I had been traveling in and out of Cuba since the very early 1990s and held the first license allowing Project C.U.R.E. to ship donated medical supplies and equipment directly from Miami to Havana. That had been quite an accomplishment, since Fidel Castro kept the borders of the island compound tightly closed, and the United States was continuing to enforce a very strict embargo against the Communist regime.
No regularly scheduled flights were allowed between the US and Cuba in those early days because of the economic and political sanctions. The only way to travel to Cuba from the United States was by a very unreliable airplane charter service. At the Miami airport, the rag-tag ticketing process was absolutely crazy. It took nearly half a day, starting at 4:30 a.m., to negotiate for the tickets and finally board the plane.
When the plane dropped down low enough for the landing procedure to begin, I could see the green countryside surrounding Havana. Everything was so overgrown and run down! The landing lights were wired on either side of the runway, with extension cords that stretched across the top of the runway. When the planes took off or landed, they had to cross over the top of the heavy, black extension cords.
By 1999, I was quite comfortable traveling in and out of Cuba. By then I had discovered a more convenient routine for entering the country. My contacts had shown me how to travel to the Casuarinas Hotel on West Bay Street in Nassau in the Bahamas. At the hotel would be waiting for me an official letter of invitation from Cuba’s minister of health. I would take the letter to the Havanatur counter at the Nassau airport, show them my passport, and board a prop-driven Aerocaribbean plane to Havana. Upon my arrival, special VIP services would meet me, issue me a Cuban visa, and hustle me through Cuban immigration and customs.
On my 1999 trip, a Cuban gentleman named Julian picked me up in his Russian Lada automobile and took me to Marina Hemingway. It was an area of Havana I had never seen before. The marina was surprisingly filled with international sailboats, fancy yachts, and interesting tourists. My hosts had secured a small hotel room for me for a two-night stay near the marina.
Before we went to dinner, my hosts introduced me to a fellow from the States who had just sailed his yacht around the world and had dropped anchor in Havana. He invited me on board his breathtaking vessel, and I thought I was once again a little boy on my first trip to a candy store. It had taken the owner twenty-two years to design and build his spectacular blue yacht. He had commissioned the Royal Huisman Shipyard in Vollenhove, Holland, to create the vessel under the watchful eye of master shipbuilder Wolter Huisman. World-renowned codesigners Ron Holland and Pieter Beeldsnijder transformed a design that was virtually nothing but a dream into probably the world’s most magnificent piece of floating art and technology.
The magnificent yacht was 145 feet long and weighed well over half a million pounds. Its main mast was 160 feet tall (the height of a sixteen story building).
During construction, no corners were cut in the design or creation of the finest and most technical floating vessel of the twentieth century. When not under sail, it was propelled by three Mercedes industrial diesel marine engines. The cost of the yacht was far in excess of one hundred million dollars. I learned that the owner had acquired his money, in part, by building and selling a very prestigious shoe company.
I expressed to my new friend my appreciation for his quest for uncompromising excellence. Indeed, it inspired me. He was very curious about Project C.U.R.E., and he invited me to sit down at his dinner table and share with him and his dinner guests about the organization. Before my hosts and I left, the owner slipped away from the table and invited me to take a complete tour with him below decks. It was a thrill of a lifetime for me. He stopped at one desk and pulled out a two-hundred-page memorial coffee-table book titled The Creation of a Masterpiece. Only a few copies of the book were published. The text and photos documented the entire story of the yacht’s design and construction. I thanked him deeply for the gift and the opportunity to experience his work of art. The book was a treasured gift to me.
The following night included the sheer joy of returning to the prodigious yacht. The owner had invited my hosts and me to have some dessert with him, and I planned to take the coffee-table book back with me for my new friend to autograph. I had stayed up reading the book until one thirty the night before and discovered that he had chosen to be referred to anonymously throughout the book as “the client” or “the owner.” However, he did include a lovely picture of his eighty-year-old mother in the book on the day of the christening.
I asked him about his reason for not including his name or photo in the book. He said, “Jim, people just don’t understand the inconvenience and burden attached to being rich. It’s really hard.”
We talked about how the things we accumulate always have a way of spinning webs around us until they nearly totally possess us. We mused at how we only add more care and concern to our lives as we add more “stuff” to our lives.
My friend observed, “It seems that when we really need to be adding peace and quiet, we only attract more anxiety and dissonance to our lives.”
I asked him if he would do me the personal favor of autographing my copy of the book. The following is what he inscribed:
Jim, The greatest joy of living and traveling on the yacht has been the wonderful new friends we have made along the way. Your dedication and work with all the needy of the world is a real inspiration. For all those whose lives you’ve touched, a thousand thanks. Your friend
After I thanked him again for his example of excellence, I mentioned that my brother and I had owned the old steam locomotive and train—the “GW 75”—that had appeared in different movies with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, and others. My friend then asked what business I had been in before Project C.U.R.E. that would have included owning an entire steam train.
That’s when I shared my story of deciding at an early age that I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was twenty-five. He interrupted and said he had the same dream to become a millionaire by age thirty-five. I went on to tell him about getting involved in real-estate development, and how I had greatly surpassed my goal of wealth but discovered that even so, I wasn’t a happy man. Then I told him how God had radically changed my life, and how I had vowed to give away my wealth, start over again, and never again use my talents and abilities to accumulate wealth for myself.
I confided in him that I believed God had given me a chance to move from success to significance, and Project C.U.R.E. was only a symbol of what had really happened inside me. Then I said, “I really respect you, my friend, for who you are and what you’ve accomplished in your life. But at some point, as you’re sailing, I wish you would think about the excitement of moving from obvious success to the adventurous phenomenon of significance. There is a difference. I know you are a man of character and would respond to such a concept.”
The two of us hugged each other on the deck of his masterpiece; then I walked down the ladder to where my shoes were and waved good-bye to my new friend.
The old philosopher and economist David Hume once said, “This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, and universal.”
The desire for wealth just might be insatiable, perpetual, and universal, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be unchangeable.