I am a big believer in people taking time to distill the lessons they have learned in their careers and in their lives and then assessing the implications of those lessons for themselves and sharing them with others. Some disciplines are very good at documenting those lessons (some call them best practices) and others, such as nonprofit management and teaching, don’t do so well.
For my part, I spent five years writing up stories (with embedded lessons) and freestanding lessons (without the stories) and they culminated in two books: Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind and When in Doubt, Ask for More, respectively. During this process, I encouraged others to write up their own career or life lessons, and was on the lookout for those who had already done so. Earlier this week I came across some great life lessons written by a man I have great respect for, and they appear below.
By way of background, early in my career I was heavily involved in trying to get the idea of microfinance into the mainstream. I found the Miami Herald under the leadership of David Lawrence uniquely helpful in this effort. Dave had gone to Bangladesh and seen the Grameen Bank in action, so it made him very open to being an ally. Years later, I reconnected with him. Across many meetings and phone calls, he was absurdly generous with advice, introductions, promotion of my books, and helping people and ideas I believed in.
Most recently, he agreed to meet with me and Marq Mitchell, a dynamic social entrepreneur working on reforming the criminal justice system (or what he would call, the “criminal legal system”) through the Fort Lauderdale organization he created, Chainless Change. (I do consulting for Marq’s group, supported in part by the visionary philanthropist Barry Segal and his team at Focus for Health.)
In the immediate aftermath of that recent meeting with Dave, he sent me the transcript of a short speech he gave and a link to a video of it. The guts of that short speech were his 12 life lessons which I found quite illuminating (especially #2, #4, #6, #8 and #9). Check them out and see which are most meaningful to you!
One: Tell people you love them while they are still here. Life can depart so quickly. Many deaths can be more or less expected. Others come as a stunning surprise -- a recent example being the loss of Paul Farmer. Let us (you and I) celebrate people and let us show love way before a funeral. May we treat all with respect, decency, kindness and, most of all, with love.
Two: Believe in people. The second President Bush warned of “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” That happens often. But if we expect the best from others, the best more likely shows up.
Three: Grow spiritually. Believe in what is higher and better than yourself. For otherwise, what could be the meaning of life?
Four: Know that racism is the great cancer of society. I have been in 56 countries, and witnessed racism in every one of them. Only by confronting oneself can racism be diminished.
Five: Have the courage to speak up. Never tell so-called “jokes” that diminish others even if out of hearing range. Being thoughtful and sensitive has nothing to do with being “politically correct,” whatever that is.
Six: Be a lifelong learner – and reader (especially of history and biographies). Live all your life enveloped in the wisdom of the author Edith Wharton, who a century ago wrote this: “In spite of illness, in spite of even the arch-enemy sorrow, one can stay alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways.” Know, too, that the future of our republic depends on genuinely informed people. Just last week, to underscore the point, I read that one of every six Americans believes in the so-called QAnon conspiracy. Social media should not be the single source of anything. Read widely. Read wisely. Deeply. Closely. Then make up your own mind. Be skeptical – and never cynical.
Seven: You and I cannot get through life without pain. But we can grow from pain. The way we handle pain can teach us what is really important in this world, and for the next.
Eight: Get back to people quickly – the same day, even if it is to say, “It will take me a couple of days to give you” a full enough response. Lincoln, my favorite President who grew all his life, told us: “Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”
Nine: Believe in redemption. We are all sinners. We all make mistakes. I think, by way of example, of a truly good man in our community, a leader who messed up, “owned” it, apologized – and deserves to be remembered for all the difference he made in so many young and older lives.
Ten: Always vote for someone with an obvious moral core -- someone who can inspire us in the spirit of Mr. Lincoln’s clarion call to “the better angels of our nature.”
Eleven: Love this country. Help make us better. Listen, really listen, especially to those who see things differently than we may. The future of this great republic depends more than ever on diminishing tribalism and hatefulness. We live, and always have, in an ever-present fragility. Benjamin Franklin reminded us of that way back in 1787. What makes America “exceptional” is not bullets and billionaires, but rather that we have wanted to be a “good people.” So often we have been. But history reminds us we have been complicit in many things bad, even sometimes evil – slavery, genocide of Native Americans, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the 1924 immigration act, the imprisonment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans in World War II, the overthrowing of legitimately chosen leaders in such places as Iran, Congo, Guatemala, and more.
And, now, No. 12, whose wisdom I carry in my wallet. Leo Rosten, the Yiddish philosopher, wrote: “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be ‘happy.’ I think the purpose of life,” he said, “is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you have lived at all.”
As you think about how you might apply these, also reflect on what your own 10 or so most valuable life lessons are, and how you can powerfully share them with others.