The Santa Monica pier was bathed in golden hour light as Karolina Protsenko’s violin wept through “What Was I Made For.” Tourists slowed. Couples held hands tighter. A little girl dropped her ice cream cone, too mesmerized to care.
Then Karolina noticed him—an elderly man in a rumpled linen suit, leaning on a cane with tears cutting through his wrinkles. He stood perfectly still until the last note faded.
“That was the answer,” he whispered.
Before she could ask what he meant, the man pulled an envelope from his jacket. Inside:
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A check for $1,000,000
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A faded photo of a young boy playing violin on a war-torn street
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A note: “You just played my father’s song. He died asking that same question. You’re living his ‘for.’”
The signature at the bottom? A name every business journal knew—Warren Buffett.
Karolina’s knees buckled. The crowd gasped. But the old man was already walking away, his cane tapping rhythm to the new song she began playing with shaking hands: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
Because sometimes,
the right question
finds you
when you’re busy
answering it for others.
That night, Warren’s assistant tweeted a single line from The Little Prince:
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.”
