that night.

As the bus winded through the congested streets of St. Petersburg, we arrived at the center where I was giving my seminar.

And here’s the reason I love the Russians.

You’d think with the hysteria on the streets with families at risk or possibly injured from the explosion, that one would walk into the seminar hall and find that most everyone did not show.

It would be completely understandable.

But not the Russians.

The room was jammed packed with attendees wanting to improve their lives and the lives of their family and friends.

I’m a writer, and sometimes it’s hard to find the words for things like I experienced that day.

The esprit de corps or national pride you feel from another being leaves one with no words, really.

If we were at war and in a foxhole being shot at, these are the guys I’d want in my foxhole.

We went on to have a great seminar and people were writing success stories and thanking me profusely for helping them in the midst of all the insanity.

When you are involved in doing good things for the world at large, you understand at a much deeper level that good things get fought.

But no matter what.

Get on that bus.

And continue helping others.

I offer a free 30 minute consultation over the phone to discuss any issues you have that you feel might be blocking your personal or business success.

There is no pitch. There is no sale. There is no obligation to do anything else. This is my way of letting you know what I do, and hopefully creating a long term relationship. Click on the link below if you would like a free consultation.

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