Miles. Moments. Meaning.
Chapter Seventeen
I returned the rental car in Charlotte.
Weather was gray. Cool wind scraping across the parking lot.
The guy at the return booth gave me a nod, barely looking up from his handheld scanner.
Another car. Another traveler. Another mile to nowhere.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked toward the terminal.
The piano was playing again.
I could hear it from the main atrium—the soft rise and fall of notes climbing above the crowd noise.
It’s one of the reasons I liked this airport.
Amid the endless shuffle of shoes and clatter of suitcase wheels, there was that music—simple, old-fashioned, unhurried.
A man playing a song for no one and for everyone at once.
I stopped at the airport post office. Dropped three postcards in the slot—one for each of my kids.
Simple messages.
A note about the city.
A joke about the weather.
A promise that wherever I went, I was thinking of them.
Then I made my way to the gate. Sat down. Watched people come and go.
Bill once told me something on a long drive through Ohio.
“I’ve traveled for years, John. After a while, every city looks the same. Every restaurant has a chain. Every mall’s got the same stores. Feels like the whole country just rolled over and agreed to be one big parking lot.”
It stuck with me.
Because there’s truth in that.
Most cities had folded into the same gray rhythm of fast food and chain hotels. Same fake smiles. Same tiled floors. Same plastic-wrapped breakfasts.
But part of me believed in something else too.
Perspective mattered.
If you looked closely—if you slowed down—there were still things you could see.
Still places that hadn’t been bought and sold a hundred times over.
The music in the airport.
The tired father lifting his son up to see planes through the window.
The way an old woman sat alone with her Bible open in her lap, smiling at something she wasn’t telling anyone else.
Life was still there.
You just had to be willing to look beyond the signs and the slogans.
Sitting there waiting to board, I thought about all of it.
About Bill.
About Dick.
About the strange, beautiful years I had survived.
I learned something about myself after enough years in sales.
I’m not built for small talk.
Never have been.
Not the kind where you talk for the sake of talking.
Where meetings become games, and everyone says they’ll “circle back” but nobody moves a damn thing forward.
I sat through enough of those rooms to know what it sounds like when people forget how to act.
When conversation becomes noise.
When action becomes a myth people only pretend to believe in.
That’s when I learned to check out.
Not rudely.
Just quietly.
A step back.
A breath inward.
I learned to save my words for when they mattered.
And when I think about it now, Bill was the same.
At first, I thought Bill was just quiet. Reserved. A man who studied people because he liked the distance.
But I see it differently now.
Bill had probably heard more foolish arguments and nonsense than most men do in two lifetimes.
He didn’t waste his breath on it.
He didn’t argue for the sake of arguing.
He listened because listening had a purpose.
And when he spoke, it was because something needed to be said.
Maybe that’s what he taught me without ever meaning to—
To stop dancing around things.
To stop wasting time trying to be polite when clarity was what mattered.
Ask for what you want.
Say what you mean.
Don’t dress it up.
Nobody has time for silliness.
Not if they’re serious about where they’re going.
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But Dick saw the world differently.
He talked to everyone.
Guy filling the vending machine. Woman mopping the lobby.
Stranger holding a map upside down at the rental counter.
But Dick saw the world differently.
He talked to everyone.
Guy filling the vending machine. Woman mopping the lobby.
Stranger holding a map upside down at the rental counter.
To Dick, every conversation was a possibility.
A spark that might catch if you gave it room.
He wasn’t wrong.
I saw him turn a five-minute chat into a five-figure deal more than once.
As I sat there thinking about him, about Bill, about the thousand conversations that made up the long slow climb out of my worst years, I realized something.
It wasn’t about filling the silence.
It was about knowing when to step into it.
That was the difference.
Dick wasn’t afraid of the empty spaces.
Bill wasn’t either.
And now, neither was I.
They started boarding the plane.
Families first.
Then the premium flyers.
Then the rest of us—all the tired, hungry men and women carrying laptops and hopes and the weight of a dozen other days.
I waited. Let the line get short.
No rush.
I knew I wasn’t just boarding a plane.
I was moving forward in something bigger.
Quieter.
Stronger.
The flight was uneventful.
Small talk with the guy next to me about weather and football.
I nodded where it fit. Smiled when it mattered.
The rest of the time, I watched the clouds slip by the window.
Sat in the steady hum of engines and remembered who I was.
Who I was still becoming.
Back home, the kids weren’t there.
They were with their mother for the week.
The house was silent when I walked in.
No shouts. No laughter.
No backpacks dropped by the door.
I dropped my bag. Took off my shoes.
Made coffee.
Sat at the kitchen table.
The same table where I had written prayers.
The same table where I had planned how to put a life back together from the wreckage of another.
I pulled out my notebook.
Wrote down a few simple things.
Charlotte airport.
Music in the air.
Postcards dropped in the slot.
Miles don’t change you. Silence does.
No poetry.
No speeches.
Just the truth.
Later that night, I stood in the kitchen and looked at the postcards still waiting for my kids.
They will come home next week.
They’d find the postcards tucked on the table from my trip to the Florida Panhandle. I’d tell them about the white sandy beaches along the Gulf, how the water was so clear it looked like glass. And I’d explain how Mobile, Alabama still felt like a place holding on to its past—
even if Bill always said every city had lost its charm.
They’d read the words.
Maybe they’d laugh.
Maybe they’d ask about Charlotte.
Maybe they’d just know.
Know that no matter where I went—
No matter how many miles or airports or meetings—
I was always finding ways to bring them with me.
Bill used to say, "Travel long enough and you learn—home isn’t where you sleep. It’s who you carry inside."
I understood that now.
That night, I sat on the back porch.
The stars sharp and cold above me.
And I breathed.
And I prayed.
And I knew that everything hard—the miles, the fights, the silences—they weren’t just obstacles.
They were the road itself.
The road to something better.
The road to a man I could respect in the mirror again.
The road to a father my kids could be proud of.
And as the night settled in around me, I realized something simple and good.
I wasn’t running anymore.
I was moving forward, one quiet mile at a time.
Toward the kind of life that doesn’t need explaining.
The kind you live honestly.
With your sleeves rolled up, your heart open, and your feet steady on the ground.
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Book Description:
A father. Three kids. No job. Nowhere to turn—except forward.
In the wake of the 2008 economic crash, a newly divorced, unemployed father finds himself at rock bottom. With three children to care for and his finances in ruins, he must fight against rejection, uncertainty, and the weight of failure to find work and rebuild his life.
This book is more than just a story about sales—it’s a story about resilience, persistence, and survival. It’s about knocking on doors, making one more call, and refusing to give up when the world keeps saying no.
Told with raw honesty and grit, this book takes readers on a journey of struggle, determination, and hope—showing that sometimes, the hardest pitches aren’t made in boardrooms, but in life itself.
Because success isn’t given. It’s earned.
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Aloha John...
Your lesson about clarity is timeless. Beautifully done.
You wrote about the differences between Bill and Dick. I'm more like Dick, definitely! But I would like to have some of Bill's wise manners. And then the differences you find in a new city, depending on one's own perception.
I always say I want to go where no plane, train or automobile can take me. And your words take me there! Thank you.