I got asked today what I am most proud of and I wasn’t able
to give a great answer on the spot. What I said was that I am proud of my
ability to build relationships. I was told that my answer was too corporate and
not personal enough. So I came home and I did some thinking and this is what I
came up with:
I am most proud of the fact that I do not have a bucket
list. I choose to treat every experience in my life as an opportunity to
achieve deeper connections with humanity and the world. To truly relate one
must be fully open to be changed and altered by experience. When we live
according to a list we are more concerned with checking things off the list
than we are with being open to the change that the experience causes within us.
In failing to relate the world becomes a giant fun fair where the candy floss
has more air than substance.
I have a friend who has listed, “living with a family in
India” on his bucket list; one thing that he needs to accomplish before he
dies. People are not tourist attractions. If you live with people and relate to
them profoundly it will change you! Everything on your list might change if you
are open to the experiences that life throws at you. You might fall in love in
India, you might decide to stay, you might never want to go back, but as long
as it is something to endure to achieve a glorious checkmark on your list you
will fail to experience what it means to live and connect with people.
If you saw the movie “The Bucket List” what you might
remember is that for the main character it was easier to jump out of airplanes,
hunt tigers and drive motorcycles than it was to walk up to his estranged
daughter’s front door, ring the doorbell and say “I’m sorry”.
I’m most proud of the fact that I have rung that doorbell
more times than I care to remember and had my heart broken too many times to
count but I choose to connect profoundly with people and I choose to face the
shadow side of my relationships with others and myself. It is better to mend a
broken heart than it is to polish a perfect stone. Relating is hard work for
me, possibly for everyone, but I only have my own experience to judge that.
I have jumped out of airplanes and climbed mountains and I
have found that it is harder to face the reality of relating than it is to run
a marathon. Life, for me, is not an endurance test.
This doesn’t stop me from having fun. I love to ski, to
hike, to play classical guitar, listen to Opera, to play pirates with my nieces
and nephews, deep intellectual debates and reading Russian novels. I love to
travel and see new places but these are not the aims of my life. If I go
nowhere else, if I never hear or play music again, or read another book, it
will be enough to have risked loving and risked being loved.
So perhaps my answer is still too corporate, but I am most
proud of my ability to build and maintain relationship and, for me, that is a
deeply personal answer.
