I Met a Man On a Journey

As I sat in Mass this morning, I happened to catch sight of a middle-aged Asian gentleman with a slight limp.

The origin of his limp, which he plays down, includes a complex voyage that started in an Asian nation in turmoil in the 60’s, hiding from troops from both sides of the conflict, coming to Canada as a boat person in the 70’s and devoting himself to service to others in the 21st century.

He has been on quite a journey up to now, but you will never hear any stories from him.  His humility prevents him from sharing his story and so you must hear his story from others.

As I thought about his journey, I couldn’t help but think of the journey that everyone in that church was on and the stories they could tell.

Stories of overcoming difficulty, of sharing with others in need, of receiving help when needed most, of laughter and loss, of victory and defeat.

Some of these stories are almost too incredible to believe; stories that if presented as a Hollywood movie would invite many to scoff at the impossibility of such perceived fiction.

And yet these stories happened.

Stories that could make the most hardened person laugh in delight ….

… the thickest-skinned weep …

… the most down-trodden see hope …

… the most negative person see potential …

… the most proud feel humbled …

… the most humble feel exalted.

Every day, billions of people set about creating stories and participating in them, each collection of stories appearing to be its own unique collection.

Despite our differences of genetics, culture, race, religion, creed, careers and social status, it is our Life stories that define who we are and create the potential for what we can be.

In our busy Life, it is easy to forget the journey that others are on.  Our own journey either overloads us with amazing joy or threatens to overwhelm us with its crushing challenges.

It is easy to forget others in need when our world is filled with plenty.  Conversely, it is easy to feel alone when we perceive the rest of the world as having moved on without us or not pausing to lend us a hand.

However, as we go through Life creating new stories (or reliving old ones), there is an important thing we shouldn’t forget.

Our stories are actually not individualized collections of stories at all.

They are in fact one very large story with many perceived insights into the same story.  Everything we think, say and do in the process of creating our perceived individual stories contributes to the story of others, including many people we will never meet.

And by the same token, their experiences of triumph, challenge, victory, defeat and love influence our Life Story, even if we are not aware of it.

Such is the Story of Our Journey.

I met a man on a journey. 

It wasn’t his journey to share with me. 

Nor was it mine to share with him.

It was ours to create together.

In service and servanthood,

Harry

My detailed blog entry for “I Met a Man On a Journey” is the same is this one and can be found here.

Accountability and Authenticity

As I dressed this morning, I donned a pair of jeans and a yellow polo shirt and prepared to meet the day - nothing significant to report there.

However, to a small band of entrepreneurs in New York in the late 90’s to early 2000’s, Tuesday was Yellow Shirt Day.

Every Tuesday, my team and I would all wear yellow shirts and would go for a walk during our lunch break and compliment other people who wore yellow shirts.  The reaction from strangers on the streets of New York covered a broad spectrum, ranging from humorous to angry.

The co-founder of Yellow Shirt Day, Narender Nath, was killed in the World Trade Center less than a year later during the horror of 9/11.

Narender came to mind this morning as I realized I was wearing a yellow shirt on Tuesday and I thought about how he lived his life versus how the media tells us we should live.

The media encourages us to focus on the disaster all around us under the guise of informing us.

If only we could get some breathing room from all of this gloom and doom, we reason, then we could be more true to ourselves.

Narender looked at this challenge differently.

He knew that if he waited for the opportunity to be authentic with himself and with others, he would wait forever and would be incredibly frustrated as he waited.

Narender believed that our world is what we believe it to be.

The media wants us to believe it is all coming apart.

Narender believed it to be one of unlimited opportunity for living, loving, learning and leaving a legacy.

I know you believe this also.

As many experts say and as Narender practiced:

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Yes, it is an overused statement.

But perhaps it is overused because we still haven’t learned the truth within it and so we need to keep hearing it.

How do you see the world today?  How badly would you like to see it in a different light?

Look around you – there are many people who are ready to collaborate with you to create that world.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

PS – A guy by the name of Mike walked into the coffee shop as I was writing this.  He was wearing a yellow shirt also and so I couldn’t resist introducing myself and telling him the story of Narender and Yellow Shirt Day.  As he left, he laughed and said “maybe we can start Yellow Shirt Day where I work”.  That would be cool, Mike!

It sometimes doesn’t take much to influence someone else in a positive way.

Simple actions touch hearts and in turn influence minds.  Whose heart are you touching today?

For more detailed musing about Accountability and Transparency, please click here.

A Quest for Authenticity – How Many Lives Are You Living?

I am running into more and more people these days who are living two or more completely different lives.

One life is the life of their dreams – passionate and living on purpose.  In this life, they are living their dreams, creating their own companies, making a huge, positive impact on the world.  Many of them are best-selling authors, in-demand speakers or high-powered consultants offering advice to the elite.  Their home life is right out of Leave it to Beaver, the Brady Bunch or some other idyllic family experience.  They live in a world where they speak freely and passionately about their purpose, their faith, their ideals and core values and their vision of the world. It is a beautiful life without fear of anything.

What a beautiful image they weave.

The other life is the life the same people are currently experiencing.  They are frustrated with their boss, their business partner, their client, their spouse, their children, their President or Prime Minister or someone else.  They feel frustrated that nobody seems to care about their vision for the world.  They are afraid to expose their core values, their faith or their belief structure.  They are afraid to stand up and speak out when they witness something that is legally, ethically or morally incorrect.  With this in mind, they assume their own personality is flawed or unworthy and thus they create new personas based on the situations they find themselves in.

Life is challenging enough when you have one life to live.

If we are living by our core values and are aligned with others with similar values, it helps to know that we should push through because the results are worthy enough to persevere for.

If we are pushing something that we are not in alignment with, then we often wonder why we should bother.  After all, we may be pushing for something important for someone else and not for ourselves – living a life for someone else.

If that’s the life we want to live, then we should select a person that we are living our life for and ask them if we can leave their name on our headstone when our end-of-days has arrived.

We might as well, since we lived their life based on their values, beliefs and expectations anyway.

Wouldn’t it better to be remembered for who we are and not for how we reflected the best of someone else?

Exactly – so what are we waiting for?

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “A Quest for Authenticity”.

Appreciating What We Create – A Lesson from Michael Jackson

Yesterday, an amazing talent in the person of Michael Jackson was lost suddenly.

His life was a dichotomy of phenomenal talent and passion for his craft on the one hand and a misunderstood, anguish-filled, pain-laden person on the other.

It is easy to embrace the positive and be critical and harsh of the negative – even when what we demand of celebrities often puts them on the slippery road of selling their soul to give us what we need.

Just as we cry foul when a company that produces the products we crave pollutes the environment in order to create them.

Just as we scream for justice when the financial institutions that we demand staggering returns from go belly up as they discover that the means of producing those returns is unsustainable.

Just as we turn our back on the incarcerated, writing them off as the lost and unsalvageable when investing our own gifts in others may have prevented someone from becoming this way in the first place.

We are quick to congratulate ourselves when we harvest something positive from society.

We are just as quick to criticize and blame others when what we harvest or perceive is not positive at all.

We can’t have it both ways.

We need to accept that we are responsible for what we create – the good and the bad.

Once we accept responsibility for both ends of the spectrum, maybe we will complain less and work harder to step up and create more positively and purposefully.

Michael Jackson did some things wrong in his life.  He did a lot of things right.  He overcame a lot.  Despite some of the things that he did that were wrong, he left a legacy to millions.

John Ruskin had a stone on his desk with one word carved in it. 

The word was “Today”.

What are you doing with the gift of today to leave a positive legacy to others?

Look within before looking outside.

Yours in service and servanthood.

Harry

Click here to read my detailed blog entry on “Appreciating What We Create”.