Updated by: June 5, 2026
What They Found
This morning I passed two men on my walk into the city.
One was in a wheelchair. The other was blind, his fingers moving steadily along a string of rosary beads, clutching them with a quiet certainty I’ve been thinking about ever since.
Both were smiling. Not the polite smile of someone making the best of things. Something deeper than that. The kind of contentment that doesn’t need an audience.
This week an Australian media mogul, a man of considerable wealth, influence and public profile, was charged with seriously assaulting his wife. He had, by every external measure, everything. Businesses. Status. Power. The kind of life that looks from the outside like arrival.
We tell ourselves a story about success. That if we accumulate enough, enough money, enough recognition, enough conquest, we will eventually feel settled. Complete. At peace with ourselves and the people around us.
The two men I passed this morning hadn’t accumulated much by that measure. They carried what they had, faith, maybe, or acceptance, or simply the hard-won knowledge of what actually matters, and it was enough. More than enough.
The blind man’s rosary beads weren’t decoration. He was holding something that anchored him. Something that answered the question that wealth and status and power apparently cannot.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
