He held her hand…

I was driving back with Anton Thayalan yesterday, after a visit to Havelock City Mall to see the Elite Auto Show 2026, a display of American cars restored by Chanaka Jinasena. A 1952 Cadillac Series 62 Golden Anniversary Convertible, a 1958 Buick Century Riviera Sedan, all polish and chrome under the coloured lights. It was the kind of scene that pulls your eye upward and outward, toward the shine of things.

And then, right there near the lights, I saw them. An old man, bent with age, and his wife, frail beside him, moving slowly the way you move when your knees have opinions of their own. He took her hand and led her across the pedestrian crossing. Looked left. Looked right. Crossed. Kept holding her hand long after the cars had gone.

I do not know their names. I never will. But I have not stopped thinking about that hand.

It was a Sunday, and Sundays are when I do most of my reflecting, so perhaps I was primed to notice. But I do not think it needed priming. Here was a man who would have loved this woman longer than I have been alive, still crossing roads for her, still watching for danger on her behalf, still holding on. It made me write a poem, which is unusual for me on a Sunday evening. But it also made me think about something I talk about often in rooms full of managers and leaders, which is the difference between holding on because you have to, and holding on because you promised you would.

Most of what passes for commitment in organisations is the first kind. We hold the hand because the project needs it, because the deadline needs it, because someone is watching. The moment the crossing is done, the moment the danger has passed, the hand drops. Nobody notices. Nobody is meant to.

What I saw at that crossing was the second kind. He kept holding her hand well after the need for it had gone. There was no traffic left to watch for. No danger left to manage. He held it anyway.

That is not a transaction. That is a promise, still being kept, decades after it was made.

I think about the leaders I have worked with over the years who I would call genuinely good, and the thread that runs through all of them is this same thing. They do not just show up when the crossing is dangerous. They do not just show up when someone is measuring them. They keep holding on when nobody would blame them for letting go, and when there is nothing left to prove by holding on.

We talk a lot in leadership circles about vision, about strategy, about influence. We do not talk enough about the quieter discipline of just not letting go. Of a promise made once, kept every single day after, long after anyone is checking.

I watched them finish crossing and walk slowly toward wherever they were going. I did not know a single thing about their life together. But I knew, right there, that it had been well lived.

Everything teaches; even an old man, holding the hand of his beloved wife…