This afternoon on NPR I heard a fascinating interview with Arthur Rosenfeld, a South Florida author who is also a Tai Chi master. He was promoting his new book, Tai Chi, The Perfect Exercise: Finding Health, Happiness, Balance and Strength. Tai Chi is described by Wikipedia as “an internal Chinese martial art practiced for both its defend training and its health benefits.” It involves certain movements, breathing exercises, awareness (mindfulness) and meditation.
During the course of the interview, Rosenfeld talked about the philosophy of Tai Chi and something called the Third Door, which is intrinsic to Tai Chi. Most of us, he says, deal with conflict through confrontation or by yielding. But there is a third door we can walk through and it must come from an inner, intuitive place. He then told a great story that illustrates this concept.
One day he was in line at a Starbucks to buy a cup of tea. The line was long and wasn’t moving quickly. He inched forward and stopped about four inches from the car in front of him. The driver behind Rosenfeld, evidently impatient about picking up his order, suddenly blasted his horn and leaned out the window and yelled, “Drive forward, you idiot!”
Rosenfeld’s immediate reaction was anger. He threw open his car door and intended to march back to the driver and punch him in the mouth. But before his feet touched the ground, he realized what he was about to do, and quickly swung his legs back into his car and shut the door. Confrontation, he realized, wasn’t the way to deal with this. That wasn’t the door he wanted to walk through. The second door, yielding, would entail him apologizing to the driver. He didn’t want to walk through that door, either. After all, what would he be apologizing for?
And then the third door opened, an intuitive blossoming. When he reached the pickup window, he told the woman at the window – a Brit whom he knew – that he wanted to buy the coffee for the driver behind him. She looked at him like he was nuts. “You oughta kick him in the arse,” she said.
“I’ll buy his coffee.”
“You might want to reconsider. He’s picking up coffee and snacks for his office and the bill is $58.”
Rosenfeld opened up his wallet and found just a $10 bill. But he felt certain about this third door and handed over his credit card.
That evening when he got home, his answering machine was filled with calls from Starbucks- call us ASAP, please – and calls from numerous media outlets. He figured he had overdrawn his credit card and called immediately. But it wasn’t about his credit card. Apparently all the drivers who had been in that long line had paid the bill for the driver behind them. NBC had gotten wind of it and wanted an interview. Now, he’s developing a reality TV show based on the Tai Chi concept of the third door.
I’m not sure how the other drivers learned about what he’d done. Perhaps when the irate driver pulled up to the window, the Brit told him his bill had been paid for by the man he yelled at, and he decided to pay the favor forward. However it transpired, the story has striking parallels to the movie Pay It Forward. And now I’d like to read Rosenfeld’s book.

















