Just when I was about to launch Secrets of Emotional Intelligence, when every ounce of my focus and energy was needed to bring it into the world, life struck me with a blow I could never have anticipated. My wife of fifty years, my pillar, my confidante, my partner in every sense, suffered a sudden stroke and was rushed to the emergency room. In the blink of an eye, the woman who had been the strength behind our home and the steady presence in my life became bedridden, fragile, and in need of constant care.

The roles reversed overnight. I was thrust into responsibilities I had never imagined myself performing: bathing, dressing, and grooming my wife, keeping vigil beside her bed through the long nights, preparing meals, cleaning, and shopping. tasks she had quietly carried for half a century without complaint. Now they were mine to shoulder.

At first, I was overwhelmed. The exhaustion, the helplessness, the grief… it all pressed down on me. Yet somewhere in the storm, a realization dawned: this was the most significant test of emotional intelligence I would ever face. I had to summon patience when my body cried out for sleep. I had to practice tolerance when frustration mounted. I had to cultivate empathy, not just for my wife’s suffering but also for the man I was becoming under the weight of this trial. I had to stay sane while everything I knew as “normal” was stripped away.

And so, I turned to my own book. Secrets of Emotional Intelligence became my lifeline. I read it once, then again, and again. This time not as an author but as a desperate student. The theories, insights, and practices I had written about became my daily bread, guiding me through each decision, each breakdown, each fragile victory.

It was in those sleepless nights, with a lamp casting its quiet glow on my wife’s face, that I realized something profound: nothing teaches better than life itself. No university, no classroom, no book not even my own can rival the relentless lessons of lived experience.

That is why, when I speak of emotional intelligence, I do so with conviction. I claim no academic title. What I hold instead is far greater: an honorary doctorate from the University of Life. And it was earned not in lecture halls, but at my wife’s bedside, through love, suffering, and the unshakable will to rise each morning and choose compassion over despair.