I Don’t Want to Miss My Life

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I’m making a lot of room this summer for the deeper reflection. Yes, this is what’s needed to write my book, Put Love to Work, connecting not just with my head but with my soul.

It’s also what’s needed to be the human I want to be. And of course, that where being the loving leader I want to be starts.

It’s easy to race through days, weeks, seasons, years trying to get “it” all done – and never getting it all done because there’s no way to get it all done. In all the planning, list-checking, and Kanban-tracking, we may never make room to be with ourselves and hold the most important conversation we can: the one with our own souls.

Why is this conversation so important? Because it is the one only we can have. And here, noticing and connecting our own dots that we become aware, integrated, whole, and ultimately available to authentically live into our assignments - whatever those are and however those change over time.

Our first assignment is to ourselves. Loving Leadership begins there.

It’s strange and wonderful how simply saying “Yes, OK, I’m open to seeing and hearing what I need to know about myself” becomes an invitation for stuff to show up.

They are like stars seen in the night sky, faint at first, competing with civilization’s artificial lights. But paying attention, turning off some of the other lights, I’m learning to pick out these glimmers. They twinkle at me from an elder’s situation, a podcast, a client’s dilemma, a statement from a grandchild, a book, a conversation with friends, a headline, an email message. 

It would be easy to rush right by it all if I weren’t feeling such a need to tune in. I’m listening and watching for patterns and discovering that, like crystalline structures in water or the songbook of birds, these gifts are everywhere. They’ve always been present. I’m just more ready to see them and notice how this, and that, and one other thing together reveal something I need to pay attention to.

So this week, insights have emerged from a new constellation of stars: My parents, Michelle Obama, and a book.

The first star in my new constellation: My Parents

My parents were married at 17 and 19. Seems crazy today! They were still kids when they had kids, and somehow through love, good communication, hard work, and good fortune too, they are still together after 61 years. They have always been young and fun, active, healthy, and vibrant - traveling, hosting parties, a huge circle of friends.

And now, at 78 and 80, they have entered that next season of life, slower and simpler, but with health challenges and declining energy too. We love and enjoy them, and we try to spend as much time as we can with them, most recently taking dinner over on Friday night.

They have always talked candidly about mortality, being both practical and down-to-earth. We all know time together is finite, so these realities flow through conversations, even as we tell stories and laugh … a lot of laughing. Candid, sweet, no regrets.

And because less than 20 years separate us, their transition into this elder stage makes my own feel suddenly closer and more real, too. The next 20 years feel clearer and the end, frankly, feels closer. I don’t mean that morbidly. I mean that it’s crystalizing my resolve to live and love with even more intention. 

The second star in my new constellation: Insight from Michelle Obama

All this was present in my heart, when I heard Michelle Obama share this on “Wild Card with Rachel Martin”:

“…at 61, you know, if I am lucky, if I am truly blessed, I (have) like, 25 more summers … I love life. I love my life. I love life. But…if I'm not mindful about it, the years slip away, and you wind up spending a year doing what? Did you do anything you wanted to? Did you spend time with the people that you wanted to spend time with, doing the things that you wanted to do? But with 25 more summers, I want to know - I want to feel each one of them…”

For someone who has given so much of her life energy to public service, I was struck by her determination to own her time in her own way. 

She said, “… I want these last 25 summers to feel long and purposeful and mine, not because I've given that time away, and I looked up and it's all gone, I've given it all away to everybody else, and I don't even know what was left for me.” Yes.

Witnessing my parents’ journey and knowing that I’m not far behind them, I too have been thinking about how many summers I have left. And because my work on love over fear came later in my life, really beginning at 50, I feel a strong and joyful urgency to give, create, speak, and make an impact.

My mentor, Edie Seashore, a luminary and groundbreaker in organization development, once told me she never planned to stop working. And she didn’t. She continued bringing her wisdom to the world until the month she died at 84. Her vocation was part of her truest expression. It was her joy and gift.

So, I’m counting the summers like Michelle, being choiceful, and aiming for a lifetime of impact like Edie.

Which brings me to this.

The third star in this constellation: “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurts” a novel by Ben Reeves.

Jim and I chose this for our book club this month. I listened to this one, twice.

Author Jodi Picoult described it as, "A gorgeously written book about what it means to be alive." And BookReporter says it is, “A gorgeous, transcendent novel… Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurtis a balm, a salve, a gift. And perhaps, most potently of all, it is an urgent reminder to do the thing that you will wish on your deathbed you could have done one last time.” 

The premise is wildly original. Travis is Death in the modern world, comforting people in their final hours without changing their fate. Then he meets Dalia, a midwife, and her eight-year-old Layla. Through their unexpected embrace of him, Death begins to understand what it means to be truly alive and what is lost when life ends.

And as Travis begins to understand what it is to be alive, we do too.

This isn’t an easy book. Some in our book club didn’t like it. It was sad, and for some, too close to home. But they didn’t make it to the end, to the love that left me in tears, grateful and determined to embrace life.

It amazes me that a book narrated by Death could inspire me to live with even more gusto and joy. To love and be with people. To see, taste, smell, and touch. To create and be awed. To be fully in the world while I am here.

And when I connect these three stars, I see this: My assignment isn’t only to do something meaningful with my life. My assignment is to fully live it.

I don’t want to confuse my contribution with my life. I want my contribution to arise from being fully alive.

So before you get back to everything that needs doing, Loving Leader, consider asking yourself this:

What is my assignment in this season of my life, not just to accomplish, but to experience, love, give, receive, and become?

Then, see what starts twinkling back at you.