“And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .”  – Hebrews 13:16 

“Share everything.  Play fair.  Don’t hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.  Don’t take things that aren’t yours.  Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.  Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.  Live a balanced life – learn some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.  Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.”  Such simple yet profound wisdom from Robert Fulghum’s bestselling book from the 1980’s, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten!

Every so often I feel the urge to pull that little book off my bookshelf, blow the dust off and scroll through its pages; for how easy it is to become distracted by the wrong motives, by achievement and performance, consumption and accumulation, and other worldly, selfish desires.  Robert Fulghum’s simple message helps me get re-centered on what really matters.  And to think, these are lessons we all learned as far back as kindergarten.

For several years my wife Tee has been volunteering two days every week at Hugs Café, one of the finest lunch establishments in our adopted hometown of McKinney, Texas.  But Hugs is no ordinary restaurant.  While it does serve delicious food, Hugs is unique because it exists to serve an even greater purpose, to provide employment opportunities for adults considered to have special needs such as Downs Syndrome.  Established as a nonprofit by its visionary founder Ruth Thompson and her husband Chris, dear friends of ours, Hugs depends on volunteers like Tee to work alongside the paid “team members”, who are provided a sense of purpose and a chance to earn a decent wage.

To have lunch at Hugs Café is to experience what we all learned in kindergarten – share everything, play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, clean up your mess, and so on.  Except at Hugs there’s an added bonus, one we also probably learned in kindergarten – when you leave you get a hug.  Like Robert Fulghum’s book, Hugs Café helps me get re-centered on what really matters.  It also brings to mind that little passage from Hebrews: “And don’t forget to do good and to share with others.”

“Take care of my sheep.”  – John 21:16 

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” Ebenezer Scrooge tried to remind the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley in Dickens’ timeless story A Christmas Carol.  “Business!” cried the ghost in response.  “Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

I once found myself in a somewhat heated debate with another gentleman over whether it was the role of business to be compassionate.  Although he himself was a compassionate person, he took the position that compassion was not the purpose of business.  I argued to the contrary.  But I’ve since had second thoughts.  If I could relive that debate I might agree that it is not the role of business to be compassionate, compassion being a word that seems too soft a term.  Instead I would argue this way, that regardless what business or profession one is in, it is first and foremost a people business; for no business or profession would even exist except to help other people meet their needs and desires.

Curious as to what was behind the success stories of some of America’s most exceptional long-lasting companies, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras of the Stanford Graduate School of Business did an extensive six-year study of eighteen visionary companies, as they called them, in direct comparison with one of each company’s competitors.  Using long-term stock performance as their measure, what they discovered is that a dollar invested in the visionary companies over a long period of time outperformed a dollar invested in the comparison companies by six times, and over fifteen times that of the general market.  While their findings were extremely complex, the differentiator essentially boiled down to this: the visionary companies view their core purpose as serving mankind, while the comparison companies view theirs as achieving profitability.  (Reference, Built to Last, by Collins and Porras)

“Take care of my sheep,” Jesus instructed his apostle Peter.  Similarly, Marley cried out to Scrooge, “Mankind was my business!”  I wonder, had Scrooge and Marley been operating that way all along, would they have been lesser “good men of business”?

“How then can we live?”  – Ezekiel 33:10 

Not long after being diagnosed with cancer my late office partner and beloved friend Jim Webb was informed by his doctors that his life expectancy was at most a year.  The following day Jim came and sat down in my office to share this news with me.  But unlike most people who had just received a death sentence, Jim instead looked up at me with that trademark smile of his.  “You know,” he said, “a person can do a lot of good in a year.”

“How then can we live?”  It is an age-old question, as mankind from the very beginning of creation was granted free will; thus, giving us the freedom to decide the answer for ourselves.  And while it is true that people experience different conditions not necessarily of their choosing, from slavery to privilege, from poverty to wealth, from illness to health, even within the most extreme of these conditions, humans still have the ability to choose how to live.  This is the core message expressed in Dr. Viktor Frankl’s classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, which is a reflection on his years imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.  That is where Dr. Frankl, considered the father of modern psychiatry, observed how his fellow victims would choose to live their lives even under the most horrific conditions ever imposed on human beings, when virtually all freedoms were taken away.  Yet even under those conditions there remained a certain freedom to choose.  While no one had a choice except to try to survive, many chose in addition to do all they could to help others as well.  Like my friend, they might have been thinking, “a person can do a lot of good in this place.” 

Due to the extreme aggressiveness of his disease, my dear friend was unable to achieve the year he had expected, nor the good deeds he had hoped to accomplish – at least not in the way he had imagined.  Although, the good he did is far more than he realized and is still being carried on.  So how did Jim answer that age-old question?  His older daughter, speaking on behalf of the family, expressed it so eloquently and succinctly.  “Dad’s mission in life,” she said, “was to bring God’s Kingdom to earth.”  The Prophet Micah said it this way: “He has showed you, O man, what is good.  And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6:8) 

“Let us not become weary in doing good . . .”  Galatians 6:9

I was having a delightful conversation with one of my former high school teachers at a recent school reunion when suddenly she caught me off guard.  “Dan,” she said, “I have to tell you, you and your group of classmates were some of the best kids I ever taught.  You were all just good kids.”  She must have noticed my astonishment, for she paused for a moment, smiled, then rephrased her compliment.  “Well, I should say if you did do things you shouldn’t have, I never knew it.”  “We did,” I admitted sort of sheepishly.

She obviously had never heard the story about our eighth-grade math class.  We had a teacher back then whose teaching style was to deliver a short lecture, then hand out a page of math problems for us to spend the remainder of class completing.  After handing it out he would then excuse himself to the teachers’ lounge, returning just before the end of class.  As you can imagine with a bunch of unsupervised middle-schoolers, by the time he did return the classroom had erupted into total chaos, for which the girls received extra homework to be turned in the next day, and the boys were summarily marched out into the hallway where each received a series of stinging licks on the behind with an oak paddle (this was back in the days of corporal punishment).  Every student in the classroom was punished, that is except one – me.  Why I don’t know, for I was as guilty as my classmates.  To this day they still hold a grudge and have never let me forget it.

Notwithstanding stories like this one, though, my former beloved high school teacher was right.  We really were good kids, certainly as measured in terms of making good grades, participating in the right kinds of activities, and demonstrating potential for a bright future.  In preparing ourselves for success, in other words, we were doing good. 

Doing good, however, means a great deal more than self-accomplishment.  If that’s all it means, then I suppose getting away with mischief in eighth-grade math class fits the criteria for doing good.  Rather, doing good occurs when our accomplishments become focused on the good of others and serving God.  Then and only then do we experience abundant life.  (It took me years to figure that out.)  So, as St. Paul reminds us, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”

“. . . the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve . . .”  Matthew 20:26-28 

Back during my corporate days, I once became infuriated when our company changed one of its internal policy.  I was deeply opposed to the change, convinced that it would severely inhibit our ability to transact business.  I was so upset in fact, that I was determined to prove the “powers that be” wrong and that I was right, when I should have instead been focusing on ways to operate within the new guidelines.  Before long, my obsession caused me to lose sight of my real purpose, that of serving the customers and employees who I was charged to serve.  Only when I realized that my bitterness was robbing me of that true purpose did things begin to improve.  As it turned out, the new policy, once I learned to abide by it, proved not to be nearly as devastating as I had predicted, the work environment became much more pleasant thanks to my changed attitude, and business got back on track and once again began to grow.

Someone once described glimpsing into hell, only to see its inhabitants gathered round a banquet table set with a scrumptious feast, not exactly what one would expect. Closer examination, however, revealed people in bitter agony; for in spite of the great feast before them, they were unable to bend their arms to feed themselves.  A glimpse of heaven revealed the exact same scene.  Except in heaven there was great joy and celebration; for the inhabitants there were using their stiffened arms to feed each other.

Although this fable may have been intended to create an image of the hereafter, it may be even more descriptive of the here-and-now.  How often do we become obsessed with surviving or thriving – or proving we are right like I did – when our purpose is to serve?  Surviving, thriving, and proving ourselves right is all about us, and focusing on “us” will ultimately lead to misery as demonstrated by the stiff-armed inhabitants of hell.  Serving, however, is about others, and serving others is what leads to joy like the inhabitants of heaven experienced.

This is the leadership model Jesus came to demonstrate; for “. . . the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve . . .”  Or as Dr. Albert Schweitzer once claimed, “the only really happy people are those who have learned how to serve.”