When I entered my freshman year of high school I had a dream, it was to earn as a freshman an athletic letter jacket in a sport, any sport, didn’t matter which one. For a little shrimp of guy like me with only modest athletic ability it was a tall order, what Jim Collins in his book Good to Great might refer to as a BHAG, that is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. To compound the challenge I didn’t play football, freshman were not allowed on the varsity basketball squad, and our school did not have a baseball team, which left only one sport – track, and I wasn’t very fast. I did have enough endurance, though, that I could run longer distances such as the mile and half mile races, my only hope. But in spite of my hard work and diligent training I still fell short, never so much as placing in a single race. So it was heartbreaking when at the end of the school year came around my big dream had been a bust.

It was summer, maybe three or four weeks after the end of the school term when one day the doorbell rang. I answered the door and there much to my surprise stood the coach holding a box. “What’s this?” I asked as he presented it to me. “It’s your letter jacket,” he replied. “But, but I didn’t . . . ,” I stammered. “It’s for golf,” he explained before I could finish my sentence. Golf? I had forgotten all about that, didn’t know anyone paid attention to golf or even considered it a sport. “You guys won the district championship in golf, remember? That earned you a letter jacket.” I was speechless! But it was true, we were the first golf team our school ever had and by some miraculous stroke of fate we had won the district championship – and my dream, my BHAG, came true. After the coach left I took my new letter jacket to my room, put my face in it and cried.

Dreams and BHAGs are sometimes fulfilled in unexpected ways. “. . . we shake the apple tree,” as Julia Cameron describes it in her book The Artist’s Way, “and the universe delivers oranges.” The point being, of course, to keep shaking to apple tree – to keep dreaming big dreams and setting BHAGs for ourselves – but don’t be surprised if the payoff comes in unexpected ways, sometimes greater than we ever imagined. Mine did, and I have kept the letter off that jacket to remind me, not about golf which I don’t even play anymore, but about the potential rewards of big dreams, BHAGs, and hard work.

My office partners, Jim and Connie, are constantly on the lookout for better office space, or different ways to configure the space we currently occupy. It is not because they are necessarily dissatisfied with things the way they are, rather for them it is part of an ongoing process of finding ways to more effectively serve the needs of their clients. In their minds the right office space is a necessary ingredient in the growth and evolution of their business, and that’s why they continually examine it. I admire them for that, and have observed their business grow because of it.

Change, it is one of the most difficult and disruptive things we contend with, yet it is inevitable. Whether we are the initiators of change like my office partners or it simply occurs around us it is going to happen, and it is for our own good that it does; for without change or willingness to participate in change there is no progress. It is the only way growth and renewal can occur.

William Bridges in his classic book Transitions explains it this way: “Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: Things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to change – until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole’s tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird molts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same,” he goes on. “Although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the functions of transition times are the same. They are key times in the natural process of self-renewal.”

We just moved. It was a difficult and disruptive decision, as change always is, to leave the house we had lived in for the past twenty-three years. Neither did we do so because we were necessarily dissatisfied with things the way they were. Rather we had been searching – like my friends Jim and Connie – for ways that would better serve the needs of our family in the years to come. We found it, our beautiful new dream home, but we would never have done so had we not been willing to change.

(from the archives)
How much is enough? Arguably, this may be one of the most relevant questions of our modern age in the Western world. If we base our evidence on the excessive consumption we see around us there is no doubt about the extraordinary buying power that exists in our world today. But is there a direct correlation between more and happier, and if so how much is enough?

Contrast that by examining happiness among the poor. My own brief experiences of working with those we might consider the poorest of the poor, mostly in Central America, has offered me some insight about this question. Specifically I remember Isabel, a Honduran woman who resides in a deeply impoverished barrio community just outside the city of Tegucigalpa. For a week she and I worked side by side on a project and though we did not speak the same language we became fast friends. At the end of that week as we were saying goodbye Isabel hugged me, then handed me a sweet note written in Spanish on a small tattered card about the size of a business card. I didn’t know what it said but I understood what was meant by her kind gesture. Isabel and her companions were some of the happiest people I’ve ever met, yet they lived in conditions that are unimaginable to most of us.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, perhaps the most renowned servant of the poor in our modern age, once noted of the Western world, “I have walked at night in your streets; I have entered your homes. I have found in them more poverty than in India.” What she was referring to was not economic poverty, but poverty of the soul. So we ask ourselves, how much is enough?

To live in a place where opportunities abound for financial success is a blessing and a privilege, but what are we to do with our abundance and how much is enough? The greatest reward in my profession as a business and executive coach occurs in helping high achieving successful clients transition their focus from success to significance, from money to meaning. It is then they discover that true enrichment is not obtained by gaining but by giving. So, how much is enough? That depends. But it depends not on how much we have, rather on how much we have to give.

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” - Luke 12:48

“Who will give when they go? Remarkable generation of donors is tough act to follow,” so stated the front page headline in the Sunday edition of the Dallas Morning News. The article praised the generosity of a number of wealthy donors who in their lifetimes have given millions of dollars toward the betterment of our community. Some have already passed on, and those remaining are not getting any younger, which leaves the big question of who will be the next generation of philanthropists.

I found this to be a rather refreshing article given that we are in the midst of a faltering economy and an ever widening gap between the wealthy and the middle-class, with protests raging across the country against Wall Street and the culture of big banks. Having spent thirty years of my own life as a Wall Street professional I can testify that the greed factor that so many are railing against is not a myth. I’ve witnessed it myself, even got caught up in it for a while. But the problem is not that some make excessive amounts of money while others in our culture struggle to find jobs. The problem is the lack of compassion some of the high paid corporate types seem to have toward the less fortunate. In a nutshell it is greed. But not all rich people are greedy. Many are extraordinarily generous, taking seriously the biblical view that “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded,” such as those praised by the Dallas Morning News. And that is what I found to be so refreshing about the article, a reminder that people of good will still exist at every socio-economic level.

Grateful as I am for the restoration of my health after a near fatal medical event two weeks ago, I too am faced with the same question as that newer generation who has amassed great fortunes. What am I to do with what I’ve been given; for “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” I pray that I will somehow be as generous with my health as those good citizens from that “remarkable generation of donors” have been with their wealth.

One of my favorite stories which bears repeating has to do with a man who lived in the small community where I grew up by the name of Roy Wall. Considered to be somewhat of a character because of his opinionated views, crusty wit, and sometimes salty language, he was also a creative inventor, successful farmer, and community leader. Roy had another distinctive feature in that he was an amputee, having lost an arm in an accident when he was a small child, something he chose to use as a source of strength and determination in his life rather than a disability.

One day, so the story goes, while Roy was struggling to harness a cantankerous team of mules a young man came by the farm to call on him. Observing the situation the young man tried to help out with the mules, but was brusquely dismissed in a sea of unrepeatable language. The young man, a newly hired school teacher in the tiny country school where Roy served as school board president, was obviously unfamiliar with Roy’s volatile disposition. Later, though, once the mules settled down and were duly hitched to the wagon Roy apologized to the young man explaining to him that even though his intentions were good he in fact interfered with his ability to deal with the mules. “Young man,” he said, “I may only have one arm, but I can do almost anything with one arm that most men can do with two. Of course, I can’t play a fiddle – but then #@!&*#$ neither can you!”

As you might imagine there are hundreds of stories about Roy Wall. He designed and created an eating utensil, for example, that was sort of a knife and fork combined allowing him to cut his meat and eat it with one hand. That instrument I am told is his grandchildren’s most coveted family heirloom. Another thing he did was teach young kids how to tie their shoes with one hand. How many of us can do that?

Roy Wall may have been an amputee, but he was hardly disabled. In fact, he could do almost anything with one hand that most men can do with two. As I lay in the hospital last week after my recent mishap I thought a lot about Roy. I figure if he can do it, why should I allow my own health issues to limit me in any way. Of course, I can’t play a fiddle either – but then neither can most of you.