It was a beautiful week in early fall when the owners and investors of the business gathered at Martha's Vineyard for a working vacation. It was a "working" vacation because no one there can let a day go by without enthusiastic thoughts about what they are accomplishing. Already, they have developed the little black box that lets disparate computers talk to one another in 30 days, rather than in a year or two. Already, some Fortune 500 companies are their clients. The company is on the cutting edge of tomorrow's computer frontier.

The thrill of reaching for frontiers has motivated the founder of this company all his life. Time after time he has foregone a life of ease, leaving mega companies once he has accomplished what he was hired to do, turning down continuing huge salaries for the lure of an entrepreneurial venture. Time and again he has succeeded, only to go on to the next level, never choosing his last success as his final success, foregoing a life on the golf course in favor of the entrepreneurial life.

His wife told me about the week at Martha's Vineyard, summing it up in one sentence. "No one used the salt." I didn't get it at first.

"John loves salt on his food, as do most people," she explained. "But, at dinner in Martha's Vineyard, he never used the salt. No one used the salt, no one. Everyone was discussing the business. We were all so excited that no one cared about the food. We ate it, but hardly knew we were eating! No one used the salt." I understood, I understand. That feeling of complete focus, total enthusiasm, is what I live for, I think it is what we all live for. It has nothing to do with business in particular. It is available from every encounter in life and is a feeling each one of us can have, and should have, on a regular basis.

I get that feeling of being transported to a different realm in several ways. One is when I am writing and I can feel the words, experience the full impact of what I am writing about, when those words and feelings become all I am conscious of at that moment. I have sometimes written for hours without being aware of the passage of time. There was a time in my life when the writing and receiving of love letters was the only meaningful thing that happened day in and day out. I poured my soul onto paper and was totally vulnerable, totally alive.

Being totally in any relationship at any given moment can create this exhilaration. My conversations with my sister, when our minds are in sync, are so exhilarating that an hour can vanish in the blink of an eye. When I am developing a campaign for an advertiser, I can get swept away in the creativity, experiencing the joy of the ideas taking form. Riding in the mountains with my husband has taken me as far from the everyday world as any rocket to the Moon could accomplish.

I think we all experience these moments of joy, of total absorption, of being completely who we really are and yet completely non self-absorbed at the same time. In these moments, it is all about being and matters not if we are about to become a billionaire or are living in a teepee.

Mothers gazing into the eyes of their babies know this sublime joy, as do boys playing with their dogs, girls riding their horses, ministers preaching to tear filled congregations, actors in their pinnacle roles. . .

What gives you this feeling? It should be present in your life. If it is not, seek it, make it fuel your life. Whatever it is, it is within yourself. It is not found in another person, in a cigarette, in chocolate, or a bottle, or a drug. Joy is in our very soul, just waiting to be released. It is found in what we do well, in our ability to be honest with ourselves and with others in our lives. It has nothing to do with money or fame or power. No one can give it to us and no one can take it away.

Bring it forth. When you do, you won't need the salt.

Jean Loxley-Barnard has been a writer all her life and studied both sociology and psychology at George Washington University where she earned a B.A. Her company, The Shopper, Inc., encompasses all the Loxley-Barnard family publications - The Shopper Magazines and Doctor to Doctor Magazine. She has been in the advertising, consulting and publishing business for 39 years.