With Purpose Success, part 85

He argues that "every act of goodness toward another person is a combination of altruism and self interest." Still, there are those rare people who willingly give without regard for themselves. Consider Wesley Autrey, the construction worker who was christened the "Subway Superman" after his split-second decision to dive onto the train tracks in Harlem and rescue nineteen-year-old Cameron Hollopeter, who had stumbled in front of a train. As Autrey lay on top of Hollopeter, holding him in place, a train roared overhead so close that it left grease on his cap. Autrey said later: "I don't feel like I did something spectacular; I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right." That was Autrey's reward- he felt good about doing what was right. 

I can't resist pointing out that Autrey's act of unusual selflessness paid off in very material, yet unexpected, ways. He received: $5,000 in cash for him and $5,000 in scholarships for his daughters from the New York 

Film Academy, where Hollopeter was a student; $10,000 from Donald Trump; a $5,000 Gap gift card; tickets and backstage passes to a Beyonce concert; season tickets to the New Jersey Nets and a signed jersey from Nets star Jason Kidd; a new Jeep Patriot and two years of car insurance from Progressive; a one-year free parking pass for use anywhere in 

New York City; new computers for his daughters every three years until they graduate high school; a year of free subway rides; and a weeklong trip to Disney World and tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway. Finally, 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented Autrey with the Bronze Medallion, New York City's highest award for exceptional citizenship. Said the mayor: "Wesley's astonishing bravery-saving a life in the face of an oncoming subway car-is an inspiration not just to New Yorkers, but the entire world." 

Do the rewards of altruism often bear such tangible fruit? Of course not. Do good Samaritans anticipate payback before helping others? Probably not. But that's not what giving is all about. If you do it for the right reasons, it usually comes back to you somehow. It just does. 

Make a Difference. When you really dig into why people give it's pretty simple most of the time. They want to bring some sense of meaning into their lives by making a difference to someone someplace in the world in some small or large way. In an AARP survey of people forty-five and older, half of all respondents called making a difference "a very important reason" to volunteer or donate money. Making a difference, especially one you can see, feels good. That's why Sir Tom quit sending out checks for causes he was unfamiliar with. It was unfulfilling. 

Most people looking to make a difference try to tie their efforts into a cause near their heart. Think about Augie and Lynn Nieto again. Their drive to search for a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease started when Augie was crushed with the illness. It's not uncommon for the families of cancer victims to adopt cancer research as their pet cause. Maybe you know a battered or abused victim and want to fight for tougher laws, or have seen school kids sharing books in poor school districts and want to lead a book drive. If you are searching for a place to make a difference, the first things any good charity or wealth adviser will ask you are, "What have you seen that bothers you? What would you like to fix? What do you care about?" 

When you can answer those questions, I assure you that you'll be able to find related organizations in need of your time and talent, or money. 

With Purpose Success, part 84

Exactly why and how people choose to give is a complex equation. But it's clear that giving can be very, very good for you-so good for you, in fact, that through time philosophers and others have wondered if giving might not just be among the most selfish of all acts! De Tocqueville, for one, described philanthropy as "self-interest, rightly understood." The Chinese 

Zen master Chuang-Tzu as far back as the fourth century bc, argued that most philanthropy is meant to further one's personal, business, or social agenda. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (who viewed charity as demeaning to the recipient) worried that people of wealth exerted too much control over society through charity that mostly furthered their own interests. Scandals erupted in England in the 1950s over the tax- exempt status of mammoth charitable foundations run by families like the Wellcomes and Nuffields. 

Philosophical questions linger today. Would the public missions that philanthropists take on be better left to government? When Bill Gates directs his foundation to buy millions of computers for public libraries in poor neighborhoods is he being generous, or furthering his own business interests? Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr cynically summed up such concerns like this: "The effort to make voluntary charity solve the prob lems of a major social crisis results only in monumental hypocrisies, and tempts selfish people to regard themselves as unselfish." 

I readily concede that there is a selfish element to giving. Yet, to me, it seems silly to attack generous acts on that level, especially in the realm of 

Everymanthropy, where what you give most of is your time and energy.

So what if you get something back for your efforts? Doesn't that just lead you down the path of more giving? Embrace the rewards. It's OK. Generally, these rewards can be lumped into eight basic categories. You may experience all of them, or just one or two. At some level, though, when you give it's because you seek to gain one or more of the following eight benefits: 

Do the Right Thing. The highest level of giving is altruism, generally defined as an unselfish act for the welfare of others without regard for oneself. 

Altruism is a core teaching in most of the religions of the world. In the Jewish Torah and Christian Gospels, for example, there are many references to loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Yet, unfortunately, true altruism is extremely rare. Even people of faith will admit that in treating their neighbors as they would treat themselves they hope to gain everlasting benefits-like, say, entry into heaven, which is no trifle. 

Dwight Burlingame, professor of philanthropy at Indiana University, has said, "It is nearly impossible for someone to act with pure altruism." 

With Purpose Success, part 83

House number 1 was proceeding so fast that by the third day all eyes were on us. I was fascinated that our pace was being driven by an "old" man who said so very little. It became clear to me that Carter's leadership style did not involve barking at people or being critical, but making everybody on the site want to work to keep pace with him. 

Wade and Shalina Gibson, the young couple who with their three children were going to live in the house, worked with us. You could see it dawning on this low-income African-American couple that they were soon going to have their own house, and that it was being built by a former president! While on the site I liked to ask my fellow volunteers why they were taking part in the build. Almost everybody had the same answer: They didn't feel whole inside unless they took some time to help others. And for this group it wasn't about writing a check; it was about giving a chunk of their life. 

By twilight on the fourth day, we were laying sod and planting trees, then finally installing carpets and appliances, and at 3:30 pm on Friday- right on schedule-we were finished. President and Mrs. Carter brought us inside the house for a ceremony, and as our group of forty coworkers and new friends stood together in a circle holding hands it hit everyone pretty much at once that we had just done a wonderful thing. 

Exhausted and filthy but with full hearts, we huddled as President Carter said a prayer and turned to Wade and Shalina and gave them a white linen-covered Bible-the first book for their first house. The gesture was so powerful; the emotional intensity in the room went up a notch, if that was possible. "Do you know what Jesus did as a young man?" President Carter asked. "He was a carpenter; he worked with his hands. By allowing us to build your house, in a small way you've allowed us to do the work of the 

Lord." Although three hundred pounds of muscle, Wade started to cry like a baby, as did Shalina. Pretty soon we were all crying. It didn't even matter what particular religion any of us subscribed to-the feelings we all shared were deeply spiritual 

Before our group broke up President Carter urged all of us who are fortunate in life to never forget those who are not. He spoke of the blessing of giving, how the harder he and Mrs. Carter work the more blessed they feel by the results. 

I just find Carter's thinking on the subject so compelling that it bears frequent mention. Giving of himself, the president has told me, makes him stronger. "Every time we thought we were making a sacrifice for others, it has turned out to be one of our greatest blessings," he said. "In other words; we have gotten more out of it than we have put into it. 

You just try it, even if it's nothing more than going to a public hospital and rocking a baby for two hours a week. It's an expansion of life, an encounter with new people who are potentially friends. And so, it's a learning process, an exciting process that gives new and expanding life experiences." 

What We Get When We Give

With Purpose Success, part 82

For me giving is both routine, and it is not. That is, I'm always searching for the next way to contribute a little something-yet I have a few special causes or steady habits that I stay with year after year. This keeps the mix varied, my options their widest, and allows me to keep learning about new things and meeting new people. At this point in my life (I'm approaching sixty), I don't yet have as much time as I'd like for giving back. Not yet retired (of course I may never retire), my central focus is still my career and my family. But now that Maddy and I have just become empty nesters, we can envision expanding our volunteer efforts in our personal quests to find purpose by doing things for others. And in a few years, I think I'd like to cut back my workload to about 50 percent -providing even more time to do all sorts of new things with my time and with my life. Lots of us are in this phase of life, and it sure doesn't hurt to start thinking now about the possibilities for when that day arrives and you have a little-or, conceivably, quite a lot of-extra time. 

A Dear Old Friend-and Role Model 

I briefly mentioned my affection for Habitat for Humanity. Let me explain where it comes from. A few years ago I went to Houston to take part in Jimmy Carter's signature annual home-building project. The experience was unusual in ways that I would never have imagined. I'd gotten the idea to join the Habitat build through my meetings with President 

Carter in Atlanta, where he had invited me to help him brainstorm the topics for his The Virtues of Aging book. 

It was a steaming Sunday in early June when Maddy and I arrived alongside some five thousand other volunteers. I was naturally anxious; other than a bookshelf or two I had never built a thing with wood. 

During the orientation that day we learned that the plan was to build a hundred houses in just five days. There would be about forty people on each house. The rest-some one thousand volunteers-would cook meals, run errands, and haul trash. 

President Carter respectfully reminded everyone that he was there to work, not to socialize, and it soon became apparent that he meant it when he told the gathering, "I have a job to do." Like all of the volunteers, 

I had brought my own tools and paid a $250 fee to be part of this unusual experience. Each house had four adept crew leaders, ten to fifteen construction pros, around ten somewhat handy volunteers, and another ten or so folks who were like me-pretty much unsure which side of the hammer to hold. 

Anyway, we showed up at 6:30 am on Monday and Maddy and I were thrilled to learn that we'd be working on house number 1 with Jimmy and 

Rosalyn Carter. Our team gathered in a circle. President Carter offered a short prayer and we got to work. Early in the morning it was already so hot and humid, within an hour I felt like I was going to have a stroke. But 

I put my discomfort aside and joined the torrent of hammering, lifting, and nailing that had commenced. Remarkably, near sunset the entire frame was in place. I, however, was ready to go AWOL. It was now over a hundred degrees, and my arm ached from swinging a hammer all day. I glanced at the seventy-something former president. He was banging away like a pro, and I wondered how long he could keep it up. 

After another work break, I was spent. But the president was still pounding away. First thing the next morning, we had a lot of wood that needed cutting. But with only two power saws on the site, some would have to be cut with a handsaw. You guessed it-President Carter stepped up and had hand-cut twenty two-by-fours in the time it took me to cut ten. By 4:30 pm of the second day, the crew was spent. Nearly all my fingers were damaged and bleeding. Carter kept right on toiling, well past the dinner hour. 

With Purpose Success, part 81

You don't have to soullessly give on command at the office, or only support your place of worship. The nonprofit world teems with organizations that can use your donations of time or money for specific purposes that you care about. We're way past the days of large charitable organizations with mostly soup-kitchen roles to offer. Such volunteers are still needed, of course, and quite valuable. But you might get a lot more out of dreaming up a charity's new slogan or rescuing injured wildlife in the mountains-or using your business skills to make an organization run more efficiently. 

In the Dychtwald house we give in various ways, and much of it is so enjoyable that we don't think about what we're doing as a service to others. My wife, Maddy, contributes untold hours at school. She coordinates team dinners, supervises training sessions, and has driven a lot of other parents' kids along with our son to distant water polo matches. 

Maddy and I also mentor students learning to speak in public, and we judge school speaking tournaments. Some folks might call such gratis efforts a chore. The hours certainly can stack up. But we love watching all the kids interact and grow, and making new friends. We do it mainly for the joy it brings to us. 

The afterglow from helping a person or an organization that benefits from our contribution is a wonderful payoff. Although psychology and gerontology have been my fields of study, public speaking about these topics has been a big part of my livelihood. It's terrific and satisfying work. But it's not easy. There's a lot of preparation that goes into my presentations that no one but me sees. Still there are some groups that I just want to help at no charge because I'm interested in contributing to their mission or their future. For example, some years ago, I volunteered to help the Alzheimer's Association devise a new marketing strategy. That was work. But it gave me a great chance to make use of something I know a bit about for a cause that had captured my attention. I always keep some of my personal bandwidth in reserve for that kind of thing. Volunteering shakes me out of my rut and lets me express myself in ways that don't happen at the office. Everyone has skills and causes that speak to them. 

What are yours?

With Purpose Success, part 80

An interesting thing about Hunter is that when he got jazzed about philanthropy it reignited sparks in other parts of his life too. He redoubled efforts in his profit-minded investment firm, seeing the profits he would be earning there as a means to further his philanthropic ventures. "What I'm doing now is a bigger buzz than any business deal," Hunter says. "When we help farmers in Rwanda get a better price for their coffee, it's their success-not ours. We are just a catalyst. But you can see the results. When a farmer one year can barely feed himself and the next year he can feed himself and his family and take care of his kids because of something you did-that's a hell of a thing." 

Yes it is-a better-than-business buzz that Sir Tom playfully but earnestly chides Warren Buffett for missing out on. Are you missing out too? "Listen," Hunter says, "I'm not someone who wants to preach to anybody else and say you should do what I do. I just feel a bit sorry for those who don't give something back because they're missing out on the best fun of their life." 

Giving Isn't a Chore 

Forget for a moment that Sir Tom is a billionaire. The epiphany he experienced was real, and you can experience it too. You don't need boatloads of dollars. You just need time, desire, and compassion, and you may never have those things in greater abundance than you do right now. Perhaps your kids have moved out, or soon will. You are staring down the road at your empty-nest years, relieved of many family responsibilities. Retirement- or partial retirement-might beckon you. You are no doubt eager to explore the vast leisure opportunities before you. But you have the time and personal abilities to devote to a higher purpose too, and however you choose to give back you can be sure that in one way or another you'll get as much as you give. 

Don't undervalue the skills and connections that have come to you through your life experiences. Not everybody knows how to weld a pipe, run a procurement division, write a press release, raise money, give an injection, pilot a plane, interpret law, teach a class, organize a brainstorming meeting or fix a computer. Someone out there can benefit from what you know, and it can be a blast passing it on. Your personal skills and assets can help you launch out in new and exciting directions. Now is the time to step up and rethink how you want your life to function, and how you might fit service to others into it. You can choose how and when. You may choose to become a vacateer, mixing fun and adventure with personal fulfillment. Why not skip Club Med this year and sign up the whole family for a virtuous vacation with Habitat for Humanity? It's tough to connect with your kids these days, and you may just find that this kind of time is the most rewarding experience of your life. 

Giving isn't like a spoonful of castor oil, that notoriously ghastly cure- all that was so hard to swallow that TV's Little Rascals-Spanky, Buckwheat, 

Darla, Froggy, and the gang-were always comically scheming to avoid their dose. The horrible taste certainly loaned credibility to castor oil's perceived medicinal value. Anything that bad must be good for you, right? Well, too many people view giving the same way: the right thing to do, but painful. It doesn't have to be that way. 

With Purpose Success, part 79

Those pithy words hit Hunter like a bolt of lightning. After many long and intimate discussions with his wife Marion about what they might possibly do with the rest of their lives, they both began to feel energized by the idea of working as hard and as smart at giving their money away as they had worked to make it in the first place-for the betterment of others and their own fulfillment. 

To better understand the challenge in front of him, Sir Tom met in New York with the head of the Carnegie Foundation, Vartan Gregorian, who urged Hunter and his wife, Marion, to think about what they wanted to accomplish. Gregorian also gave Hunter a whole new way to think about his wealth. "He challenged me," Hunter says. "He said it wasn't really my money; I just held it in trust for the common good. That was a big shock for a Scotsman-being told my money wasn't actually mine." 

Hunter took those words to heart, though, and in 2007 announced that before he died he would give all of his money away. One of his principal benefactors so far has been the Scottish educational system, which in his view needs a dramatic overhaul to prepare students for draconian changes in the Scottish economy. Sir Tom became determined to introduce enterprise and entrepreneurship into school curriculums to prepare the nation's youth for the information-based world they would graduate to. He invested in pilot school programs that proved so successful that the government agreed to adopt and fund them. 

Hunter has other acclaimed philanthropic interests as well. For example, he is investing $100+ million in Africa through partnerships with the Clinton Foundation, UNICEF, and others. He mobilized popular support for aid to Africa and is committed to sparking substantial and sustainable economic growth there, beginning in Rwanda and Malawi, where governments have pledged their full support for his programs. 

Hunter's mission, in concert with the Clinton Foundation, is to develop programs that produce profits from agriculture and provide greater access for the poor to better nutrition and health care and clean water. In one year his efforts helped Rwandan farmers increase their crop yield by 240 percent. 

What's most fascinating and exemplary about Hunter is that while he has worked so hard to make his fortune, he doesn't simply want to give it away. Instead, he approaches all of his giving as an investment-not charity. 

He sets goals and demands measurable results, much like running a for-profit company. He says he would have cut off funding for his Scottish education initiatives had they not shown demonstrable progress. In this way, he embodies the new breed of twenty-first-century philanthropreneur, who seeks social change through targeted investments in people. 

You can be a philanthropreneur too-for as little as $25-through innovative organizations like kiva.org and microplace.com, which fund third world business start-ups. I'll talk more about those in chapter 7. 

With Purpose Success, part 78

In other words, if you'll indulge an American football metaphor, Buffett is the quarterback who drove his team to the goal line and then left the game, handing off responsibility for gaining the final yard-the toughest yard-to another teammate. Gates is no ordinary teammate, for sure. But Sir Tom's point is worth considering: Someone with unusual ability owes it to others to stay with the job until it is finished. In Hunter's view, making a fortune is the easy part; distributing it for maximum good (getting over the goal line, to complete the football metaphor) is the real challenge. "I really believe there's nothing that you can't solve with the right brain power," says Hunter. "I would love to get Warren Buffet's brain engaged in some of these challenges. And, by the way, he would also get so much out of it." 

Taking on Goliath comes naturally to the direct and enthusiastic Hunter, forty-seven, who enjoys playing drums with a local rock band and usually sports a "make poverty history" wrist band. His earliest role model was Wal-mart founder Sam Walton, and he later fashioned himself after a fellow countryman, Andrew Carnegie-whose name Hunter endearingly pronounces as only a Scot would, with the accent on the second syllable (Car-NAY-gee). 

Hunter is the son of a working-class grocer from the Ayrshire mining village of New Cumnock, about an hour south of Glasgow. After a bitter miners' strike in 1984 his father's business failed, which proved to be a valuable early lesson for Hunter in the importance of becoming self- reliant. He was an average student. But he developed a knack for buying and selling things and after college he went to work for a newspaper that he audaciously offered to buy after being there just a few weeks. He was fired by the enraged owner. 

But Hunter found his mark soon enough, striking riches in the global athletic apparel business. His company grew into the U.K.'s top sports retailer before he sold it for $600 million. He was just thirty-seven at the time, and soon after selling the apparel company he opened a private investment firm called West Coast Capital, which provides seed money to entrepreneurs. By age forty-five, Sir Tom had become Scotland's first- and wealthiest-homegrown billionaire. 

It was around then that his personal journey from success to significance took wing, springing somewhat ironically from a strategy to shelter his wealth from taxes. Shortly after selling his company, he established the 

Hunter Foundation with no clear vision of what it might do other than keep the tax man out of his pockets. From this bit of self-interest, though, emerged a new worldview. Hunter began to transform from driven businessman fixated on lavish living into devoted, roll-up-your sleeves philanthropist. "When I became rich, I found I didn't have anything to do anymore, which was kind of scary," Hunter recalls, after selling his company. "And, of course, as my profile grew so did my mailbag. People would write me and ask if I could do this or that for their football team, or their church, or their hospital. Some of the letters really pulled at my heartstrings. So 

I'd send them a check. But then that was it. I didn't know if the money had made a difference. I didn't know if it was even real, and it wasn't fulfilling. Who would have imagined that giving out money would be so boring?" 

He began to research ways he might give that would have more meaning and satisfaction for him and came upon Andrew Carnegie's famous 

Gospel of Wealth, which states that "a man who dies rich, dies disgraced."

With Purpose Success, part 77

Some years, we've concluded that everything is going just fine, while others require serious discussion-maybe even an argument or two- before we can align our needs and commitments again. We also have practical discussions of what our relationship needs more of or less of. 

As our lives have unfolded, these "pauses" have focused on everything from our anxieties over the impending birth of each of our two children, a few work failures and humorous successes, the death of Maddy's dad, and most recently, how we intend to cope with becoming empty nesters and the painful financial reckoning that has seized the world. This annual ritual has proven a great way for us to stay connected, and when the moment comes when we face each other and say "I do," it never fails to help us remember the things that made us fall in love in the first place while allowing us to take notice of all the reasons we love each other still. 

We try not to make a big chore of these occasions and have found that the simpler we keep them, the more we can focus on each other and on the continually evolving purpose of our bond. From time to time, when people learn about our remarriage history, they ask us why we would do something as odd as that. We simply respond, "You should try it! We bet you'll be moved by the experience." 

Giving-It's Also about 

What You Get

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.

-Joseph Campbell 

In June 2006, Warren Buffett, the second richest person alive, pledged 85 percent of his personal fortune-$31 billion-to the Bill and Melinda 

Gates Foundation. The world of philanthropy had never seen anything like it, and Buffett was roundly applauded not just for his outsized generosity but his humility as well. He could have built himself a shrine in Dubai, or he could have established the world's largest foundation in his own name to live on forever as a monument to his riches. He could have pulled a Leona Helmsley and left $5 billion "for the care and welfare of dogs," or whatever his handpicked goals might be. But Buffett chose otherwise; he handed his money to a friend whom he trusted to more effectively distribute his life's accumulation. In the eyes of the world it was a singular act of selflessness, and a clarion call for others to follow his lead. 

So only a refreshingly honest and irascible Scotsman like Sir Thomas Hunter, a self-made billionaire philanthropist himself, could see Buffett's largesse as anything less than magnanimous. Buffett, argues Hunter, may have taken the easy way out. "If you've been clever enough to make $31 billion, you're wired differently from 99 percent of the population," 

Hunter explained to me. "And I would love to have your thinking in trying to solve the world's seemingly intractable problems." 

With Purpose Success, part 76

In fact, Maddy and I have found that to make our marriage work, we have to continually bring "purpose" to this relationship, just as we've been discussing with regards to work, or charitable involvements. I've come to notice that for so many people, their marriage can simply get lost within the pushes, pulls, and pressures of their everyday lives. It appears that many marriages wrongly assume that automatic pilot will keep things in place. I truly don't think it happens that way for most of us. In fact, I'm convinced that just as a garden regularly needs replanting or a business may need continual infusions of investment capital, our marriages also need to be refreshed-even rebooted-on a regular basis. There are lots of relatively easy activities that can help to refresh our romance: simple acts of kindness during a stressful period, an unexpected gift, a playful dinner for two-and so on. 

However, one of the key ways that we repeatedly remind ourselves of the sacredness of our bond is by getting remarried every year-again and again. Yes, that's right. Maddy and I have gotten remarried every year on or near our anniversary for twenty-five years-and counting. When we originally married, on Thanksgiving in 1983, we had such a great time at the ceremony and on our honeymoon that I asked Maddy if she'd consider remarrying me every year. And, to add a bit of spice to this ritual, we set the rules that we would do so in a different religion and in a different location each year. 

We haven't missed a year yet, and so far, we've been remarried in a castle in Bath, England, by an Anglican priest; in a Hopi ceremony in 

Sedona, Arizona; and at Marie Antoinette's Chapel of Love in Versailles, France. We've been married by the skiing judge of Vail on the high slopes of Vail mountain; in a tai chi ceremony (followed by a nude soak in the mineral hot springs) at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California; by a tribal chief and his toddler grandchildren in a Navajo ceremony in Tucson, Arizona; and by the ship's captain while cruising through the Sea of Cambodia off the coast of Thailand. We've recited our vows in Grace Church in Greenwich Village; in a Buddhist ceremony in Berkeley, California; in a Mayan wedding at the top of the Chichen Itza pyramid in the Yucatan; and, of course, at the Chapel of Love in Las Vegas (and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I was dressed in a white Elvis jumpsuit with red trim-gold medallion and all). We've even been "married" twice by our children-once in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and a few years later on a secluded beach on the remote island of Anegada in the British Virgin 

Islands.

We also had our kids perform a formal remarriage ceremony for my parents in celebration of their sixtieth anniversary at our home in California. 

When my dad strolled down the aisle in his white dinner jacket arm in arm with my beaming mom and then our kids launched into the service that they had written together, it was an incredibly powerful moment in all of our lives-for every reason you can think of. 

For Maddy and me, getting remarried each year is definitely a lot of fun. But we also have found that these occasions are like valuable sanctuaries when we can look critically at the year that just passed and openly discuss what went wrong and what went right. These moments have become punctuation points in our relationship when we can stop the train, take a deep breath, and rechart our course. When I was younger, I believed that the nouns and verbs of our lives were what mattered most. 

Maddy and I have both come to appreciate the special importance of the punctuation points! 

With Purpose Success, part 75

People like Michelle Mundy, Mark Goldstein, and Gerald Chertavian have enormous impact, and so could you by finding a group like theirs, or starting one, and coaching someone who might benefit from your interests, experiences, or particular set of skills. And as each of them points out-you'll benefit too from fresh perspectives that can only come from people who are not part of your age or economic or ethnic demographics. 

The Win-Win 

I've described mentoring as a two-way street, and it really is. You get as much as you give. I recall a project decades ago when I was asked to teach a group of elders how to take better care of their health. I would engage them in yoga and meditation for a while, and afterward we'd just sit and talk. These elders loved the time they spent regaling each other-and me-with tales from their younger days. It was a joy for them to voice their memories. 

The strange thing was that the more I indulged them the more I found myself enraptured by what they had to say. I often felt that what they had to say to me was far more interesting than what I had been teaching them. They had so much stored knowledge. When I got beneath the surface-to their stories and insights, and the moments that had changed their lives-there was so much for me to learn from them. 

Experiences like that are what propelled me into the aging field.

Today we have a society groping for wisdom and guidance, as illustrated by the explosion of self-help books and self-appointed media gurus. 

Yet it may be the person living in the apartment next door who has the answers you really need. By not seeking that person out; by not setting up mechanisms for that kind of exchange, collectively we're letting some of the greatest wealth of our time go to waste. Meanwhile, as individuals we're failing to explore a gold mine of potentially transforming yet-to-be relationships. 

A Confession 

OK, so even though the title of this chapter suggests that our marriages might not be the most important relationship in our lives, the truth of it is-in mine it is. That might be the case for you too, if you are married or have a longtime partner. The title is not to be taken literally. I'm just saying you need to shake things up and keep pursuing other relationships even as you take care of this paramount one. Over the long haul, there's no question that my connection with my wife, Maddy, ultimately towers over all other relationships in my life. But this special quarter- century love affair doesn't always just "fall into place," and there are times when we're ready to strangle each other or when it feels as though the other activities of our lives have formed jungle vines that threaten to cover-or even bury-our connection. 

With Purpose Success, part 74

These kinds of transitions from the for-profit world to the nonprofit world are becoming common and have immense value. In Mark's case, the skills and knowledge he brought to his faith-based consulting wouldn't necessarily strike anyone on Madison Avenue as earth-shattering. But within this particular nonprofit sector they just didn't have his level of sophistication. What he brings to them is enormously valuable, and 

Mark's profound sense of contribution provides incalculable satisfaction.

Civic Programs. Nondenominational mentor programs also abound.

Again, they tend to have a strong focus on youth and fall under a national organization like the Foster Grandparent Program (www.seniorcorps. org), Boy Scouts of America (www.scouting.org), Girls Scouts of the 

USA (www.girlscouts.org), Girls Inc. (www.girlsinc.org), National Black Child Development Institute (www.nbcdi.org), Kids and the Power of 

Work (www.kapow.com) and YMCA of the USA (www.ymca.net). The central aim of these types of programs is to impart skills that will help kids throughout their life. 

There are also many locally operated nonprofit mentor programs run by a highly energized founder, which makes them fun to work for if you are a volunteer. The key is matching your passion with the right organization. 

Helping Inner-City Youth 

A longtime supporter and mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters, Gerald Chertavian wanted to step up his service commitment after striking it rich during the dot-com mania in the late 1990s. He never forgot the essays he wrote to get into Harvard Business School, where he later graduated with honors. He had espoused on the need to teach low-income young adults basic business skills. "So I decided it was time to make good on those essays," he says. 

Chertavian, forty-two, grew up in working-class Lowell, Massachusetts but enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street before starting a software development company that, when sold in 1999, put $27 million in his pocket. Long active in Big Brothers Big Sisters, he turned his thoughts to the four million young adults aged eighteen to twenty-four who, he says, are disconnected from society because they've never been given a chance. "That's totally unacceptable," says Chertavian. "This is a solvable problem." 

In 2000, he launched Year Up, a nonprofit that gives disadvantaged young adults one year of training in what Chertavian calls ABC: attitude, behavior, and communications. This interpersonal training is complemented with technical training, usually in computers. Students are paid a stipend of $180 a week and get docked if they're late for class. Some 85 percent find meaningful work directly out of his program; 60 percent of those who enroll have been referred by former students. 

Wilfredo Pena came to the States from El Salvador as a teen refugee, went through the Year Up drill, and found work in the back office at Fidelity 

Investments. "He's now finishing college and has bought a house," says Chertavian. "He's living the American dream." 

Year Up now has seventy employees and an annual budget of $13 mil lion. It operates in four cities and graduates five hundred a year. Chertavian, who just began taking a salary at the insistence of his board, is now raising $18 million to expand into four more cities. "This is incredibly satisfying to me," he says. "I have a real desire to mentor and see other people reach their potential. I'm so blessed. I get to find meaning in what 

I do every single day."

With Purpose Success, part 73

Program (www.seniorcorps.org). Senior companions serve adults who need assistance to live independently. They offer companionship, assist with simple chores, and provide transportation. Generally, senior companions are sixty or over and must commit to at least fifteen hours each week. Some training and expense reimbursement is available. But the real benefit to the volunteer is the joy of helping others. 

Here's John Glenn on the subject of retirees giving back: "When I was in space the second time, I was seventy-seven. When I came back I heard from every old folks' organization in the United States. Most of them were just congratulatory things but some of them wanted advice, and my best advice is, I think you do better when you wake up every morning with something you're looking forward to, something productive. Older adults sometimes just sit and do nothing, and I think that's the worst thing they can do. They've had a lifetime of experience. They've had education. They've had on-the-job training. They've been business executives. 

They've been farmers. They spend a lifetime learning how to do these things. I don't think it has to end. At the least we can have people who take these experiences and use them to mentor young people, advising and counseling them so that maybe they don't have to make some of the same mistakes we made in getting through our own lives. "A mentor gets a lot of satisfaction. They're doing something constructive, so they feel good about that, and when they see the results with the young people they're working with it's very, very rewarding. 

Also, they have a feeling that their own experiences aren't just ending because they're old. They're able to sort of provide a new base through their own experience; they provide a new base for a young person to start from and that gives you a great deal of satisfaction." 

Faith-based programs. Religious organizations account for 43 percent of all volunteers who mentor youngsters and thus are a major force in this movement. Much of their effort centers on spreading their philosophy and reinforcing their values. These can be gratifying outlets for folks who share the same religious zeal as the organization. 

Some years ago one of my former executives at Age Wave, Mark Gold- stein, rediscovered his faith. Mark is a terrific public speaker with a deep understanding of how to craft marketing plans to appeal to maturing boomers. But his life changed after his mother's death. He began attending temple more regularly and started requesting private visits with his rabbi. While attending these sessions, he couldn't help but notice that the services and programs seemed to be out of touch with the middle-aged men and women in the community. One day he was asked to speak at a gathering of Jewish leaders, and he talked about the fact that many boomers were turned off by organized religion and how congregations might approach this generation to reengage their faith. The audience loved him, and now he spends most of his time counseling Jewish leaders on how to better appeal to a new generation of congregants. He has become a marketing guru for a nonprofit sector, all based on the knowledge and skills he learned during the course of his primary career. 

With Purpose Success, part 72

Sounds pretty darn easy, doesn't it? If you still have doubts, take this fifteen-question "mentor quiz" designed by Peer Resources. Award 5 points if your answer is yes; 2 points if your answer is sometimes; and 1 point if your answer is no: ___Do you know what it's like to have worries, frustrations, and concerns about your work? ___ Do people seek you out to talk about their worries, frustrations, and concerns? ___Is the amount of time you spend listening significantly greater than the amount you spend talking? ___ Has anyone ever helped you uncover a feeling or talent that, before then, you hadn't recognized in yourself? ___ Has anyone ever inspired you with a famous quote that influenced your thinking or behavior, and that you have since passed on to others? ___ Has anyone ever prodded you to an "aha!" moment that enabled you to grasp the core of meaning of some event, or a deeper understanding of yourself or someone else? ___ Has anyone ever helped you gain knowledge about how things work, about how to get things done? ___ Has anyone ever encouraged you to find a way to deal with challenges in your life or work? ___Has there ever been anyone in your life who had a profound positive effect on you, but you didn't realize it until much later in your life? ___ Has someone in your life provided just the right help to you at just the right time? ___ Has anyone in your life helped you to grow and deepen your character, moral or ethical integrity, or gain a stronger commitment to your values? ___ Has anyone inspired you to shift the direction of your life in a constructive way? ___ Have you ever reached out to a person in need, and made a difference? ___ Do other people reach out to you when they have important life or career decisions? ___ Have you ever felt a profound change in your values and goals after pondering something you observed, read, or experienced? ___Your Mentor Score 

Now add them up. If you scored 60 to 75 points you not only have great potential to be a mentor but probably are also already acting in that capacity for one or more people. If you scored 45 to 59 points you are clearly a valued person in other people's lives and have what it takes to be a great mentor. If you scored 30 to 44 points you may have core mentoring strengths that likely will blossom through experience. If you scored below 29, you may still be right for this type of giving, but you may need some training. 

Your Mentoring Choices

The vast majority of community-based mentor programs are geared toward at-risk youth, those teens and preteens who come from poor and often split families and are most vulnerable to dropping out of school and getting into trouble and living a life of low expectations. Yet there are ample opportunities to mentor all kinds of kids through athletics, tutoring, and programs like Junior Achievement (www.ja.org). You can mentor youngsters with disabilities, those wishing to learn a hobby or play an instrument, or how to write or take up a cause. 

Mentoring opportunities extend beyond kids and the physical limitations imposed by geography-to virtual and professional communities of folks around the world with whom you share a value or experience. 

That might be your alumni association, a national civic group, your tribe, fellow ex-pats, activists, or coworkers. 

A woman I know who recently retired from her entertainment law practice is putting together a group of retired Hollywood cameramen, newscasters, screenwriters, producers, actors, and actresses-to travel to third world nations and teach teenagers all how to envision and produce world-class media. Imagine their impact? A troupe of highly skilled com munications professionals heads off to, oh, Kenya to share their skills with people who are just developing their ability to publish local newspapers and film documentaries-and who can really benefit from this type of knowledge. Being a mentor in this more flexible, modular world outside your own immediate community can be both satisfying and liberating. 

Whatever you try, give it time. The fit may not always be perfect at first and it will take time to work out the kinks. But don't be afraid to move on if something doesn't feel right after a few weeks or months. 

Mentoring should be an experience you enjoy. Give yourself permission to explore various options until the right connection falls into place. 

There are formal mentor programs geared toward seniors too, who may be struggling with finding new friends, a purpose, or a pastime and who may be encountering aging issues like immobility, medical care, loss of a spouse, financial difficulty, or loneliness. Such people can benefit from a surrogate child or grandchild. But often the best mentor for a senior is another senior who's already faced one or more of the same issues. One organization making such matches is the Senior Companion 

With Purpose Success, part 71

Mentoring programs come in many forms, and there is a place for you.

I guarantee it. "At any one point in time, I have three, or four, or five people that I am acting as a mentor for," says Deepak Chopra. "And 

I listen to them mostly. I listen to what's going on in their life, what's going on with their friendships, in their relationships. To be a mentor you need to understand what's going on in a person's life and you just want to have an internal dialogue that says, "How can I help? Because 

I really care."

When I asked Jill Godsey, marketing director of Big Brothers Big Sisters, how a person could tell if they were cut out to be a mentor, it was almost as though she didn't understand the question. "Do you like to watch movies?" she responded. "Do you like to play video games? Do you enjoy shooting hoops? Those are the kinds of things that our Big 

Brothers and Sisters do with their Little Brothers and Sisters. It is simple and fun, in addition to rewarding." 

With Purpose Success, part 70

Over the years Wilborn's grandmother relocated a few times, usually within an hour of Austin. Mundy worried that the sudden departures would cut her off from Wilborn, so she and the child agreed to stay in touch via letters and the telephone. Mundy occasionally drove to wherever the family was staying in order to take Wilborn out to lunch or shopping. 

After Wilborn's grandmother moved back to Austin while the girl was in fifth grade Mundy decided that the official mentor designation was too restrictive. For example, she was limited to visiting only during school hours and on school grounds. So she chose to take a more active role in Wilborn's life. 

Mundy began to take Wilborn shopping, to amusement parks and ball games, and out to eat. "I took her out to eat a lot because she never had that opportunity before," says Mundy. "Her family just didn't have the money. I'll never forget taking her to a restaurant. She had never had fajitas, which is unheard of for a fourteen-year-old Texan. When those fajitas came out sizzling in front of us, her eyes just got huge. It was such a simple pleasure for me to watch her experience something new that most of us take for granted." 

Mundy opened up Wilborn's life in more meaningful ways too. She not only encouraged her to stay in school as a teen, but also helped her study and earn grades that would get her into college. She showed Wilborn, who had never been out of Texas, that she could go anywhere she liked-and even helped her fill out the college applications and loan and grant documents. 

Now, when Wilborn visits Austin she stays at the Mundy home and babysits for Mundy's two children. She calls Mundy "Mama-Shell" (instead of her first name Michelle). "By the time I was in eighth grade she had taken the role of my mom," says Wilborn. "The mentor thing stopped. She became my mom. I needed school supplies, they were there; money for school clothes, it was there. If field trips came up I didn't have to worry about how I'd pay for them. She made sure I attended-if my grades were good. She made sure that I was in band and in basketball and active in school. It was awesome. When I introduce her to friends I say, 'This is my mom.' " Without Mundy, says Wilborn, "I'd probably be back in Austin doing nothing. I'd probably be a bum." 

Yet this has been a two-way street. Mundy says that Wilborn's response to her efforts has given her confidence in her ability to be a good mother. She values the exposure her own children have had to a child born with less. It has kept them grounded and forced Mundy to answer some tough questions about life and fairness and materialism. "Our relationship shook me out of my little bubble world," says Mundy. "I can't imagine my life without her. She exposed me to things outside my world and opened my eyes; she put things in perspective for me. I have learned that no matter how bad a situation is you can always see the good in it. 

She does. Little things in my world that I used to see as a big problem I now see much differently." 

Do You Have What It Takes?

With Purpose Success, part 69

Each school setting has its own vibe. A child could be highly successful and active in elementary school but lose that in a middle school that is four times larger. The issues only compound as kids work their way to college. "They may be going from a position of being well known and active and energetic and highly integrated socially to one where they know very few people," says Carr. "Now they're faced with a lot of older kids who might push them around or just make it more difficult for them to feel like they're part of things. By establishing a mentoring program to help with the transition you increase the likelihood that they're going to continue to be productive and get the grades that they need, and reduce the likelihood of social problems, particularly those associated with alcohol and drugs." 

Whether at work, at school, or in your family or community, I'll bet you have skills and experience that others can learn and benefit from- and which will help you form mutually beneficial connections to folks outside your generation. The National Mentoring Database (look them up at www.mentoring.org) lists 4,100 organizations that specifically support youth mentoring programs. It is estimated that some three million adults in the United States have formal one-to-one relationships with kids who are not their own, and in polls virtually every last one of them say they would recommend to their friends that they become a mentor. These relationships last, on average, for nine months but many go on for years- and keep enriching all the parties involved. They need your help. 

Making a Lifetime Friend 

Michelle Mundy, thirty-eight, was in her first job in the advertising department at Texas Monthly, a magazine, back in 1992 when her employer decided to partner with Communities in Schools, a national mentoring organization. Mundy, who lives in Austin, Texas, thought it would be a good way to give something back. So she signed up to mentor a bright- eyed five-year-old with absentee parents, Angela Wilborn, who was being raised by her grandmother, and the arrangement flowered into a full- fledged friendship of seventeen years-and counting. "I will never forget our first meeting," says Mundy, who was just twenty-two at the time. "This little kindergartner had the biggest smile. 

She was so excited to meet me, and that made me excited. There was definitely a connection for us right away." It doesn't always work like that, 

Mundy says. Years later, after her formal mentorship with Wilborn had ended, she tried again-twice-but never felt the same kind of connection. 

But with Wilborn it seemed natural, and the relationship ultimately brought meaning and perspective to both of their lives. With invaluable guidance from Mundy, Wilborn became the first in her family to graduate from college (with multiple job offers)-and Mundy was proud to be at the commencement with her own daughter at Johnson & Wales 

University in Providence, Rhode Island, to help celebrate.

It all started when Mundy began meeting Wilborn as a very young girl once a week to help with schoolwork, or eat lunch, or play jacks, or just listen. "She really looked forward to my visits," Mundy says of Wil born. "If I had a conflict and couldn't make it, it was a really big deal to her and that made it a big deal to me. I had to show up." Says Wilborn: "Every Friday she'd show up no matter what. She'd congratulate me on my grades or talk to me if I was in trouble. Later, she motivated me to stay in school. There were times I thought I'd quit. But she wouldn't let me." 

With Purpose Success, part 68

Then I met Maggie. We attended many of the same conferences, worked together, and often spoke from the same dais. She was a phenom known as "America's wrinkled radical." She was in her seventies, but she was beautiful, brilliant, and outrageous. She was in the media all the time at protests and sit-ins. She was on Saturday Night Live. She was a force, and she believed that what the aging field needed was a Paul Revere to ride in and sound the warning about how an aging population would change society. This rider would have to be young, she believed, so that young people might pay attention. 

Maggie thought I just might be that person. She encouraged me to aspire to the role of social revolutionary. I'm not sure I'll ever live up to her hopes for me, but the thought of being influential, a change agent in my area of expertise, has been my personal North Star for decades. It's what got me thinking about the enormous social, political, and economic impact of aging-related issues and making the field my life's purpose. It's probably the reason I'm writing this-my sixteenth-book. It's partly because of Maggie. She made me think big. She told me I could. She believed in me. 

The Coach Next Door

Mentors come in all shapes and sizes. Some like my parents are there for a lifetime; others-like Eugene Kleiner, for me-for just a day. Some are aligned with charitable groups like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (www.bgca.org); others are simply a friend, relative, neighbor, teacher, or employer with time, insights, wisdom, and guidance to share. Informal mentoring is by far the most common dynamic. But formal youth-oriented programs are rapidly expanding at schools and through national organizations like America's 

Promise-The Alliance for Youth (www.americaspromise.org), Save the 

Children (www.savethechildren.org), and Mentoring USA (www.mentoring.org). Meanwhile, executive-to-protege coaching programs are proliferating in the world's largest corporations, bringing even more visibility and momentum to the concept. 

Rey Carr is a Canadian who latched onto the mentoring movement early, and since 1975 has built his life around coaching others and helping others find coaches in every aspect of life. His firm Peer Resources (www.peer.ca) is the ultimate guide to understanding the movement and getting involved-whether you're seeking to be a mentor or looking to find one among your peers or superiors at work, school, or in the community. Carr's mission is to provide training, educational resources, and consultation to any person or organization that wants to establish or strengthen peer support, peer mediation, peer referral, peer education, peer coaching, and mentor programs in schools, universities, communities, and corporations. 

A scholar with numerous degrees, including a doctorate in philosophy, Carr loves horses, chocolate, cycling, and Mexican food. He believes strongly in the value of humor and laughter-and the value of coaching at all levels. "When you look at the most successful companies, they are the most likely to have a mentor program, and when you look at the least successful companies, they are least likely to have one," says Carr. 

Likewise, he says that student mentors provide invaluable service to other students by helping with a variety of things that they've learned through their own experiences. One big one is transition. 

With Purpose Success, part 67

One of my most profound mentoring experiences came several years after I had launched my consulting firm, Age Wave. I was struggling to find time to manage my staff and my investors and, frankly, not enjoying myself. On the one hand, I liked the idea of running a growing organization because it was a platform that would let me expand and have greater reach. But the headaches of hiring and firing, raising capital, and dealing with high-pressure investors didn't seem worth it. I expressed these feelings to an older woman in my field, Rose Kleiner, who urged me to speak with her husband, Eugene, about my business problems. At that time, I had never heard of Eugene Kleiner, but it turns out he knew a thing or two about business. He was the cofounder of Kleiner-Perkins, the highly acclaimed 

Silicon Valley venture capital firm that initially funded Amazon.com, America Online, Genentech, and other successful enterprises. In his seventies at the time, I primarily thought that he was a kindly elderly man and, perhaps, he'd have some sympathy for my plight. Little did I know that within a few hours he would emerge as my Obi-Wan Kenobe for that stage of my life. 

So I met with Eugene-for just a day. It was both the start and the finish of a beautifully successful mentorship. I told him about my struggle with shareholders and my frustrations with capitalism; that I could easily walk away from the venture capital world and have a lot more fun. 

He listened patiently for hours as I whined away. Then I finally asked him what he thought. "Well, Ken, if you walk away from your employees and your shareholders now, you'll be far more free and you may even have more fun. 

But for the rest of your life, you'll be known as a 'quitter.' On the other hand, if you stay and fight, even if you fail, you'll be known as a 'fighter' -and if you win you'll be known as a 'fighter and a winner,' " he casually reflected. Then he added, "One day you may want to hire people again or raise money for a new venture, and people will look back and judge you on how you handled this dilemma. They'll either see a quitter, or a fighter or a winner. Take your pick." 

Bam! I knew I didn't want to be a quitter. That one day changed my life, and Eugene Kleiner probably never knew what a significant influence he had been. That's the way it works sometimes. What he said probably sounded trivial or obvious to him. It wasn't to me. If you make yourself available for this kind of role in others' lives you will have a bigger impact than you imagine. 

Another extremely important coach in my life was Maggie Kuhn, founder of the 1970s activist group known as the Gray Panthers, which fought for nursing home reform and against all forms of age discrimination. 

She was one of my guiding lights for years when I first entered the aging field more than thirty-five years ago. Back then, there were few positive images of the elderly. The study of aging was primarily focused on loss, disease, and poverty. I wanted it also to be about wisdom, connections, longevity, and continuing contribution. I wasn't sure the world was ready for my positive spin and thought about switching to another field of study. 

With Purpose Success, part 66

Yet the term mentor didn't fully emerge in popular language until the eighteenth century French priest and educator Francois Fenelon put his own spin on the subject in The Adventures of Telemachus. This was a soaring work of fiction that told of Telemachus's many travels and the relationships he forged with various wizened elders, including his primary teacher, Mentor. Searching for his father, Telemachus embarks upon a series of adventures and encounters with extraordinary men who directly or obliquely provide him with important life lessons. He employs these lessons in his search and ultimately becomes reunited with his father. 

Telemachus is little known today. But when it was printed in 1699 it became an immediate success and was the most frequently published modern work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The book was most important for the political views it espoused. But it helped shape intellectual development for a hundred years, and because the mentoring theme was so dominant throughout the story it solidified and gave a name to the act of being a role model and life counselor. 

In more modern times, Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie has become a mentoring classic. In this heartwarming real-life tale, Albom tells of reconnecting with a favorite college professor he hadn't seen in sixteen years. After learning his old mentor was dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, Albom visits the man every Tuesday and soaks up his wisdom on love, work, marriage, envy, children, forgiveness, community, and aging. 

Over the course of my career, I've seen a handful of seminal events that have lifted our youth-obsessed culture's aging awareness, such as 

John Glenn's trip back into space at seventy-seven, George Foreman retaking the heavyweight boxing crown at fifty, Jessica Tandy winning her first Academy Award for her role in Driving Miss Daisy at seventy-nine. 

But in some ways, Tuesdays with Morrie trumps them all. A runaway best seller, it presented a view of mentoring that caught the attention of millions of readers. It's not a Hollywood story about conquest or guy gets girl or coming of age. It's about the passing of wisdom; about the primal need for elder guidance and to pass along all that one has learned. There is something powerful about the passing of knowledge and wisdom and perspective from one generation to the next. Albom's book nailed it-and hit a global nerve. 

I'll bet you've had a mentor, or life coach, at some point and possibly been one too, at least informally. My time helping students with public speaking is a form of life coaching, and in the coming years-when I'm more or less done mentoring my children (you're never really done, of course, but now that Maddy and I are empty nesters, they seem to need me less)-I envision devoting many more hours to that kind of thing. As 

I grow older and, hopefully, grow a bit wiser, passing on the fruit of my experiences to others is a role I'd really like to play. 

Certainly, I've had mentors. In my case, they've been informal relationships at different points in my life. I long ago learned to value the insights and wisdom of people who are older than me. I've sought them out from time to time, and when I've connected it has always helped me work through specific problems or set a general vision for my work or my life. 

With Purpose Success, part 65

It might even fill a void for the younger woman if she has lost her mother or grandmother. 

Numerous studies, including one from Johns Hopkins University, have shown that adults who interact regularly with children report increased well-being and a healthier view of life. One study found that preschoolers in regular contact with adults develop better social skills. 

Kids who grow up exposed to the aging process tend to see it as natural.

They are less fearful of aging and exhibit greater tolerance and respect for elders. 

These kinds of findings have moved many communities to begin proactively joining the young and old by organizing activities at so-called shared sites. They include programs like the one at Heritage Day Health Centers, in Columbus, Ohio, which operates a program for older adults in the same building as a childcare center sponsored by the YWCA. Both sponsors pool their resources and promote activities including finger painting, cooking, and volleyball where both young and old participate. The nonprofit 

Generations United (www.gu.org) has as its goal matching different-aged people in an educational setting so that they can explore areas of common ground while celebrating the richness of each generation. The group's core belief is that young people can relieve isolation, loneliness, and boredom among older adults while the adults, in turn, can be a positive role model. 

There are many other options and organizations that will help you connect with younger-or older-people in an exciting learning environment, including programs at most universities or through mentoring groups like 

Community in Schools (www.CISNET.org) and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (www.bbbsa.org). 

Mentor Your Way to Meaning 

No new connection, in my view, is more beneficial and personally fulfilling than the one that emerges when you invest a chunk of your time in someone else's future. What is a mentor? Generally, it is anyone who takes the time to share their life lessons with someone else who is typically younger and open to learning from the voice of experience. This is not just a guardian and her dependent or a teacher and her pupil, but any relationship where you are allowed to pass on a skill or your wisdom. 

Mentoring occurs in many places and has been with us for centuries.

It is one of the oldest forms of influence the world has ever known and has been traced to the ancient Greek storytellers. In his classic tales, The 

Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer tells of Odysseus, who asked his friend 

Mentor to look after and educate his son Telemachus while he fought in the Trojan War. 

With Purpose Success, part 64

Ten years later, Sabatini says, she remains in contact with every single volunteer from that trip. "I created relationships that are some of my longest term colleagues and friends," she says. One of those was the head of the local women's group in India, Bhavana Dee. She still lives in India, but Sabatini exchanges e-mail with her regularly. The two have coordinated service trips for other groups and visit each other. "We hang out, drink tea," says Sabatini. "She's one of those people I just have an easy connection with. Anytime she shows up she's welcome at my house for as long as she wants to stay." 

Reach across Generations 

In search of new and meaningful relationships, it can be enormously helpful to break out of the generational box where you more or less associate with and meet only people around your age. We have become an age-segregated society. The kids go to school all day and have carefully orchestrated extracurricular activities through the dinner hour, all with their peers. You spend ever longer hours at the office with no children or elders in sight. More older adults live in retirement villages or congregate in senior centers with people their age. And it's all exacerbated by our spread-out extended families, which only occasionally come together. 

When they do, family members sometimes find they have few touchstones. 

The result is that the old have too few relationships with the young; and the young do not understand their elders or the aging process. This distinctly modern condition has consequences. In the absence of understanding, myths and stereotypes flourish. Young and middle-aged people see elders as feeble and intransigent. Elders see younger generations as disrespectful and possibly even evil or dangerous. We all lose in the process because our perspectives are needlessly warped. 

Take a minute right now and think about the ten people you spend the most time with, other than your kids or parents. Is there anyone in the group who is more than ten years older or younger than you? How often do you even see a thirty-eight-year-old going out to dinner with their sixty-seven-year-old friend? Not often, right? This isn't the way things always were, nor is it the way things should be. Just a few generations ago, families lived together and worked on the farm, or at the family business. 

People were always dealing with and relating to children, young adults, heads of households, and grandparents. They saw births; they witnessed deaths. The old counseled the young and taught them valuable skills; the young challenged the old and offered new ideas. Everybody benefited. 

But today the tapestry of the generations has been pulled into threads.

Kids are preoccupied being kids, and with cell phones, the Internet, and Facebook-and parents often don't even know who the kids are talking to-or what they are talking about. Grandma and Grandpa may live four hundred miles away and be busy doing their own thing. You are left with your peers to ponder about how it all became so difficult to understand one another. 

Intergenerational ties can keep your life interesting and keep you connected while providing enormous emotional nourishment. Young people feel like they are being mentored; old people feel honored and that they have some way to offer their unique counsel. A thirty-two-yearold woman who befriends a sixty-three-year-old woman can learn about childrearing and marriage without competitive spirits getting in the way, like whose twelve-year-old is the smartest or best athlete. The two can simply enjoy their shared love of, say, spy thrillers, gardening, or investing. 

With Purpose Success, part 63

I would have eaten less cottage cheese and more ice cream.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day. 

I would never have bought ANYTHING just because it was practical/ wouldn't show soil/guaranteed to last a lifetime. 

When my child kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner." 

There would have been more I love yous more I'm sorrys   more I'm listenings   but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it ... look at it and really see it   try it on   live it   exhaust it   and never give that minute back until there was nothing left of it .. 

We can all learn something from Bombeck's observations about the value of relationships and experiences, and take the time and devote the energy to create our own special moments. 

Growing Close as a Vacateer 

Elisa Sabatini decided to seize every minute after hitting her middle forties.

She thought about the kinds of things that excite her, which include travel, cultural learning, and community service, and figured she was a good candidate to become what I call a vacateer-someone who goes on vacation to volunteer their time in the service of others. Through www.voluntours.org she signed up for her first trip, hoping to forge some friendships with people who share her passions. Sabatini, who is single and fifty-three years old, is now a veteran vacateer, and she remains close to many of those she met on three separate service trips over the past ten years. She cherishes the instant bond that people share when they take time out of their lives and pay their own expenses for the privilege of, say, working in fields or mixing cement as part of a project that will improve the lives of some of the poorest people on earth. 

Sabatini's first experience as a vacateer was a six-week trip to Asia, where she toured India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh with fifteen other volunteers. 

They worked with a local women's group that taught nutrition and health, and found housing and improved security for the residents of poor neighborhoods. "The experience we had there of looking at that culture and then looking at our own culture was really a compelling thing," she says. "I remember one of the guys on the trip said to me that he was so impressed to see that many of the issues in these little villages weren't so different from the issues that everybody deals with-loving your kids, putting food on the table, being sure that you've got a safe house for your children and a decent school in the neighborhood." 

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What is going to most likely emerge in the years to come is people reaching out and seeking to form their primary connections with friends-not family. And women likely will take the lead in this mature friendship revolution as we begin to say good-bye to the Noah's ark style of living, where there is one man for every woman and they stay together for life. As we age, there simply won't be enough men to go around because they don't live as long. Millions of women are already discovering that it can be as nourishing to share life's ups and downs with a network of close friends as with one spouse. A trip to any geographic area with a high concentration of retirees will reveal the emergence of energetic and attractive groups of older women, who go to the movies together, enjoy investing together, and who care for one another when a health problem arises. Increasing numbers of women will choose to live together with their friends la The Golden Girls, recapturing some of the communal spirit of their youth and blending it with the emotional and financial practicalities of their current lives. 

Plan Your Relationships

If you're like most people, you've probably spent hours agonizing over and planning the financial part of your later years. Modern culture dictates it. You are raised and led to believe that your top priority in life is to achieve financial freedom; to quit work as soon as is practical; and to spend the rest of your days doing whatever you like. You literally grow up and grow old asking, "How much is enough?" Wall Street was built on this obsession, and plenty of others have tapped into it for profit as well. Author Lee Eisenberg enjoyed success with his thoughtful book on retirement preparation, titled The Number. But your happiness depends on so many other things. Boiling it all down to money can be a colossal mistake. 

Living well is foremost about how you spend your hours, and who you spend them with. Sure, financial resources give you more options. 

But the real goal isn't money for money's sake-to keep score, as Augie 

Nieto came to realize. It's finding quality time, and you can't have quality time without others to share it. "The experience of separateness arouses anxiety," noted the philosopher Erich Fromm. "It is, indeed, the source of all anxiety." So along with all of your financial planning you might try a little relationship planning too. After all, growing old and lonely is no more fun than outliving your savings. 

Few have described the value of friends, relationships, and experiences better than Erma Bombeck, who penned these fabulous words: 

If I Had My Life To Live Over 

Someone asked me the other day if I had my life to live over, would 

I change anything.

My answer was no, but then I thought about it and changed my mind.

If I had my life to live over again, I would have talked less and lis tened more. 

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy and complaining about the shadow over my feet, I'd have cherished every minute of it and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was to be my only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. 

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. 

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. 

I would have eaten popcorn in the "good" living room and worried less about the dirt when you lit the fireplace. 

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. 

I would have burnt the pink candle that was sculptured like a rose before it melted in storage. 

I would have sat cross-legged on the lawn with my children and never worried about grass stains. 

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life. 

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

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Why is that? Harvard author and professor of public policy Robert Putnam documents this in his landmark book Bowling Alone, where he explains fifty years of growing isolation as the product of the mass penetration of TV sets into households followed by newer technologies like the personal computer and Internet. Putnam argues that we are so distracted by technology and life in general that we do not take the time to search for true friendship or nurture it where it has taken root. In our increasingly isolated world, the notion of friendship has become watered down. 

You may have folks to shop with and to exercise with. You have fishing pals, and hang out with people at work. But few of these relationships rise to the level of genuine friendship-people to whom you can bare your soul and without whom your life would be significantly less full. 

These kinds of relationships-whether there are two or ten-deserve your focus. "Companionship is only the matrix of friendship," wrote C. 

S. Lewis. "It is often called friendship, and many people when they speak of their friends mean only their companions. But this is not friendship in the sense I give to the word." 

Nurturing new relationships is especially critical as adults. Eventually your parents, your partner and your siblings and other relatives may move on or pass away. Close friends can replace them in your life. In any event, good friends fill most of your emotional needs and can contribute to your sense of meaning. Hindu teachings say that friendship provides fulfillment in such psychologically critical areas as affection, romance, brotherhood, protection, guidance, and intimacy. Marlene Rosenkoetter, dean of the school of nursing at the Medical College of Georgia, identifies these virtues of friendship as well: playing a role in someone's life, feeling loved, feeling good about yourself, and having a support group. 

We're moving into a world where friendship networks, which are not necessarily easy or natural for us to form, are of utmost importance. In earlier days you didn't really need to know how to make friends. You simply had them. They lived near you, sat next to you in church, or worked with you. You didn't often pick up stakes and move; so you naturally bonded with folks in the community over the common interests that put you near one another in the first place. The idea of someone, at age sixty-three, walking up to someone in an art class and saying, "Hi, my name is Claudia. What's yours?" and trying to jump-start a friendship that way is kind of new. But it's increasingly common and important. 

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This higher level of relating to those who matter the most is all part of speeding up as you reach the finish line. With time so dear, you come to realize that it just doesn't make any sense to lose a minute on trivial things or on trivial relationships. That's why I regard Nieto's marathon metaphor as so powerful. Look ahead to your finish line. You don't need to be ill to see it. You've probably got a bunch of good years left. But why not speed up anyway, and find and focus on the people and pursuits that really matter? 

Speeding up transformed Augie Nieto. He realized that before his illness he had been spending too much time building a shallow circle of acquaintances to fill out his life with activities and fun. What was missing, he concluded during his illness, were close relationships that would help him discover what he was all about and pursue new paths. He chose another metaphor to explain this idea to me: 

Think of performing on a stage with all the people in your life seated in the theater. Some are in the front row. Some are in the middle section, and others are seated way back. Those in the back row can barely see what's going on, and they are only modestly involved in your life. They can't see you sweat or wink or slip-or nail your lines. They may be interested, but in a detached and easily distracted way. Those in the middle rows have a slightly better feel for your performance. But you're still not making eye contact; there's much that they too miss. The folks in the front rows, on the other hand, see your every expression and do not miss a line. They pay close attention and practically live your performance with you. They may even feel the spittle from your mouth as you approach the front of the stage and passionately belt out your words. It is they you are performing for. They are the ones who really count. 

In life, Augie told me, focus on people in your front rows. "It's so easy to waste your time on the wrong people," he says. "Only when your time has grown short do you realize all of the lost opportunities. You could have spent your time with someone who really cares." 

One Good Woman-or Man 

If developing deep relationships and continually restocking the pool are so important, why is it so difficult? The Greek philosopher Diogenes spent his entire life searching for one good man, and by his account he never succeeded. Both Aristotle and Cicero considered a true friend among the most unusual of treasures. "The wish for friendship develops rapidly, but friendship does not," wrote Aristotle. "That such friendships are rare is natural . . . they need time and intimacy." 

Oh, yes. We have many acquaintances; the average number of "friends" that people claim in their lifetime numbers in the hundreds. But you cannot possibly have that many "meaningful" relationships of the sort that Augie Nieto has come to value. We routinely substitute the sweet nectar of deep and genuine friendship for the artificial flavor of passing acquaintances. We have filled our lives with a revolving door of folks who serve a purpose for a while but vanish as quickly as they appeared. 

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But rather than die, as he had intended, Nieto was hospitalized and fell into a strange and revealing coma. For several days he could not move a muscle or communicate in any way. Yet his mind was alert, and he could hear everything being said around him. As his family and close friends kept a bedside vigil, they tearfully talked of their love for him and their hope that he would revive. Nieto was moved by their expressions of love for him, even as he lay in this comatose state with, in the best-case scenario, nothing but physical challenges ahead. 

For the first time in his life he saw and felt that he was deeply loved by those closest to him regardless of his appearance, physical abilities, sexual prowess, business acumen, money, or influence. He reflected that his wonderful wife and kids and close friends seemed to love him unconditionally, which he had never suspected. This realization both liberated and empowered him-and helped him shake off the coma. And it ultimately totally reshaped his worldview. "I woke up and was able to accept my diagnosis," Nieto said, further reflecting that "your body is just an envelope. You and what you stand for are inside." Once he realized that, Nieto said, "I was no longer just reacting; I was able to act. With encouragement and support I was determined to make a difference-a big difference." 

We too often seek in ourselves and in our friends superficial qualities.

Yet appearances are not the root of meaningful relationships. Augie 

Nieto had to fall desperately ill to realize that. Perhaps you've reached some nadir in life too. Hopefully not. But if you have hit a snag let the example set by Nieto-or quite possibly someone you know, a neighbor, friend, or family member-serve to reinvigorate you and enliven your personal quest for purpose in the relationships around you. 

The wisdom that Nieto acquired through his illness proved of such ultimate value to him that he eventually grew to accept his multiplying physical limitations. Only through the lens of his illness was he able to see life clearly. "Here's a guy who defined himself by his physical body as well as his mind, and now his physical body is like the crate he was shipped in," his wife, Lynn, told me. "His focus is stronger now. He's not out doing the one-hour runs and the massive workouts. But he's spending that energy elsewhere, where it really counts." 

Lynn Nieto says her husband's illness, and the revelations it stirred, actually drew the two much closer together. "I know things about my husband that most people will never know about their spouse," she says. "I know the way his beard grows. I know how to shave him. I know how to care for him in a physical way that I cherish. It takes forever for us to get ready in the morning. But I don't find that it's important that I'm ready to go at 7:30 am I cherish the preciousness of each day." She says that "our marriage is stronger than it's ever been." Of course from time to time they disagree. "But there's a whole different thought process of how long you're going to stay mad," she says. "You ask yourself: How significant was that? Do I really want to pick that fight?" 

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It may seem a stretch to devote a chapter to new relationships in a book about moving from material success to personal significance. But finding purpose in one's adult years is about many things-finding the job or pursuit of your dreams, replanting your time and money-and also developing the richest and most meaningful connections of your life, and through that support network reaching for your full potential. 

Augie's Quest 

Let me return now to the story of Augie Nieto. He found his purpose in life when there wasn't much time left for him to pursue it. But that's not all he found. With his days running short, he thought deeply about what matters most-and through his reflections gained a high degree of wisdom about many things. I was especially taken by his life-as-amarathon metaphor. Nieto had been an avid runner before his illness; he competed in twenty-one marathons in all. He knew what he was talking about. His observation that in life, as in a long foot race, you speed up when you see the finish line is one of the most important things I've ever heard. 

Am I making too much of his observation? I don't think so. As I've said, most people live their life like a climb up a mountain: The way up is exhilarating; the way down-the back side of life-is a long period of retreat and withdrawal. Nieto's vision is so much more hopeful. It holds the promise of ramping up your ambitions and contributions later in life, not withdrawing, and through a kind of existential time warp actually doing-and becoming-more as you get older, and in far less time. 

Knowing his days are numbered has given Nieto renewed momentum and changed his path. "I redefined normal," he told me. As he went from 

Ferrari to wheelchair, athleticism to near total paralysis, he clarified and accelerated his goals; he wiped away trivialities and focused on what was important to him and brought meaning to his life. "I didn't mourn what 

I couldn't do; I celebrated what I could do."

His quest for an ALS cure was just one of those things, and there he's already established a powerful global legacy. With his business savvy and turbo-charged fund-raising, Nieto has expedited potential breakthroughs for many years to come. His ultimate legacy in this area may well be having established a model for networked collaboration and funding of scientific research that will be duplicated in the quest for many other cures. 

But along with his drive to make a difference in the world of science and medicine, he came to focus on something more personal-his connections to other people and especially with his wife Lynn. A strapping former football player and inventive and charismatic marketer, Nieto had always derived a large portion of his self-worth from being physically fit, charming, handsome, smart, savvy, and able to provide his family with a comfortable lifestyle. Without those attributes, he believed, he would be nothing; he would cease to be important even to the people around him every day. "I wondered 'Why me? What did I do to deserve this?' " Nieto recalled thinking after being diagnosed with ALS. His self-esteem devolved into self-pity, and he fell into despair and then one day purposely took an overdose of his medication. 

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By the time you reach forty-six or fifty-two or sixty-six even most marriages could benefit from some refreshing. I have my own special way of doing that, which I'll share near the end of this chapter. For now, let me just say that if you put in the time it'll be worth it. Make the call. Send the e-mail. Extend the invite. You might be surprised at how rewarding it can be to reinvigorate not just your marriage but also other family ties and old friendships. Bonds forged many years ago are truly special. At one time, these were dear people in your life. Whatever happened since then doesn't matter. If your house was on fire it's their pictures and the mementos of them that you would grab. 

But as important as those relationships are-especially the one you share with your spouse-it is the not-yet-made relationship that has the power to be most transforming. With family and old friends you enjoy familiarity, and that may foster comfort and trust. These are vital relationships. 

Take especially good care of them. But don't stop there. Don't be content with the relationships you already have because there is no promise greater than the one built into a new encounter. 

New relationships come with uncertainty-but also excitement. They arouse your curiosity and sense of exploration. It is critical that you keep surrounding yourself with fun and interesting people who can help you discover and be what you want to be. I'm not saying your spouse and family can't help. Your husband or wife knows you best. Their understanding is definitely important. But nurturing and restocking your network of close friends is critical to the self-discovery and personal growth that will lead you down the road of higher purpose in the years ahead. 

In the past few decades we have become increasingly isolated. Studies show that the number of confidants each of us can truthfully claim has dwindled from four to just one or two. That's not enough. Too few friends is limiting. You have the capacity to handle more without sacrificing anything in your marriage and family, and each one of your close relationships will fill you up in unforeseen ways. You owe it to yourself to keep opening doors. This isn't a popularity contest. You're not trying to register the most "friends" on Facebook. So don't overdo it. Experts say that four is a good start. Six or eight is better. Ten could stretch you too thin. 

Great Partners, Great Results

How important are close relationships? History is full of examples of greatness that was only achieved through partnership-Laurel and 

Hardy, Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, Lucy and Ricky, Rogers and Hammerstein, Lennon and McCartney, Ginger and Fred, Gates and 

Allen, Ben and Jerry, Antony and Cleopatra, Lewis and Clark, Bonnie and Clyde, Pocahontas and John Smith, Roosevelt and Churchill. 

These partnerships all surpassed what any of the individuals could have achieved on their own. "If we are together nothing is impossible. 

If we are divided all will fail," noted Winston Churchill. This human condition may be why so many important decisions in society are left to groups. For example, our laws are made by hundreds of politicians who were elected by millions of people. The Supreme Court rules by committee, as do juries. Central banks from the United States to Europe to Asia set interest rates via a majority vote. "Every prince needs allies," said Italian 

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, "and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs." 

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It's ironic that only when he had so little time left did Nieto realize what was truly most important in life. He sees what he has been able to accomplish on the ALS front, and it is so much more satisfying than the material successes he enjoyed before. If Nieto could speak clearly now I think he'd say to everyone in shouting distance that you should live your life with urgency, as though your time is running short. Find a dream and pursue it-with determination and passion. 

Your Marriage Is NOT the Most Important 

Relationship in Your Life 

In the drought and heat of Berkeley, California, in the summer of 1991 fires ravaged the hillsides. Berkeley is a quirky and wonderful place where 

I lived from my mid-twenties to my late thirties. It's a college town filled with lots of interesting characters who are among the most highly educated and wealthiest people in the world. In their homes they have all the latest high-priced technology as well as exquisite handmade and restored antique furniture. These people are extraordinarily well traveled, and many of their homes are decorated with Persian rugs, rare paintings, and exotic tribal art. Yet as flames swept through the area, and thousands of residents were given about three hours to pack up and evacuate, almost all of these beautiful and precious possessions were left behind. 

I love this story because three hours is plenty of time to grab a few paintings or roll up a rug. Yet three hours is not so much time that you can think for a while or make a second trip. Those who were fleeing had just one shot, and they had to make up their minds quickly; they had to decide what they would get from their home and stuff into their SUV on their way out of town. Their gadgets and their fancy and expensive stuff didn't make the cut. 

What do you think they took? What would you take? In almost every case, the things piled into their vehicles were family pictures and souvenirs of interesting moments in their life. Photos and videos. These were their most cherished belongings. At the end of the day, isn't it the experiences we have, and our memories of them, that are our most valued possessions? I believe this episode offers a beautiful illustration of the importance of the close relationships and moving experiences that you have throughout your life. It is the people you have known and the special moments that you've shared with them that matter; not things. Does someone have to burn down the house for you to realize that? 

Our lives can be busy. Making a living, raising kids, and keeping the household humming require tons of energy. Sadly, it's natural for relationships, even your closest ones, to slip to the back burner. How often do you call your parents or grown children? Have you lost track of a sister or a brother? What about nieces and nephews, cousins, a college roommate, or your Best Friend Forever from high school? 

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He dedicated himself to finding a cure for ALS, even though with his rapidly deteriorating condition he fully understood that such a thing was not likely in his lifetime. His new goal, he told me, was to create and endow a businesslike operation that would become self-funding and stay on ALS research long after he had passed-or until a cure was found. 

I'm happy to report that just such an operation is now in place, thanks to "Augie's Quest," which he describes in detail in his 2007 book by the same title. 

As I was formulating my own thoughts for this book, I spoke at length with Augie in November 2007, when he had become wheelchair bound and ALS had rendered his speech almost unintelligible. He was a gentleman and took great pains to carefully enunciate so that I would understand his words. Virtually every sentence he uttered was a gem, and 

I could hardly believe the extent to which he had turned away from physicality and materialism and toward this larger more spiritual purpose. It occurred to me that this previously frisky caterpillar was transforming himself into a soaring butterfly right before my eyes. "At first, I had no idea what ALS was," Nieto confessed. "It's known as Lou Gehrig's disease. But Lou Gehrig died a long time ago. A lot of people don't remember him." Believing that the disease needed a face in order to attract funding for research, this very proud man went public with an illness that was killing him an inch at a time and robbing him of his ability to perform the simplest tasks, like walking, bathing, or feeding himself. He pledged much of his personal wealth to the cause as well and took every opportunity to speak on the subject and draw attention to the illness. 

Because of his entrepreneurial and team-building talents, Augie approached the usually disjointed and tedious process of global medical discovery with an intensity and ingenuity previously unseen. In a short time, Augie's Quest has been producing meaningful results, yielding clues from collaborative teams of researchers worldwide that should help to more quickly identify possible treatments. He has set in motion incentives, networks, and funding mechanisms that are literally speeding up the scientific process while ensuring that it will not slow down even after he's gone. This singular mission has brought great purpose to his life at a most difficult time. It's also taught him valuable lessons about not wasting time and living life with urgency, lessons that he freely passes on to those who will listen. "When you're healthy, life is like a marathon with no end in sight," he told me. "You can't see the finish line, so you slow down and pace yourself. But when the finish line is in view, you speed up because there is no point in saving your energy. This disease has taught me to run faster. I can see my finish line now, and so I run at a fuller tilt."