New Delhi, May 27 -- "One Time, One Meeting."

Some wisdom arrives dressed in complexity. This proverb arrives in four words. It does not explain itself at length. It does not need to. Ichi-go ichi-e, one time, one meeting, is among the most quietly powerful phrases in Japanese culture. It describes something most people sense but rarely name. Every encounter you have is happening for the first and last time. Simultaneously. Right now. That truth changes everything about how you should show up.

The proverb originates in the Japanese tea ceremony tradition. Tea masters used it to describe the spirit with which each gathering should be approached. Every tea ceremony, they believed, was a singular event in all of human history. The same peo...