The Rhythm of Life

Several years ago I found myself standing before a class of high school seniors in Cape May, on the Jersey shore, in the United States. I had been invited to speak to them about life beyond high school graduation, but I found myself more interested in what they might have to say than in what their teachers thought they needed to hear.

I began by asking them how long it would be until they graduated. In a burst of excitement and energy, they replied in unison, “Eleven days.”

What I really wanted was to enter into the unbounded territories of the hopes and dreams these young men and women held about their future. There were eighty-four students before me that morning, representatives of the future. I was curious. I wanted to know what they yearned for. I wanted to be invited into their hearts and minds.

I invited myself by asking, “What do you want from life?”

For a few moments there was silence. Then, as they realized that my question was not rhetorical, a young man called out, “I want to be rich.” I asked him why he wanted to be rich. “So I can do whatever I want,” was his reply. I asked him how much was enough. “A million dollars,” he said, and I remember wondering how many people think that a million dollars will change their lives.

Then I raised the question again.

A young woman said she wanted to be a doctor. I asked her why. “So that I can help people, relieve suffering, and make a lot of money,” she replied. I wished her well and hoped she would be able to keep her reasons in that order as the years passed.

I asked the question again: “What else do you want from life?”

A young man toward the back called out, “I want a beautiful wife.” His friends giggled, and I asked him if he had been successful in locating one yet. He said that he hadn’t, and I sympathized with him, explaining that I had not, either.

Then I asked him if he knew what he was looking for in a woman. He said he did. So I explained that the best way to attract that kind of person was to become that kind of person.

I asked the question again: “What else do you want from life?”

This time a young man with a firm and confident voice said, “The president. I want to be the president of the United States of America.”

I then proceeded to ask him how he intended to achieve this goal. He unfolded for me and his fellow students a plan that included undergraduate studies in international business and political science, followed by law school, local political campaign involvement, a number of summer internships on Capitol Hill, a time in the United States Army, and an array of community service.

It was clear that this dream had not entered his head during this brainstorming session that I had forced upon these high school seniors. His wasn’t a pipe dream or the vain dreaming we do while we sleep; rather, it was the dreaming that we do in the daylight hours, which gives birth to purposeful living and forms our future. Perhaps one day he will become the first African American president of the United States of America!

I wished him well in his endeavors. The mood had changed. The young minds before me had been dragged deeper into this session of dream making by the realization that one of their peers had already spent a lot of time thinking about this very question. So I asked it again: “What else do you want from life?”

“Happiness—I want to be happy,” a young man said.

“How will you find or achieve this happiness?” I asked. He - didn’t know. I asked him if he could describe it, but he couldn’t. I assured him that his desire for happiness was natural and normal and that we would talk about it later in our discussion—but that comes a little later in this book.

Again I posed the question: “What do you want from life?”

A young woman said, “A man to share my life with.” I asked her, as I had asked the young man earlier, if she had succeeded in locating one. She wasn’t shy, and she volleyed by saying, “How will I know when I find him? How will I know he is the one?”

“Wait for the man who makes you want to be a better person, a man who inspires you because he is always striving to better himself.

“It’s not about how he looks, or how he looks at you. Not that these things are not considerations. It’s not about gifts. All too often gifts are only excuses and apologies for not giving the only true gift—ourselves. When you are wondering if he really is the one for you, consider this one idea: You deserve to be cherished. Cherished! Not just loved. Cherished!”

We held eye contact for a moment or two, her eyes began to well with tears, and I knew she understood.

Now, the room was filled with a profound silence as I asked the question again: “What else do you want from life?”

After a few moments of that silence a crowd exudes when it is almost exhausted of input, a young lady said, “I want to travel.”

I encouraged her to travel as early in her adult life as possible, explaining that “travel opens our minds to different cultures, philosophies, and worldviews. Travel opens our hearts to the people of foreign lands and their different traditions and creeds. Travel dissolves the stains of prejudice that infect our hearts and societies.

Now, I asked the question one more time: “What do you want from life?” But the crowd was quiet, and exhausted, and still.

I was surprised. I was disappointed. I felt an ache within me.

In less than twenty minutes, eighty-four high school seniors had become exhausted of their hopes, dreams, plans, and ambitions for the future. If that was not completely true, then whatever they had failed to share was either not worth sharing or they lacked the confidence to share it. Seven students had been able to summarize the dreams of all eighty-four. Was I still in the land of infinite dreams and opportunities? I wondered.

If I had asked them to tell me what was wrong with the education system, our discussion might have lasted for hours. If I had asked them about their favorite sporting highlight, or television sitcom, the discussion might have lasted all day. Have we become more interested in spectator sports and television sitcoms than in our own future?

It constantly amazes me that men and women wander the earth marveling at the highest mountains, the deepest oceans, the whitest sands, the most exotic islands, the most intriguing birds of the air and fish of the sea—and all the time never stop to marvel at themselves and realize their infinite potential as human beings.

More people have access to education today than ever before. But I cannot help but feel that the modern educational experience is not preparing us adequately to attend the rich banquet of life. Certainly the young people of today have mastered the use of technology and are capable of solving complex scientific and mathematical problems, but who and what do these serve if they cannot think for themselves? If they have no understanding of the meaning and purpose of their own lives? If they do not know who they are as individuals?

That impromptu question—“What do you want from life?”—has become a regular part of my dialogue with friends, colleagues, loved ones, and strangers on planes. I ask it as a tool to help me to understand others, and I ask it to further understand myself.

For the most part, the answers people tend to give are vague and general, not at all thought out. Most people seem surprised by the question. I have been accused of being too deep on a number of occasions, and only very rarely does someone say, “I want these things…, for these reasons…, and this is how I intend to achieve them….” Without exception, these are the people who are living life passionately and enthusiastically. They very rarely complain, they don’t talk negatively about others, and you never hear them refer to happiness as some future event linked to retirement, marriage, a promotion, or some unexpected windfall of money.

So, what do they have that most people don’t? They know what they want. Do you know what you want?

Most people can tell you exactly what they don’t want, but very few have the same clarity about what they do want.

If you don’t know what you want from life, everything will appear either as an obstacle or as a burden. But one of the great lessons of history is that the whole world gets out of the way for people who know what they want or where they are going. Be assured, if you don’t know where you are going, you are lost.

Do not say, “I am too old.”

Don’t say, “I’m too young.”

Tiger Woods was three years old when he shot 48 for nine holes on his hometown golf course in Cypress, California.

Julie Andrews was eight years old when she mastered an astounding four-octave singing range.

Mozart was eight years old when he wrote his first symphony.

Charles Dickens was twelve years old when he quit school to work in a factory, pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish, because his father had been imprisoned for debt.

Anne Frank was thirteen years old when she began her diary.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was fourteen years old when he enrolled at Harvard.

Paul McCartney was fifteen years old when John Lennon invited him to join a band.

Bill Gates was nineteen years old when he cofounded Microsoft.

Plato was twenty years old when he became a student of Socrates.

Joe DiMaggio was twenty-six years old when he hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games.

Henry David Thoreau was twenty-seven years old when he moved to the shore of Walden Pond, built a house, planted a garden, and began a two-year experiment in simplicity and self-reliance.

Ralph Lauren was twenty-nine years old when he created Polo.

William Shakespeare was thirty-one years old when he wrote Romeo and Juliet.

Bill Gates was thirty-one years old when he became a billionaire.

Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Coco Chanel was thirty-eight years old when she introduced her perfume Chanel No. 5.

Mother Teresa was forty years old when she founded the Missionaries of Charity.

Jack Nicklaus was forty-six years old when he shot 65 in the final round, and 30 on the back nine, to win the Masters.

Henry Ford was fifty years old when he started his first manufacturing assembly line.

Ray Kroc was a fifty-two-year-old milkshake machine salesman when he bought out Mac and Dick McDonald and officially started McDonald’s.

Pablo Picasso was fifty-five years old when he painted Guernica.

Dom Pérignon was sixty years old when he first produced champagne.

Oscar Hammerstein II was sixty-four years old when he wrote the lyrics for The Sound of Music.

Winston Churchill was sixty-five years old when he became -Britain’s prime minister.

Nelson Mandela was seventy-one years old when he was released from a South African prison. Four years later he was elected president of South Africa.

Michelangelo was seventy-two years old when he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Auguste Rodin was seventy-six years old when he finally married Rose Beuret, whom he met when he was twenty-three.

Benjamin Franklin was seventy-nine years old when he invented bifocal eyeglasses.

Frank Lloyd Wright was ninety-one years old when he completed his work on the Guggenheim Museum.

Dimitrion Yordanidis was ninety-eight years old when he ran a marathon in seven hours and thirty-three minutes, in Athens, Greece.

Ichijirou Araya was one hundred years old when he climbed Mount Fuji.

Whether you are sixteen or sixty, the rest of your life is ahead of you. You cannot change one moment of your past, but you can change your whole future. Now is your time.

Think about it. Stop reading. Ponder it. Write your answers down. Make a list.

Put this book aside now—and before you read on, spend five minutes or five hours answering the question for yourself. What do you want from life?

Maybe you have already thought long and hard about this question but have never written it down. On the other hand, if you have never taken time to seriously address the question, don’t pretend that you have. Take the time. Think it over. Write it down.

There are no right or wrong answers. Write quickly. Don’t think too much. Don’t analyze or edit yourself as you make your list. Write everything down, even the ones you feel are foolish. Your answers don’t have to be definitive. They will change over time. That’s okay. In fact, some of them will probably change by the time you finish this book. But it is still important to write them down now. It will help you as you read through the rest of this book and as you venture through the rest of your life. So write your list, and when you are done, date it.

Start a new notebook. I have what I like to call my dream-book. It’s a regular journal with blank pages, and I fill those pages with my hopes and dreams and words and ideas that inspire me.

Each day in my quiet time, I ﬂick through the pages of my dream-book and I see things I had written three, four, five years ago, things that seemed impossible at the time. Today they seem insignificant, because I have grown, achieved those dreams, and moved on. I now also realize that other things I thought I wanted are not as important to me as I imagined they were.

Even if you write your list now, put it away and don’t look at it for a year. When you do take that list out one year from now, you will be amazed by the self-revelation it will afford you.

Stop reading. Put the book down. What you are about to write on that paper is infinitely more important than anything else I have to say in this book.