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.