2015: Leave It All On The Table

by Duane Burghard
©2014

2014 was a pretty awful year for me in a lot of ways, so it might sound strange to hear me say that I'm really grateful to have gone through it. The events of this past year have changed me as a person. It's always been important to me to share my knowledge and experiences with others, but the events of this year have elevated this desire to a near obsession.

I've lost count of how many stages my ongoing mid-life crisis has been through (though I'm certain that we're in double digits by now), but this one is different.  When I was a young Navy Officer, I remember an instructor quantifying how much money it took to train us (the buildings, the manuals, the teachers, the electricity for the lights, it was quite a laundry list). I never forgot the point, and for the many years since I have often thought about the frankly *tremendous* amount of human and other natural resources that go into making each of us. The building of our minds and bodies both physically and mentally requires an incredible amount of food, water, energy and raw materials. As I've gotten to mid-life, however, I find myself regularly wrestling with the concern that I am not enough of a "net positive" on the Earth, and I've basically come to the conclusion that if all of the knowledge and experience that I've been allowed to gain is only for my benefit, then it's at least somewhat wasted in that the costs can't possibly equal the benefits (I'm not capable of producing enough positive output all by myself to justify all the resources that went in to making me). As a result, I am now convinced that the only way I can justify my existence is for me to do more to share the benefits of my knowledge and experiences with others. So with that in mind, as we shut the door on 2014, I've been thinking a lot about what I can do to help make 2015 better, not just for me, but for everybody.

When people reach my age and they've made a bunch of mistakes but they're fortunate enough that none of those mistakes have killed them (yet), we are often (somewhat amusingly) called wiser as a result. In reality, of course, it's probably more accurate to say that we were simply luckier, but either way, our perspective gives us the opportunity to share some observations and, as a result, hopefully allow those who come after us to make better decisions (which, in theory, then produce better outcomes and results). That's what I want to do here. In thinking about *how* to do that, however, I've made one of the most ironic discoveries of my life; I think the best way for us to make better decisions is to throw out the very methodology that we, or at least I and many people I know, have been using for making decisions.

The problem, as I now see it, is that our entire decision making paradigm and/or process is screwed up. Most of us do what we do for ourselves and our children based on what we think will produce the greatest amount of opportunity and success, and we predominantly associate opportunity and success with economic freedom, which we then equate to happiness and personal fulfillment. We make this association for the most logical reason I can think of; it's what we've been trained to do. There's only one problem;

... it's totally wrong.

Sooner or later, most people realize that our lives are pretty much a one time deal, and if you're not doing what you know in your heart is right and/or what you should be doing, well, you're quite literally missing your *only* chance to do it. This is a big deal because, the older I get, the more I'm learning that happiness and personal fulfillment usually come from the process of doing as opposed to having. So as we enter 2015, I would like to encourage everyone to do three things.

First, STOP making the "smart" or "safe" decisions about what we do in life. The vast majority of the time, these decisions block us from doing what we SHOULD be doing. Do NOT give in to the "practical" at the expense of the right. I'm at the age where the recognition of our mortality really starts to kick in. I'm starting to lose friends on a too regular basis, and the lesson they are teaching me in passing is that we should pursue our dreams NOW, because there are no "do overs" and no guarantees in life. We should do the things that will make us so happy that the economic consequences of the decision are irrelevant (because if we do that, we will be ready and willing to sacrifice what we "have" for what we know is right ... and incidentally, regarding that sacrifice of the the things we "have," don't sweat letting them go, we don't really have them anyway ... learned that this year too).

Next, we need to change our definition of success. If you're like me you've spent a good deal of your life chasing after some level of economic success. The good news is that, if we live our lives in that pursuit, the vast majority of us will get at least some of that success. Sadly, it's also true that almost none of us will get the level of success that we've been programmed to want, but the vast majority of us *will* accomplish something. The problem, again, is that it's the wrong something. We have become a nation dominated by an obsession for things, and I have been a willing participant too often. This summer I had a chance to visit with family and friends in Europe, and one of the most interesting things I discovered was that nearly every European I met had a lower average income than I had, fewer "things" ... and yet they all had more experiences (including people far younger than me) and they were generally happier. I have now concluded that success should be defined by the accomplishment of good for ourselves and others, regardless of the economic result, and it should be measured by how much joy we and others get out of what we're doing. If you're not enjoying it, stop doing it.

Our success should also be based on what *we* think of our work and not what others think. This change takes a LOT of courage. Not only do we have to be willing to risk what others may define as "failure," but we have to know that the value and success in what we're doing comes from doing it, regardless of how the outcome may be perceived. Great artists don't worry about whether or not their painting is appreciated in its time, or at all ... your life is your painting, it's most important that *you* find it to be a great work of art.

Finally, leave it all on the table. We should live lives such that, whenever the end comes, whether it is tomorrow or another 50 years from now, we have lived lives of honesty to ourselves and of value to humanity. Don't leave important things unsaid or undone, especially when it comes to the people who matter most to you. As I get older, the people I know who have more experiences and less money are generally richer in spirit and happier in life for having made the trade. I have always greatly admired people who have lived their lives according to this principle. The President of my high school class had a very successful business career. In 1993, shortly before our 10 year reunion, he gave it all up, literally, and went to teach math to poor children in the mountains of rural Venezuela for several years. He came back, and is now again a successful businessman. He demonstrated that you *can* in fact just walk away, and, if you want, you can come back again, the world will still be there. Another friend left college to go teach reading to inmates in prison. He did that for a while, then went back to school and today he's a nursery school teacher. I have a family member who has done a lot of traveling in the last decade. She is fearless, going places I would have been afraid to, even at her age. I have prayed for her safety often, but I have also known that, even if something awful would have happened, she would have lived her life doing what she loved and seen more of the world than most of us ever will. I often said that I wished I could be like these people. I'm going to stop wishing.

Now I want to be clear that I am NOT suggesting that everyone stop everything, quit their jobs, sell everything they own and go "walk the Earth." I'm not heading to Venezuela, prison or Thailand tomorrow and I'm not saying you should either (that said, I'm also not saying you shouldn't). Most of us are not ready to do that. There are, especially for those of us with children, practical realities of needing to make sure there is a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothing on our bodies. But perhaps our children don't need so many *things* and perhaps they don't need 15 activities to be constantly driven to as much as they need happy, loving and fulfilled parents as an example of how to *live*. We each have different things we should be doing to live our lives in honest obedience to our spirit. For me, right now that means writing, so simply creating this blog was an act of honesty to my deep inner desire to write (I think of it as getting an early start on 2015). It's success for me has to be in the fact that it *exists*, not in how it achieves the traditional definition of success. Obviously I *hope* people like it and that it brings other people something positive too, but its purpose is to express ideas, regardless of who hears. Each of us has that different thing that we are being called to do; whatever it is for you, don't wait. 2015 is your year. It's your time. Put it out there. If we do that, then we've already won. We're already successful.

Have a great 2015; leave it all on the table.