A fictional short story inspired by a true story recounted by Ram Dass in one of his many lectures.
James Lyons had always been a man of quiet determination. Born in a modest suburb outside of Philadelphia, he spent his youth sharpening his edges—valedictorian of his high school, finance major at Wharton, internship at Goldman Sachs by junior year. He rarely slept more than five hours, not because he had to, but because ambition stirred in his chest like an electric current. By thirty-two, he was managing portfolios worth hundreds of millions. His name was whispered in boardrooms and shouted in bars on bonus night.
His world glittered. A penthouse overlooking Central Park. A Patek Philippe that cost more than his parents’ home. A black Porsche that barely touched the pavement as it weaved through Lower Manhattan. Success was not a goal—it was the air he breathed.
And then, the phone call.
It began with fatigue, then night sweats. A checkup out of caution. A CT scan. Then: Stage II lymphoma. He listened to his physician’s voice on the other end of the telephone describing the diagnosis while seated in a corner office with a skyline view. He handled the conversation the same way he handled every professional business call, with a direct but courteous tone and a promise to follow up by a specific time and a request to reach out if there was any new information. His ability to compartmentalize was so refined that the moment he ended the call, he seamlessly resumed preparing for his next meeting, as if nothing had happened. The reality didn’t sink in. It seemed inconceivable that something so mortal could happen to someone so indestructible. After all, he had only just turned 40 and was the picture of perfect health.
Treatment followed—rounds of chemotherapy, days in sterile rooms under fluorescent light, weeks where even tasting food felt like a betrayal. His body was scorched and rebuilt from the inside out. In those months, time unspooled in strange ways. The markets no longer mattered. The morning briefings lost their urgency. As his hair fell out, so did his attachment to the identity he’d spent his life constructing.
He recovered. Slowly, miraculously. But something in him had gone quiet—and stayed that way. He did not return to work. He sold the Porsche, then the penthouse, then his tailored suits. His friends called, worried. His managing director offered him a “soft landing”—a quieter role in an advisory position. James declined.
Instead, one crisp spring morning, James boarded a flight to India with a single backpack and no return ticket.
He wandered for months. First in the crowded alleys of Varanasi, where death was both ritual and spectacle. Then to the high passes of Himachal, where silence hung so heavy it rang in his ears. He shaved his head. He learned to sit cross-legged without cursing his joints. He lost weight as his digestive system slowly adapted to the local flora. He listened to old monks and young beggars, to the sound of prayer wheels turning and bells chiming in temples that smelled of incense and ash.
In Rishikesh, he washed his clothes in the Ganges and taught English in the afternoons. In Ladakh, he met a Buddhist nun who spoke almost no English but once whispered to him, “Your body is not your life. Neither is your money.”
Months turned into a year.
Eventually, he stopped moving.
James settled in a small ashram in a quiet community outside Udaipur, teaching basic accounting to local weavers who were starting a cooperative. He lived in a stone hut with a cot, a journal, and a photo of his mother from childhood. He rose before the sun, meditated, worked in the garden, and never again opened a Bloomberg terminal.
He did not renounce the world—only the illusion that it owed him anything.
Visitors came. Some curious, some lost. Once, a young banker arrived from London, burned out at thirty, asking what James had found.
James handed him a small pot of chai and said only, “I stopped chasing what I didn’t need.”
The man blinked. James smiled, and for a brief moment, they sat together—two versions of a life, side by side.
The years passed peacefully. By the time James turned 45, his body had already adjusted to a rhythm far removed from Wall Street. He woke before sunrise, swept the stone courtyard of the ashram, tended to tomatoes and chilies in the garden, and taught finance and English in the afternoons to his friends’ aspiring children. He wore the same two linen shirts each week. People came to ask for advice—not always about business or investment allocation, but on how to resolve a difficult interpersonal challenge, or how to live with less. James had become something quietly solid: not a guru, not a recluse—just present.
Every year or so, he’d make a call to a broker in New York to check on the investment portfolio of index funds he’d reorganized before his exodus. Without lifting a finger, the market had steadily compounded into more wealth than he could possibly spend in twenty lifetimes, even after generous gifts and contributions to friends and family.
Sometimes he would remember New York: the hum of his building’s elevator, the polish of a boardroom table, the quiet panic that lived in the pit of every trader’s stomach. These weren’t memories he missed, but they weren’t rejected either. They were part of a life fully lived, no more or less sacred than this one.
On his 49th birthday, James received a letter from his sister in Connecticut. Their mother had fallen, and though the injury wasn’t life-threatening, her memory was beginning to fray. James returned—not out of duty, but love. He left with no fanfare. His exchanged farewells and modest mementos with friends. The head of the ashram hugged him and said, “Go gently.”
He arrived back in the United States wearing sandals and carrying one small suitcase. His sister picked him up in a rental car, bewildered and relieved. For weeks, James sat quietly at his mother’s side, reading aloud, sharing tea, watching the maple trees turn orange outside her window.
It happened in a bookstore café in Midtown—of all places.
James had wandered in while visiting a friend. He was sipping black coffee and thumbing through a used copy of a Tolstoy novel when a voice rang out: “Lyons? Is that really you?”
It was Darren Wu, an old colleague from his investment banking days, now something of a legend—Executive Vice President at one of the firms they’d once dreamt about. Darren looked older but no less hungry, his tailored suit as crisp as his handshake.
Over espresso, Darren marveled at James’ transformation. Then, almost impulsively, he said, “We could use someone like you, Lyons. Grounded. Thoughtful. Not chasing the next deal. Just… present.”
James laughed, but something in Darren’s voice rang true. Not ambition, but need. Not recruitment, but invitation.
James joined Darren’s firm. Not as a partner or strategist, but as a quiet steward of a small internal team. He requested no titles. His office had no view. He said yes to mentorship roles, coached junior analysts through panic attacks before earnings calls, and sometimes sat in silence with overworked peers until they found their own words.
When James returned to investment banking after a decade away, the office had become almost unrecognizable. Paper had all but vanished—replaced by dual-monitor setups, cloud-based document sharing, and real-time collaboration tools. Email had been eclipsed by instant messaging platforms like Bloomberg Chat and internal systems that logged every keystroke. Trading floors were quieter, too—algorithms had taken over much of the noise. Analysts now relied on automated models and data visualization dashboards instead of spreadsheets. Mobile devices had become extensions of the desk. The speed, the surveillance, the seamlessness—it was a new world, humming with invisible code.
He wore simple clothes, brought lunch from home, and never checked his new “smart” phone after 6 p.m. — much to the dismay of colleagues who seemed to be “always working.” He had purchased a tiny apartment with a short commute by train to Manhattan. He selected furnishings that reminded him of the ashram and spent most of his free time reading, meditating and walking in the park. He didn’t own a car, computer or television.
Colleagues began to notice something about James. In his presence, the tone changed and the tempo slowed. People asked deeper questions. Some even paused before responding, rather than reflexively offering solutions. His presence wasn’t loud, but it was unmistakable.
When Darren noticed that the office was more productive but less frantic, he asked James, “What’s your secret?” James would shrug and smile. “Nothing. And everything.”
He was no longer invested in the prestige, the numbers, or the game. He was simply there—to serve, to witness, to guide—not with authority, but with grace.
Stories of the “banker monk” spread through the Wall Street rumor mill with a ripple of disbelief and cocktail-hour speculation. Some dismissed it outright—just another burnout crawling back in from the wilderness. But behind the scoffs, even the most ruthless rainmakers couldn’t help but wonder: why had he really come back? They whispered about the way he turned down a corner office and bonuses, how he made tea for interns, how he never checked his phone after dusk. “He’s lost his edge,” some said. Yet rooms quieted when he entered, and people found themselves lingering by his desk longer than they meant to. They called him a curiosity, a paradox, a man who had once devoured the game and then returned to play it as if it no longer mattered. And in that unlikely return, James Lyons became an urban legend—proof that even in a world ruled by velocity and margins, grace could make people look up.
James kept his calendar half full on purpose. He found joy not in strategy meetings but in checking in on people. He brewed tea in the kitchen instead of delegating it. Analysts confided in him. One started calling him “the eye of the storm.”
The partners didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t pitch new ideas or chase new business. Yet, somehow, teams around James performed better—fewer missed deadlines, fewer late-night meltdowns.
He’d taken up walking every morning before work. Sometimes around Central Park, other times just down side streets lined with trees. Outside of work, he never counted dollars, only the rising and falling of his breath and the steady repetition of mantras.
James possessed a quiet clarity that unnerved and fascinated his colleagues. Years spent in monastic stillness had trained him not only to observe the breath, but to perceive impermanence in all things—including capital flows and valuations. He no longer chased the market; he listened to it, the way a monk listens to wind moving through pine. While others pored over models and forecasts, James watched sentiment rise and fall like waves, noting when greed bloomed too fast or fear clung too long. In meetings, he rarely spoke, often seated slightly apart, hands folded. But when he leaned forward with a simple observation—“This feels like clinging” or “There’s too much noise in this”—the room shifted. Conversations quieted. Strategy decks were reconsidered. His detachment had become a kind of compass, not because he was distant from the world, but because he saw it exactly as it was—without illusion.
Whispers began circulating: “James Lyons? Isn’t he the guy who vanished for ten years?” Interns Googled him. A few bold ones asked outright.
He never hid his story. He spoke plainly: cancer, disillusionment, self-imposed exile, healing. Not a redemption arc, he’d say. More like… realignment.
One intern, Maya, asked what changed him most. James thought for a long time before replying: “Learning that just because something pays you doesn’t mean it serves you.”
On quiet Sunday evenings, James wrote letters he never sent—to the man he used to be.
You were so sure the world owed you something. So sure drive alone was enough. You raced a thousand miles an hour… never asking why.
But you also carried me this far. Thank you for building the boat. It was just never meant to stay in one harbor.
He kept them tucked in a folder next to a Tibetan mala bead necklace and a wrinkled flight receipt from Delhi to JFK.
One day, a junior analyst fainted in a stairwell after a sleepless week prepping a pitch deck. While others scrambled, James sat beside her until the paramedics came. Later, HR sent him a stiff thank-you note.
He asked HR for an unused room on the 18th floor to be cleared out—an old conference space with a window facing east. He brought in a lamp, a small plant, and a kettle. No phones allowed.
He called it “the Lantern Room.” People came when they burned out. James would find the time to sit with them and listen. It wasn’t policy. It was presence.
Years passed. James stayed on. Not for glory or growth, but because people kept quietly reaching out to him—not for answers, but because they trusted the questions would be safe.
The world didn’t change much. Deadlines still loomed. Numbers still blinked across monitors. But small things began to shift—more pauses in meetings, more moments of breath, more lunches taken in peace.
One rainy evening, as the closing bell echoed through Manhattan, James stood by the window of his small office. He looked out over the city not as a man on top of it—but as someone simply glad to be still standing.
James Lyons didn’t seek to become a mentor, but gravity has its own language. People began orbiting him—the overworked, the curious, the ones burning quietly on the inside. Among them was Maya Desai, the aspiring young analyst with eyes that flicked over spreadsheets as if searching for a way out.
She noticed James not because he was powerful, but because he seemed… rooted. While others raced past one another between meetings, James walked slowly. While others replied to emails with clipped urgency, James asked, “How are you—really?”
At first, she thought he was a relic from another time. But the more they spoke, the more she listened.
They began with shared lunches in the park, then quiet check-ins after long nights of client decks. Maya brought him questions—some sharp, some fumbling—and James never gave her answers. Only stories. Anecdotes from villages, from monks, from markets and mountain passes.
One late winter evening, after a pitch had collapsed and Maya sat despondent beneath the buzz of a flickering desk lamp, James appeared beside her with two cups of ginger tea.
“You’re not here just to get promoted,” he said. “That’s survival. But there’s another game underneath it. The one where you learn what you want your days to feel like.”
He didn’t talk her out of ambition. He simply placed it beside a mirror.
Over years, she grew into someone who asked better questions. She led with kindness. She quietly opened a foundation to teach immigrant students about financial literacy. She still worked in finance—but with both hands on the wheel.
When James finally announced his retirement, she didn’t cry. She only hugged him tightly and whispered, “Thank you for showing me the way out while staying in.”
James left New York quietly with a simple email to his colleagues.
Subject: As the River Flows
“The great way is easy, yet people prefer by-paths.” — Tao Te Ching, Chapter 53
Dear friends,
Like water flowing around stones, I move on—not in haste, not in sorrow, but in rhythm with the path that calls. Thank you for walking beside me, for your warmth, your wisdom, and your presence.
May your days be light, your work meaningful, and your hearts at ease.
With gratitude,
James
After James departed, something in the fabric of the office quietly shifted. He’d left no mandate, no farewell speech—but his presence lingered like the hush after a meaningful conversation. Those who had worked beside him spoke of his stillness, his listening, the way he brought warmth into rooms once ruled by urgency. The Lantern Room on the 18th floor remained intact, kept dimly lit with a kettle always ready and silence always welcome. Over time, new hires would enter curious, and the older ones would tell stories—of James, and how a man who once outran the world taught them the grace of simply being in it. Darren and others often remarked that the value James brought to the firm was utterly unquantifiable. The firm’s continued success and cultural reputation spread as a something unlike anything else on Wall Street. Their strategy of hiring transformed and vexed the many applicants who competed to join the unicorn company. Rather than recruiting the next generation of “killers,” they preferred to find the right bright young candidates for internships who could grow into the unique culture that came to be called, “Lyons’ way.”
After James left the firm, he gifted his belongings and modest apartment to a friend and flew east again, not to escape, but to return. To the ashram outside Udaipur where time moved differently and silence tasted sweet. They remembered him. The garden had grown wilder; the paths more worn. He moved into his old room. The same stone walls, the same cot. He no longer needed books to remind him of peace—he only listened. He had anonymously donated a substantial fortune to the Ashram and the local community, but despite his best intentions, everyone knew and never mentioned it.
Mornings were spent walking by the lake, afternoons in prayer, evenings in stillness beneath banyan trees. He taught when asked, listened more often, and wrote in the soft margins of a journal he never meant to publish.
His body, once a fortress of will and recovery, began to slow. He felt it not with dread, but with awe. As if returning not just to a place, but to a center.
One night, during the monsoon’s edge, the rain whispered against the tiled roof. The air was thick with the smell of jasmine and wet earth. James lay beneath a woven blanket, a candle flickering low on the windowsill.
He closed his eyes and thought of Maya, his colleagues, his many friends throughout his travels, of the Lantern Room and the boy he once was—the one who chased more because he didn’t know the weight of enough. In the song of the rain falling on leaves and distant thunder, James lay still. Breath slipped from his body like water from cupped hands—ungrasped, ungrieved. He savored the familiar peace that he had spent so many years learning to return to, vast and weightless.
He smiled.
There was no rush now.
He exhaled and uncoiled from the world as gently as he had entered it. Time bowed, and what remained was presence—formless, complete.
And quietly, with no drama, no legacy to defend, right before James Lyons returned to the stillness he’d spent his life learning to recognize, he thought, “I wonder how the S&P 500 is doing today.”