A Bristol multi-millionaire businessman (who also happened to be a dear lifelong friend of mine) and I met up for lunch one day.
Neither one of us knew at the time that he would very soon unexpectedly pass away.
During our conversation at lunch that day, my dear friend confided the following words to me:
"BEN, I MADE WAY MORE MONEY THAN MY FAMILY OR I EVER NEEDED. BUT I WISH I'D SPENT MORE TIME WITH MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. IF I COULD GO BACK, I WOULD STILL WORK HARD AND MAKE ENOUGH MONEY. I ENJOYED MY CAREER AND THROUGH IT I HELPED A LOT OF PEOPLE. BUT I WOULD KNOW NOW WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. IF YOU GET A CHANCE TO WRITE ABOUT ALL THIS SOMEDAY, PLEASE DO IT. TELL POOR FOLKS TOO. I'VE ALSO SEEN THEM GET TOO BUSY TO SPEND TIME WITH THEIR FAMILIES. PEOPLE, RICH OR POOR, WON'T LISTEN TO ME IF I TELL THEM. THEY THINK I'M JUST SAYING SUCH A THING BECAUSE I'M RICH WITH MONEY AND IT'S EASY FOR ME TO SAY SUCH A THING NOW. BUT THEY WILL LISTEN TO YOU. MY FRIEND, PLEASE TELL EVERYBODY THE REAL SECRET TO BECOMING RICH."
I promised my friend that I would do as he asked.
I have spent the last couple of days adding a lot of my own words (within the context of this story) to what my friend said to me.
Ultimately, however, I felt like adding anything of my own would only take away from his very wise words … spoken directly to us all. So I deleted my own words.
Thank you for reading his words, my friends.
