So, my grandfather stopped the car and he took me out of the car.
And I had no idea what was about to happen because he had never said a cross word to me.
And I thought he might actually be angry with me but he wasn't.
He took out, we had some privacy from her. And he said these incredible words.
He said, "you're gonna figure out one day that it's harder to be kind than clever."
I spent an unusual amount of time with my grandparents and especially with
my grandfather on the ranch. So, he had a ranch in South Texas.
And I would spend my summers there from age 4-16. And when I was 4, they were taking me for the
summer to kind of give my parents a break. Cause they were so young.
And it was useful, I was a handful I'm sure. He created the illusion for me when I was four
years old that I was helping him on the ranch. Which of course, could not have been true.
But I believed it. And by the time I was 16 of course,
I was actually helping on the ranch. I can fix prolapsed cattle,
we did all of our veterinary work, some of the cattle even survived.
And we fixed windmills and laid water pipelines, and built fences, and barns, and
fixed the bulldozer that you guys talked about. One of the things that's so interesting about
that lifestyle and about my grandfather is he did everything himself.
He didn't call a vet if one of the animals was sick, he figured out what to do himself.
Being resourceful. If there's a problem there's a solution.
And of course, as you mature and get into the business world,
and anything you do on a team, you very quickly realise that
it's not about just your own resourcefulness, it's about team resourcefulness and how does that work.
But that attitude of my grandfather's, but he was full of wisdom.
John mentioned the story about the words my grandfather gave to me at one point of
"it's harder to be kind than clever." That story, the slightly
longer version of that story, cause this was really powerful wisdom,
is that I made my grandmother burst into tears. And the way I did it was we were
driving on a long road trip and she was a chain smoker.
And this was, I was probably 10 years old, so this was around 1974.
And it was in a period of time where there were heavy radio advertisements,
sort of anti-smoking radio advertisements trying to convince people to stop smoking.
And one of the advertisements had this figure in it,
it said something like "every puff of a cigarette takes so many minutes off of your life..."
I think it was two minutes. But I can't remember.
So, I sat there in the backseat on this long car ride and calculated how many years
she had taken off of her life. And in my 10-year-old mind,
I had been extremely clever to do this. And so, when I was finished with my arithmetic,
I proudly announced to her how many years she had taken off of her life.
And I got a reaction I did not expect with her bursting into tears.
So, my grandfather stopped the car and he took me out of the car.
And I had no idea what was about to happen because he had never said a cross word to me.
And I thought he might actually be angry with me but he wasn't.
He took out, we had some privacy from her. And he said these incredible words.
He said, "you're gonna figure out one day that it's harder to be kind than clever."