The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“To tell you the story of how I got from the Xintang factories to here would take all evening, so I’ll just say that I managed to get out of there and start a small business here in Shanghai. I worked hard, I was lucky, and eventually I sold that business for what seemed like a king’s ransom to me. With that money, I began to invest in other companies, large and small. There has been no shortage of opportunities in this country over the past few decades.”

  Gao Li explained that when his business began to take off, he did what I would have assumed any newly wealthy man would do. He bought expensive clothes, fancy cars and a yacht. He spent lavishly on dining out, vacations and gifts.

  “The only thing I didn’t do was buy a glitzy penthouse apartment or a huge house. My wife wouldn’t hear of it. We got this place before our daughter was born. To Gao Ling, it was home. She never wanted to move.”

  Mr. Gao went on to say that one day his wife had asked him to take her and their daughter for an afternoon stroll through the park. He told her that he didn’t have time—he was off to a car dealership to check out a sports car he was interested in buying. Gao Ling looked at him with disappointment and asked, “You would rather shop than live?”

  “She wasn’t angry, just sad. All afternoon, I could hear the echo of her words. And I kept hearing it for days, weeks.”

  Gao Li didn’t buy the new car. He realized that he didn’t care at all about cars. And he didn’t care about having a fashionable place to live. In fact, he didn’t enjoy most of the objects he was spending so much of his time acquiring.

  “I was buying them just because that is what I thought I should do. So I stopped shopping. And I didn’t miss the things one bit. What I did regret was missing out on that walk.”

  Gao Li said he kept the Bentley and the helicopter for business purposes. The helicopter saved him a lot of time—time that he could spend with his family. And the yacht was a good place to entertain because his home was too small for that.

  “That’s where the wisdom of the talisman comes in,” said Gao Li. “I realized that by living a certain way, I was missing out on simple pleasures, life’s greatest ones.”

  “Money can’t buy happiness, right?” I said. That was one of my mother’s favorite chestnuts.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Gao Li now, leaning forward earnestly. “I’ve been poor, so I would never say that money is not important. You have been enjoying Shanghai’s opulence today. But what you haven’t had a chance to see is the considerable poverty that exists in this country. The poor here—the poor everywhere—have fewer choices. They can’t always enjoy the simple things because they are working so hard to stave off hunger and suffering. They are too exhausted from the difficult work of feeding and clothing and sheltering themselves and their families. My parents had very little time for pleasure—simple or otherwise.”

  Gao Li sat back again. Then he bent forward to refill his teacup. He offered to fill mine, but I shook my head.

  “You know, Jonathan,” Gao Li said slowly, “it seems to me that most of us who are lucky enough to escape poverty forget what having a little money does. It frees us to make choices about our careers, where we live, things like that. It frees us to spend time with friends and family. It allows us to enjoy the simple things. But people think that money is only about what can be bought, what is consumed. So they become distracted by the next shiny toy, just like I did. And if they start buying too much stuff, spending too much, they can get trapped. Almost more trapped than the truly poor. They become beholden to mortgages and credit card debt and loans. Or just trapped by having to make the big money their lifestyle depends on. After all, as Julian always says, the more addicted you are to having, the less devoted you will be to becoming. And what I’ve discovered is that real happiness doesn’t come from accumulating things. No, lasting happiness comes from learning how to savor common pleasures like a cool breeze on a hot day, or a star-filled sky after a day of hard work. Or laughter with loved ones over a three-hour-long home-cooked meal.”

  “The shell,” I said, lifting it back out of the box. “Collecting shells on a beach?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “One of the best times I have ever had was building sand castles with my wife and daughter at the beach in Qingdao. The shell that Julian gave me has served beautifully to remind me of the perfect moments of that perfect day. And those memories are a form of wealth.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. I was thinking of another beach, another woman, another child. But something was still nagging at me.

  Finally I said, “But Gao Li, if you are now a wealthy man, why not just quit? Spend all your time on the simple pleasures.”

  He laughed. “Good question,” he said. “My wife asks me that all the time.”

  He took a sip of tea and then placed his cup back down on the table in front of us.

  “Work is also a pleasure for me, Jonathan. But it’s more than that. Remember that coffee shop we stopped at?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s not the only small business I have invested in. For every large venture I undertake, I try to find at least two small businesses to support. I look for people who think they can change their own lives as well as the lives of others. Small businesses in country villages and crowded cities; family enterprises and individual college students; entrepreneurs with ideas and a heart. And I follow these little businesses like traders follow the market swings. The men and women I give money to turn my dollars into new lives—they extend my help farther than I would be able to do on my own. And they help me build a better world in the process. Making a difference has now become more important to me than making money. This realization has made my life so much more joyful, Jonathan.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said. Mr. Gao’s story made me feel humble.

  Gao Li shook his head. Then he looked over at the window, at the brilliant lights of Shanghai spread out before us. I didn’t say anything. He seemed to be thinking about something.

  Eventually Gao Li started again.

  “A few months after Julian had his heart attack, he wrote me a letter,” he said. “I have to tell you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to open it. I was afraid that it might be another lawsuit. But it wasn’t. It was a handwritten note. Julian said he had quit his practice, had sold all his belongings. He had traveled. He had learned things. And he said that he was very glad he had lost the suit against me. He said I was a man he would like to get to know better.”

  Gao Li was smiling at the memory. “I will never forget the closing lines of that letter,” he continued. “‘Lasting happiness,’ Julian wrote, ‘comes from the size of our impact, not the extent of our income. Real fulfillment is a product of the value we create and the contribution we make, not of the car we drive or the house we buy. And I’ve learned that self-worth is more important than net worth. But I think you know that already, Gao Li.’”

  “And you did,” I agreed.

  “And I did,” said Gao Li.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, back at my hotel, I stood at the living-room windows and gazed out at the skyline across the river. The view was marvelous during the day, but after sunset the skyline took on the look of some fantastic futuristic amusement park or an elaborate display of abstract sculpture—spectacularly colored spheres, columns, spires, cylinders, gleaming and sparkling like electrified crystal. Even driving back to my hotel from Gao Li’s place had been a wonder. The city skyline crowded with jewel-toned light. I had never seen anything like it.

  But I thought of what Mr. Gao had said to me that evening. All this glitter was seductive. I would have loved to spend more time here to explore the city, but the feelings Gao Li’s office, the Bentley, the helicopter, the actor, even this hotel suite had evoked in me were more about pleasure than real happiness. Maybe that was the key distinction Gao Li had been trying to make. How could I expect these kinds of riches to make me happy when I had been finding it impossible to enjoy even the simple joys of my life? It seemed to me that both Julian and Gao Li ha
d found something that most very rich people will never have: a feeling that they have enough.

  The truth was, right now, here alone in my hotel room, thousands of miles from home, if I could have any one thing, it wouldn’t be a yacht or a fancy car or a sprawling mansion. It would be an answer.

  I DREAMED THAT NIGHT of the curving Cape Breton roads I had driven earlier that week. They had made me think of Juan, made me think of his last moments. He lived outside the city, and he was driving home in the evening, the rush hour long over. It was a spring night; the roads were dry. He was on a stretch of highway that ran through wooded areas near his home. It was a route he drove every day, yet somehow he had crashed through a steel barrier and plummeted into a ravine. The medical investigator said that he had suffered multiple life-threatening injuries, but that the cause of death was a massive heart attack. Emily, his wife, said that work stress had led to his death. I had no doubt about that. By the time he climbed into his car that night, Juan was a gray specter of the man I once knew. The last few years at work—the pressure, the isolation, the abandonment by friends and colleagues—that had destroyed him. But there was one question that no one was asking. One question that haunted me. One question I desperately wanted answered. But it was a puzzle for which I might never find the solution.

  CHAPTER TEN

  NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN more in contrast with Shanghai’s glitzy, frenetic cityscape than the quiet, dusty expanses that spread out around me as I traveled the highway between Phoenix and Sedona, Arizona. After being in the air for the better part of the day, I had arrived in Phoenix in the early afternoon, picked up a rental car and headed out. Despite the fact that I had been moving back and forth between time zones like an airline pilot, I felt remarkably good. I didn’t think jetlag was something you were supposed to get used to, but I now seemed able to fall asleep when I needed to and to get up with the sun, wherever I was.

  In a suburb on the northern edge of Phoenix, I pulled into a restaurant that was part of those ubiquitous chains that offer quantity over quality. I was hungry, and this would be fast and easy. As I walked inside, I noticed a display of tourist pamphlets against the wall of the doorway. I plucked a few out of the rack before I headed to the hostess desk.

  The hostess showed me to a table, and a young man, no older than seventeen I would guess, materialized at my side. I ordered a club sandwich and some juice, and the waiter disappeared again. I looked over at the small pile of pamphlets I’d dropped on the table. One in particular had caught my eye. It was about “vortex tours” you could do in and around Sedona. According to the pamphlet, the Sedona area is thought to be the location of at least four energy vortices—places in the landscape where the Earth’s invisible lines of energy intersect to create a concentration of power that could have extraordinary therapeutic properties. There seemed to be quite the cottage industry associated with these vortices: one pamphlet listed dozens of massage specialists, tarot readers, personal magnetic-field re-balancers, even past-life regression therapists. Oh brother, I thought. I was having enough challenges with this life without diving into another.

  I wondered why Julian had sent the talisman out this way. Did the talisman have something to do with crystals or auras or energy fields?

  By the time I had finished my sandwich, my young server was at my side, offering coffee and dessert. I declined but couldn’t help thinking about how much this young man reminded me of Lluis. He might not spend the rest of his days waiting tables, but I had a feeling that whatever he ended up doing, he’d do with enthusiasm and success.

  I paid my bill, left the restaurant and crossed the parking lot to the rental car. It was time to head out to meet Ronnie Begay. According to Julian’s directions, she lived about a hundred miles north of Phoenix.

  After a few minutes on the highway, I rolled down the windows. The dry desert air felt good against my skin—a welcome change from the steaminess of Shanghai. I heard my phone beep but didn’t pick it up. I had to pay attention to the road.

  The number of messages from the office had dwindled steadily. I hadn’t really expected to hear any more from Tessa, but Nawang had been quiet, too. Yesterday, she acknowledged this absence with an apology: Sorry I haven’t been keeping you up to date on everything, but it’s been crazy around here. For the past few days, Luke, Katherine and Sven have been holed up in the conference room with a group of men and women I don’t recognize. Rumor is that there will be an announcement by the end of the day, maybe tomorrow. No doubt a merger is under way, but everyone is trying to figure out if they are buying us or we are buying them. David is freaking out. He seems fairly convinced that he is going to be given his walking papers either way.

  I tried not to feel happy about that. Ayame would not be impressed by my mean-spirited reaction.

  I don’t know what to think about my position—or yours, Nawang wrote.

  I realized that the uncertainty didn’t worry me at all.

  The inevitable reorganization at work would not be a threat to me. It would be an opportunity. If I got a severance package, I would use the freedom to talk with companies that might be able to offer me a position that suited me better. If the reconfigured company wanted to keep me on, I would see if there might be other places in the firm for me. Since Juan’s death, there had been a vacancy in the design department. Maybe I would see about that. Either way, I could use the shifting business to my advantage. I felt excited about the prospect of change.

  That was something new: looking at change without fear; or maybe not completely without fear, but with an acceptance of the fear that always came with any sort of significant upheaval in my life. Maybe I was becoming more like my sister, Kira.

  While I always chose the safe, obvious path, Kira had struck out on her own route again and again. After high school, she worked for half a year and then joined a youth exchange program, doing volunteer work at a number of orphanages. After college, she traveled the world, visiting marvelous destinations—from Malaysia, Bali and New Zealand to Sweden, Estonia and Russia—working here and there to support herself. During one of her journeys she visited a women’s cooperative in Guatemala. She was impressed with the things the women made—elaborately embroidered and decorated cushions and linens—and with the industry, hope and courage of the women themselves. When she came back home, Kira announced that she was going to find a market for the women’s products and help them sell their wares. Just a few years later, she was running a hugely successful fair-trade importing business and had storefronts in half a dozen major North American cities. When her twins were born, Kira decided to sell her business to one of her partners. She would take a few years at home and plan out her next career venture. When I expressed surprise that she could give up the enterprise she had worked so hard for, she just laughed. “I’m not going to live the same day over and over again, and call it a life,” she said.

  JULIAN’S DRIVING INSTRUCTIONS were simple enough. I turned off the highway, onto a small road about an hour and a half after I had set off. The road wound around until I came to a smattering of houses strung out along either side. Most were mobile homes, decked out with porches and awnings and other not-so-mobile additions. Interspersed among them were a few small, low bungalows. A number were set off by chain-link fences. Small patches of brown grass surrounded the houses, but the desert crawled right up to the edge of the struggling turf and stretched back away for miles. Eventually I spotted the street number on a mailbox that stood in front of a neat brown home. I pulled into the gravel drive, alongside a gray pickup truck parked in front of a small garage. As I climbed out of the car into the midday heat, I noticed that the front yard was festooned with various bits of brightly colored extruded plastic—children’s toys. No doubt the sound of the crunching gravel alerted Ronnie, who had swung the front door open just as I was stepping up to it.

  “Jonathan!” she said, as if we were long-lost friends.

  Ronnie was probably about sixty—her hair, which had some
dark streaks, was mostly a silvery gray. Her bronzed face was lined, but not at all drawn. When she laughed, it looked almost as if the creases around her eyes and mouth were dancing.

  She ushered me into the living room, cautioning me to watch my step around the toys and games that were scattered across the floor.

  “Can you believe I cleaned this up once already this morning?” she laughed.

  “I have a six-year-old,” I said. “I know how it goes.”

  Ronnie moved into the kitchen and peered out the window. I followed her gaze. In the backyard were a half-dozen children of various sizes playing some sort of game with a large inflatable ball. Ronnie told me they were her grandkids and her grandnephews.

  The grandchildren were visiting for the afternoon, but the grandnephews were permanent residents.

  “My niece,” said Ronnie matter-of-factly, “has been in and out of trouble since I can remember. Her father isn’t in the picture; her mother isn’t well and has never been able to help out. A few years back, things reached a crisis point. It looked like her kids were going to be taken away.”

  Ronnie was now opening the kitchen window, calling out.

  “Rose, make sure that Sammy gets a turn, okay?”

  Then she turned back to me.

  “José and I were the only ones in the family with the room and the resources to take the kids in.” Ronnie put her hand on her chest, as if she were pressing her heart back in.

  “Best decision I made in my life,” she said with a smile.

  Ronnie went to the fridge and took out a large jug.

  “Iced tea?” she asked. When I nodded, she filled two glasses that were sitting on the counter and handed one to me. She left the other on the counter and moved toward the back door.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but I promised the kids a snack, and I’d better get to it before I ruin their appetites for dinner.” Ronnie went out the door. I watched her through the screen as she headed into the garage. She came back a few minutes later with an enormous watermelon. When the children spotted it, they followed her into the kitchen, whooping and hollering. “Watermelon, watermelon, watermelon,” they chanted, as if calling for an encore at a rock concert.