On Saturday, I finished Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami - and it left me feeling surprisingly optimistic.
Not in the rah-rah, motivational speech kind of way…
But in that quiet, deep, metaphysical kind of way.
The kind that makes me feel like there's more to this world than we can see.
That maybe, if you're paying close enough attention, a mysterious adventure may lead you somewhere you never expected to go…
What made this book work for me wasn’t just the story.
It was the perspective.
The main character is a painter.
not a tech founder
not a corporate climber
not someone trying to maximize quarterly growth
Just a man committed to his art, moving through his days with the quiet rhythm of creation.
That alone helped shift my mental gears.
It pulled me out of the well-worn grooves of American business culture and dropped me into something softer, stranger, and more curious.
Then there were the characters…
The Commendatore—an embodiment of an idea.
Longface—something between a metaphor and a myth.
Neither of them were human, yet the both felt true.

They made me think about how much of life might be real but unseen.
How much of our day-to-day is governed by forces we can’t name, let alone control.
And instead of feeling unsettled by that, I felt hopeful.
Characters like these remind me that reality might be more magical than we give it credit for.
Then there was the pit...
A literal pit, carved into the earth.
But also a symbol…
A passage
A question mark
A call to the unknown
I marvel at the possibility that there’s a portal right here, in my backyard, waiting to bring me closer to a world I don’t know.
Something that can help me discover truths about myself that I feel, but can’t quite grasp with my five senses.
Finally, what might’ve been my favorite thing about the book:
Its structure…
There are multiple side plots happening all at once.
Threads that seem unrelated, slowly revealing their connection as essential parts of the whole.
And that made me think about Tribal—the business I’ve built, the athletes I coach, the stories we’re telling.
Inside of Tribal, there are side plots everywhere.
Different groups of athletes are building toward different team races
Writers inside Quillkeepers are exploring their voices and learning to communicate as leaders
Athletes are building businesses, creative projects and bringing the team into their experience taking risks and betting on themselves
And most recently, athletes have started coming out to Boulder more regularly and Team Training Camps are popping up out of nowhere.

None of it is planned like a plotline, but somehow it all fits.
These moments don’t just happen around the story…
They are the story.
It’s easy to look at it all and think it’s disjointed—but it’s not.
It’s a novel. And we’re writing it together.
Now I’ll leave you with this…
Killing Commendatore is 733 words!!!
So I need to let you in on a secret…
This is the first book I’ve ever read both physically and through audio at the same time.
But not alternating between reading and listening…
I listened and read simultaneously.
I’d put in my headphones, hit play, and follow along with the physical copy word for word.

That simple shift helped me take down a 700+ page novel in just three weeks.
Reading anything over 300 pages usually feels like a grind for me. And I don’t think I’ve ever finished a book with more than 500 pages before this one.
The “listen and read along” strategy was a huge unlock.
Something clicked.
I didn’t drift off while listening and miss out on details of the plot
I didn’t read only to realize my mind has been thinking of something else for the past 5 minutes
Reading felt immersive, almost cinematic.
So I’m continuing with my next book (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami) the same way.
Maybe that’s the real thread here: Finding hidden doors in stories, in business, in books, and in life.
Magic hiding in plain sight.