Many people who’ve read my book, Meaningful: The story of ideas that fly, have said that the introduction impacted them the most. I’d never have written that introduction without a generous nudge from a trusted friend, who read the manuscript. He reminded me that some people might only read the first page.
‘Tell them what they need to know on page one,’ he said.
Here’s an updated version of what I wrote
EVERY DAY COUNTS
Our deepest fear is that we will run out of places to hide - that one day there will be no boss who allows us to remain invisible and no political or economic circumstance that stops us from doing the most important work of our lives. We are the ultimate paradox. There are only two things we want - we want to hide and we want to be seen.
I know you’re scared that your idea might not work.
I know you worry about being wrong, far more than you celebrate the things you get right.
I know you waste time being anxious that you won’t measure up to someone else’s metric of success.
I know that some days you say one thing and do another.
Why else would the same New Year’s resolutions happen every new year?
I know you are afraid people will laugh at you.
I know that every day you walk a tightrope between getting over these fears and creating an impact.
I know you’re ‘this close’ to a breakthrough.
I wrestle with these fears, too. Every single day.
On my best days, I put away my nervous laughter, the emails I must answer and my to-do list, and I do the things I don’t have the courage to do on the days I want to hide. The things that matter—the kind of things I wish my brother had had a chance to do.
My brother never posted a photo on Facebook or created an iTunes playlist. He never booked a room on Airbnb or made a call from an iPhone. He never got to know what an app was and how magical the Internet would be. He will never walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or eat a moon pie in Gramercy Park. And he won’t be there to help his granddaughter blow out the candle on her cake when she turns one.
Johnny was the kid who wouldn’t come in from playing outside until the very last warning. He lit up any room just by walking into it. Like the Pied Piper, he had trails of friends who followed him and women who adored him (yes, he was impossibly good-looking, too). He was funny and magnetic and caring and genuine, and he died right on the cusp of a brand-new millennium, with a lot of dreams left inside him because he didn’t understand that there was no reason to wait for tomorrow to be better - that he didn’t need to hide. He was the most magnificent person who had everything he needed, and he didn’t know it.
Every day counts.
The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who they are and to reflect that back to them. When we help people to become more of who they want to be, to reclaim some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.
I see you.
What’s the one thing your someone needs to hear? Tell them.
So important and precious! “The two most important things we can do are to allow ourselves to be seen AND to really see others. The greatest gift you can give a person is to see who they are and to reflect that back to them. When we help people to become more of who they want to be, to reclaim some of the permission they deny themselves, we are doing our best, most meaningful work.” Thank you!
Love LOVE how you write about and tell us about your brother. The first paragraph being the things he never did, the second paragraph about all the things he was. Beautiful. I'm sure he'll be blushing.