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“Carry each other’s burdens . . .”  – Galatians 6:2 

One of the positive things about aging – and yes there are a few – is the acceptance of and appreciation for help from others.  As one who has always been reluctant to ask for help, believing it to be a sign of weakness, this has been a huge transformation for me.  Two lessons I have learned through this process are that one, age is not the reason I need, accept, and appreciate help; rather it is that with age I finally wised up to the fact that we all need help from others regardless of our age, and that accepting help is a sign of strength and wisdom, not weakness.  And two, in my determination to do everything on my own, I felt little inclination to recognize, much less to help others in need.

There is an old Scottish tale I once read about a small girl trudging along carrying a young boy in her arms not much smaller than herself.  A passerby, noticing the girl toting such a heavy load for her size, expressed concern that it might be too much for her.  But the girl joyfully replied in her thick Scottish accent, “He’s na heavy.  He’s mi brither.” . . .   Notably, it was that same Scottish parable that would eventually inspire the familiar hit song recorded by The Hollies in 1969, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.”

“The road is long,” the lyrics say, “With many a winding turn / That leads us to who knows where? . . . But I’m strong / Strong enough to carry him / He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother / So on we go / His welfare is my concern / No burden is he to bear / We’ll get there / For I know / He would not encumber me / He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother / If I’m laden at all / I’m laden with sadness / That everyone’s heart / Isn’t filled with gladness / Of love for one another . . . And the load / Doesn’t weigh me down at all / He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

As a young man I was convinced that it was up to me to make my own way.  But as life has taught me, no one should ever think that he or she is totally independent and doesn’t need help from others.  Nor should anyone feel excused from the task of helping others.  For God has surely placed us on this earth to help each other along the way, or as the Apostle Paul puts it, to “carry each other’s [our brothers’ and sisters’] burdens.”  The Scottish girl had figured out at a young age what has taken me a lifetime to learn, “He’s na heavy.  He’s mi brither.”

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded . . .”  – Luke 12:48 

“You will be like God,” the notorious serpent assured Eve in the garden, thus enticing she and Adam to take a bite of the fruit God had clearly forbidden them to eat.  Ever since that incident that precipitated the fall of mankind almost every child starting around age two has carried on the tradition of believing they too can be like God.  Anyone who has ever been involved in raising or teaching small children knows what I’m talking about.  And one of the symptomatic behaviors of that age is the demanding phrase “I want!”  I want a cookie, I want that toy, I want ice cream, I want you to swing me.  In our household we refer to it as having a case of the “I wants.”

One of our grandchildren happened to be going through that stage of the “I wants” a few years ago when I saw an opportunity to give her a dose of her own medicine.  It happened one weekend during a sleepover at our house, when we got up early on Saturday morning and cooked up a big platter of pancakes, her favorite.  Sure enough, in the blink of an eye she grabbed the biggest one for herself and plopped it down on her plate.  That’s when I stuck out my bottom lip and cried out in a whiney voice, “But I wanted that one!!!”  My hope was that she might get a glimpse of what she sounded like when she had the “I wants,” maybe teach her a lesson.  Fast forwarding a few years, either it worked, or she eventually out-grew the “I wants” because now that whiney voiced “I wanted that one!” has become a joke between us, a trick she plays on me as much as I do her.

Now I am no child psychologist, but it seems to me that the “I want” phase can be healthy in a child’s development, that is if it is channeled properly to develop ambition and work ethic instead of becoming a spoiled brat by being given everything they want.  Likewise, ambition too can be healthy if it is channeled in such a way that leads the child to success (however that is measured).  Success, however, must not be the ultimate outcome, for success is healthy only when it is channeled toward responsibility, meaning responsibility for others – our families, neighbors, communities, for those less fortunate – that is, loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Success thrives only when it is shared, just as surely as it will die when squandered on self-gratification.  Jesus made that point crystal clear, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

• Ecclesiastes 3:1 

Whew!  What a relief getting a reprieve from the scorching temperatures of the Texas summer, that relentless perpetual heat wave that seems to have no end in sight.  Not that hot summers are unusual in Texas; they are simply part of where we live.  In my lifetime, rarely have there been summers of mild temperatures and higher than normal rainfall.

If I appear to be whining about the summer heat it is because I am.  Just wait a couple of months, though, and you’ll catch me whining about having to rake the fall leaves in my yard week after week.  And by February I will be sick to death of cold weather.  Then around mid-May I’ll be complaining about my spring allergies.  Whine!  Whine!  Whine!

But here is the flip side.  I love beautiful fall days, crisp mornings, autumn colors, pumpkin flavored coffee, and football games.  It is one of my favorite seasons.  I also love cold winter days sitting by the fire reading a book, watching sports on TV, preparing for the Christmas holidays.  And I love springtime when the weather begins to warm, the days grow longer, and the outdoors begins to green up and blossom.  Then, amazingly, I even look forward to summertime once again, long days to spend outdoors, knocking around in Bermuda shorts and my favorite Keen’s sandals, cooking on the grill, eating on the patio, having picnics, or attending outdoor concerts.

Interesting, isn’t it, the push and pull of seasonal changes, how we soon grow weary and bored from day-after-day long hot days?  That’s the push.  But the anticipation of fall, crisp mornings, milder days, and early sunsets, that’s the pull.  Sometimes I think God must have created the annual seasons – winter, spring, summer, and fall – to prepare us for the seasonal changes of life – childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle, then old age.  There, too, we experience the push and pull of transitioning from one season to the next. . . Except, it has been the last one that has surprised me the most, even though at the top of my game having grown weary of those hard-charging middle years – the push – yet anticipating new work to do, a higher calling, accepting a more humble position within my family and community – that is the pull.  It is so true, isn’t it?  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

“The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.”  – Proverbs 20:5 

In his newest book Resilient John Eldredge tells a story about several friends sitting on his deck one night “talking about this and that,” as he describes it, “when a woman we all know came up in the conversation.  She’s the kind of person who seems to have an internal steadiness.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen her thrown by anything.  She might seem at first to be quiet and withdrawn, but that’s only because she doesn’t need to assert herself into the center of things.  When she speaks, it seems to come from a deep resource.  There was a moment of silence, and then someone said, ‘She’s a deep well.’”

What struck me about that story when I read it was not the uniqueness of it but its familiarity.  Don’t we all know someone like that who seems to have it all together – grounded, rock-solid, quietly confident, “a deep well” as the woman was described?  But then Eldredge added a punch line, a profound truth that applies to all of us.  “Actually,” he wrote, “every human being is a deep well.  They just don’t draw upon those places within themselves because they live near the surface of their own existence.”

We have a mantra within my profession of executive coaching about the people we work with, our clients, that everyone is “creative, resourceful, and whole.”  Everyone, in other words, is a deep well, except most of us fail to recognize that depth because we tend to live too near the surface.  As coaches we challenge our clients to draw from those deeper parts of the well where answers and solutions and enlightenments dwell, as often does a greater sense of purpose.  Evoking awareness, we call it in our professional training, the calling up or summoning of what is already there, down deep.  That’s what we do.

To be clear, none of us will find all answers, solutions, or knowledge no matter how deep into the well we dive.  Indeed, we always need others to shore up our shortcomings because we all have them.  What we will discover from down deep, however, is an awareness of more capacity and capability than we realized.  For every human being is a deep well, but we must dive beneath the surface in order to draw upon it.  “The purposes of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out,” says the Proverb.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders . . .”  – 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 

In one of my early Abundant Living essays years ago I wrote about a man who was my seventh-grade history teacher and principal of the junior high school I attended.  “B.F. Jordan was one of those special teachers,” I wrote, “who touched my life with his wisdom, wit, character, and passion for teaching.  He never had a student, to the best of my knowledge, in whom he did not see great potential.  Well into young adulthood he remained my counselor, advisor, and friend – until his sudden and untimely death.”

I went on to describe him as a person who “never had aspirations for glory, victory, fame and fortune that I could ever tell.  He seemed quite content with who he was – pretty much unknown beyond the city limits of our small community.  Why is it, then, that I remember him, but I can’t remember the winner of [say] the 1963 World Series?  Could it be the quiet way he touched the lives of the many young people he taught?”  This past summer I had an opportunity to hear B.F. Jordan’s son, Lindy, give a reflection about his dad.  One of the stories he told referenced his father’s work ethic, and how in the summer months when school was out of session he would hire out to roof houses – in scorching West Texas heat no less – to supplement his modest income as an educator.  Not that I was surprised by that story, it just added another layer of respect for a man I so admired.

It’s the quiet ones we have to watch out for, we’ve often heard it said.  Sometimes that is meant as a warning, of course, but most often it is to call attention that the one we least expect, the one in the back of the room or the end of the line, the most modest, most humble who winds up being the one with the most influence, being the most impactful.

In these days of the internet glaring in our eyes and television blaring in our ears, how easily our attention is drawn away from the quiet ones – the B.F Jordans in our lives, our colleagues, our caring friends and neighbors, bosses, teachers, coaches, parents, children, and relatives, not to mention our own influence as quiet ones among those within our circles.  “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders . . .”  Want to change the world?  Turn your attention toward the quiet ones.  Be one yourself.  That’s who makes the world a better place, always has.