What I want to know is this: how do you intend to use your life?"
I wasn't sure what she meant and asked, "You mean in terms of what I'm going to make of my career?" "No." "Do you mean in terms of the books I may write?" "No."
I thought something was lost in translation. What did she mean?"Ken, how will you use your life?" she repeated.
Remember, I was just twenty-seven. My mind was stuck in concerns over my emerging career, celebrity, and hopes for a family one day. How would I use my life? I was going to make some money and have a couple of kids, I said to myself. Yet I knew she was getting at something deep, and at that time the meaning of her question didn't sink in. I fumbled for an answer and ended up telling her that I wasn't sure; I'd have to see where my career took me. We finished our lunch and then parted ways, and I couldn't help but feel that I'd betrayed shallowness in my approach to life and that it had disheartened her. Her question-how will you use your life?-haunted me for many years.
With time I came to understand Dr. Mueller's point. I had one life to live. There might be fifty years of it or eighty or a hundred. But it's one life and it can have a higher purpose. In fact, it must have a higher purpose in order to be a life truly worth living. Only now, as I complete my sixth decade of life, do I fully grasp what Dr. Mueller was saying to me back in Copenhagen: How might I pursue my interests and career-and utilize whatever abilities I had-in a way that helped others and might redefine success for me, not in terms of how much money I make or how many books I sell, but by the way I bring meaning and purpose to everything
I do and the impact I have on others? That question looms before me still. And so I will ask you-how will you use your life? It's never too late to begin to figure out the answer.
Roll Up Your Sleeves
Significant acts are all around us, from ordinary people mentoring a child at school to Warren Buffett pledging $31 billion to the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, a charitable enterprise with the not-so-modest goal of wiping out disease around the world. The Gates Foundation is on the leading wave of new-style charities headed by "philanthropreneurs," who seek not just to alleviate pain and suffering in the world but also to make certifiable progress in destroying the root causes, and who roll up their sleeves and get involved. This movement is just now taking wing and promises to finally make a dent globally in problems like poor health, poverty, and illiteracy. It's the new thing in giving-generosity combined with personal involvement and linked to businesslike management and performance measures. You can be part of it too.
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