I had to stay in Munich unexpectedly due to aircraft malfunction.

It’s strange how sometimes things contrive to give you what you need, I would call it the Universe but some might find that a little out there.

I met a man, we’ll call him Steve, who was a toymaker. He was in Munich for a toy fair. We talked about the weather, I knew it was bad in Boston where he was from and he spoke about the comparative mildness of a balmy February day in Bavaria that felt more like spring.

Then we began to compare our situations; I told him I was returning from Ankara where I’d been giving seminars and workshops on living the Good Life, attaining and maintaining happiness and satisfaction; which he found, as most people do, fascinating. He was an inventor of toys. In demand for his skills because he could solve problems, work out ways to do things effectively. He was the centre of a hub of contacts, people who knew his skills and abilities and used him to move their own ideas forward.

We talked about pressure. The difference between creative people and methodical or systems people. How creative people without a system drift, how methodical people without creativity become stuck and so on. Then he told me about being audited randomly by the IRS, the inspector wanted to know what he did and so Steve took him to his basement.

He ran his business from home and showed the inspector Geppetto’s workshop. The IRS guy asked lots of questions, what exactly he was doing, why he travelled so much and so on. Steve answered all the questions and after a few hours the IRS inspector said, “I want to do what you do”.

Steve said, “No you don’t”. The inspector said, “Yes I do”. So Steve said to him, “When do you retire?” They worked out that the inspector could retire in four years if he chose. Steve said, “I can’t retire. Once you do this, it never leaves you alone. I know some of the greatest toy-makers in the world, legends in their field and they’re still working well into their eighties and nineties, coming up with new inventions.” I knew that it wasn’t a job, what he was describing was a vocation. It wasn’t a career, but a way of life. As far from a tax inspector as it was possible to get.

I reflected to Steve that I had a grid I was developing:

Apprentice

Mechanic

Engineer

Architect

Creator or Inventor

and asked him how he’d become a toymaker. He told me the story of helping his father who was a handyman and picking up skills. Then doing an engineering degree and finding himself working with toymakers because he could create systems that enabled them to create their visions in a practical way. He ended up as the chief engineer at a very well known toy manufacturer and had eighty people working for him. He was left to do his own thing by the owner because the company always earned money from his ideas, systems and products.

I reflected back to Steve what I thought he was doing relative to the heirarchy I had described and said that the reason he could not stop was because his work validated and utilised all that he had learned in his life. As an inventor he was able to ‘free range’ and build a platform through which a compelling frequency influenced him. This was the process of creating toys, inventing and solving problems.

He worked for himself now. Happy to freelance and work as he chose. And this is the key to well-being, a developing strategy that enriches and extends your skills and abilities and allows you to refine continzually and invent new ways of being. Steve told me that he felt energized talking about it in this context, he said that just talking to me had made him feel good about himself. That to me was worth a diversion.

Then he went to his toy fair and I caught my plane.