Friendship

intentions are clear. It turns out that the more deliberately you live, the more coincidences
you notice in your life.
Once Conversations with God, book 1, was published, for instance, it became my intention to
see it placed into the hands of as many people as possible, because I believed it contained
important information for all humankind. Two weeks after its release, Dr. Bernie Siegel was in
Annapolis, lecturing about the connection between medicine and spirituality. In the middle of
his presentation he said, “All of us are talking to God all the time, and I don’t know about you,
but I’m writing my dialogue down. In fact, my next book is called Conversations with God, and
it’s about a man who asks God every question he ever had, and God gives him the answers.
He doesn’t understand all of them, and he even argues a little with God, and so they have
this conversation. It’s really my own experience.”
Everyone in the audience chuckled—except one young woman.
My daughter.
Samantha just “happened” to be in the audience that day, and at the first break rushed down
to the podium. “Dr. Siegel,” she began, breathlessly, “were you serious about writing that
book you talked about?”
“Sure was,” Bernie smiled. “I’m halfway through it!”
“Well, that’s very interesting,” Samantha managed, “because my father has just had a book
published that’s exactly the one you’ve described, right down to the title.”
Bernie’s eyes widened. “Really? That’s fascinating. Although I’m not surprised. Once an idea
is ‘out there,’ anyone can tap into it. I think all of us should write our own personal bible
anyway. I’d love to talk with him about his.”
The next day, I spoke with Dr. Siegel at his home in Connecticut. We shared our
experiences, and it turned out that he was, indeed, writing the same book I’d just had
published. At that point, I didn’t see the perfection of what was happening, but fell into fear. I
began to imagine the worst-case scenario: two months after Bernie’s book comes out, people
find mine on some back shelf somewhere and accuse me of copying his.
I was too embarrassed to share any of these thoughts during our conversation. After all, my
own book warned against fear-based thinking, saying repeatedly to throw out negative ideas
and replace them with positive ones. Bernie kindly said that he’d love to read my book, and I
promised to send him a copy. I hung up, and tried to apply some positive thinking. For
several weeks I alternated between worrying and wondering. Wondering is the opposite of
worrying. It is to something wonderful as “worrying” is to something worrisome. These days I
wonder a lot—that is, produce, with my mental energy a lot of wonder. In those early days I
was still caught up in worrying at least half the time.
Half-time wondering must have been enough, because do you know what Bernie Siegel did?
Not only did he retitle and rework his own book—he turned around and endorsed mine. His
was the first celebrity endorsement which Conversations with God received, and it helped
book buyers, who might have been skittish about a previously unpublished author, see the
value of what I had produced.
Now, folks, that’s class. That’s the action of a big person, who knows he has nothing to lose
by lifting up a fellow human being. Even when that fellow human being is walking all over the
same territory covering the same ground, here is a man capable of saying not only hey
there’s room enough for all of us, but, even, I’ll give this person some of my space.
I’ve since come to know Bernie on a personal level. We’ve even made presentations
together. He is a sheer delight, with a sparkle in his eyes that lights up every room. That is
the sparkle of selflessness, or what I have come to call, in my personal shorthand, the Bernie
Factor.
Your eyes will sparkle, too, when you go through life as Bernie does, lifting up everyone
whose life you touch. Surely this must be what is meant by living life “beneficially”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross used to say “All true benefits are mutual,” and that was a great
teaching, for when we benefit others, we benefit ourselves. I know a man who understands
this perfectly