Receiving

“My brain is only a receiver. In the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration.”

— Nikola Tesla

When I first read this quote from Tesla, something cracked open in me. As an emulsion scientist, I am trained to learn, analyze and solve. My entire doctoral journey at NYU was built on the belief that if I just put my mind to it, I could figure anything out.

That is the nature of a Ph.D., after all. It leads you to go deep & singular into a narrow topic. And slowly, without realizing it, you build an ego around your intellect because the system rewards people who trust their own brain above all else.

Even while working at Bio-Rad developing digital droplet PCR chemistry, I carried that same posture: fist tight, ready to fight every problem with pure cognitive force. I was, in many ways, the opposite of a receiver. I was a grinder.

When the Fist Starts to Open

Then, at 35 years old, I founded Vertosa and stepped into cannabis, a field I knew almost nothing about. Suddenly, the tight fist didn’t work anymore because I reached the ceiling. I needed people who knew things I didn’t and who saw things I couldn’t.

The Vertosa experience humbled me in the most meaningful way. I started to realize that knowledge is not a fortress you build alone but more like a flowing river you step into. And the moment I loosened my grip, opening my palm instead of clenching it, everything changed. Better ideas came, better talents joined and better opportunities appeared.

Tesla understood this at a fundamental level. His brain was not the source — it was the antenna. The universe was broadcasting and he was simply tuned in. As a scientist, I found that idea both humbling and electrifying. What if the greatest breakthroughs don’t come from forcing solutions, but from becoming ready enough to receive them?

250 Hands and One Moment of Inspiration

Emmet Bush joined Vertosa in 2020 as a Jr. Lab Technician and grew into quality manager over the years. He is one of the most quietly talented people I have ever met. He picked up drawing in his early twenties, completely self-taught, and he just never stopped. Wherever Emmet goes, his drawing pad goes with him.

One afternoon, he showed me a practice series he had been working on: 250 drawings of hands. Different gestures, different angles, different expressions of the human palm. I stood there looking through page after page of hands and an inspiration hit me.

I saw my own journey in those hands. The tight fist of my Ph.D. years. The slowly uncurling fingers of the Vertosa journey. And then, the open palm — soft, upward-facing, waiting. Tesla’s quote came rushing back to me. And the image arrived fully formed, almost instantaneously: my hands, open, held up to the universe, with the entire cosmos pouring into them.

I looked at Emmet and said, “I need a favor.” He said, “What?” I said, “I need you to draw my hands inside the universe.”

He got it immediately. He took photos of my hands, carefully positioning the perspective so it would feel like I was looking down at my own palms receiving the stars. We aligned on how the universe should look in the background. Nearly eight months of work, inspiration, and quiet refinement later, the painting was done. I call it “Receiving”.

I was shocked when I saw it completed. Because it looked exactly like the image I had carried in my mind for months. It now hangs on the wall in my office at Vertosa, and I look at it every single day.

Receiving More Than Science

The painting was born from a scientific impulse. But the longer I sit with it, the more I realize the open hands are receiving everything life is presenting us!

The universe is not only handing you wisdom and opportunity. It is also handing you the challenges, the misunderstandings, the criticism, the doubt and the heartbreak.

People often ask me how I stay grounded through all the ups and downs of cannabis turbulence. I found my answer in this painting. I am here to receive all of it. The love and the friction. The clarity and the confusion. The wins and the lessons disguised as losses. Instead of gripping life tightly and fighting it into submission, we hold our palms open and let everything move through us. Don’t hang onto it, just receive it, experience it, and release it.

The Hands Give Back, Too

I remember the moment Emmet handed this art to me. He said, “Harold — this painting shows you receiving, but it also shows you giving something back to the universe. It is both ways.”

He was right. Open hands don’t only receive, they also offer. But what am I offering back?

My gift back to the cosmos is the work we are doing at Vertosa and phytoRX — introducing this beautiful plant into everyday life, to heal our body and liberate our minds.

— Harold Han, The Happy Chemist

P.S. Check out Emmet’s work here.