After fifteen chapters and a lifetime of questions, the book was done.
We wrote it for our children. We said that at the beginning. We wrote it for their children, and so on. We planted seeds in the hope that something would grow.
And then we went back to work.
Jeff went back to Penfield. I went back to Del Mar. We ran the business, served our clients, taught the system. We did the thing we said we’d do — we increased our responsibility.
But the book didn’t sit still. It went places we didn’t expect. It landed in front of people we’d never met. It started conversations we couldn’t predict.
And in the middle of all that, something else happened. We started giving things away. The system, the philosophy, the ideas we’d spent years building. We gave them to clients, to partners, to strangers who asked good questions. We gave because that’s what the Ethos said to do.
We believe in the Spirit of the Gift.
We wrote that. We meant it. But meaning it and living it are different things. Living it costs something.
A Monday Night Text
One night, Jeff and I were texting. No agenda. No business. Just two people who’d written a book together, sitting in different time zones, thinking out loud.
Jeff said:
“I’ll land on kindness in the end.”
I thought about that for a minute. Kindness. After everything — the system, the business, the map, the philosophy — he’d land on kindness. That felt right.
I typed:
“I did give away too much.” “Maybe more than I had to.” “I’ll do better next time.”
Jeff laughed.
“Hahah lol.” “Yeah me too.” “Seems like we will get better at it.”
I stared at that last line.
Seems like we will get better at it.
I’d read that sentence before. Not from Jeff. From the book. From the Gardening Tips we’d written in the Appendix.
You are going to get better at it.
We wrote that for other people. For founders and dreamers and anyone staring at a blank notebook wondering if they had anything worth saying.
Turns out we wrote it for ourselves.
The Next Chapter
When you give something away — a system, a philosophy, a piece of your life in a book — you don’t always know what you’ve given until later. Sometimes much later. Sometimes in a text message on a Monday night.
I gave away too much. Maybe more than I had to.
That’s what it feels like when you write something honest. You give people your thinking, your mistakes, your dead ends, your gumption. You hand them the map you drew for yourself and hope they don’t just use it — you hope they draw a better one.
I thought about all fifteen chapters. The paper route. Speedo driving west. The windowless lab. Harvard. Pirsig’s card catalog. The Fourth Statement. The Boot Sequence. Not-a-Book. Tomorrow Let it Be.
All of it was behind us now. And here we were, two guys texting on a Monday night, still figuring it out.
I looked at the conversation on my screen and realized what I was looking at.
I typed two words:
Chapter 16.
Then I typed one more.
DAMN
The book was done, we said.
Fifteen chapters. All we had.
We gave the map away
And wondered if we’d
Given more
Than we could
Afford to.
But kindness has no ledger.
And Quality
Doesn’t keep a tab.
We thought we wrote the last page.
Turns out
We’re still
In it.
Damn.