Real Wisdom

A few days ago I was speaking to 28 year old Kate Atwood, one of Atlanta’s outstanding young leaders. Kate’s mom died when Kate was 12. Her teenage years were hard, lonely, and grief stricken. You’d never know it today except for her uncommon wisdom.

Four years ago Kate founded Kate’s Club, a non-profit dedicated to helping grieving children who have lost one or both parents. It’s been a huge success and has become a major community asset.

Kate offered a profound insight about the human condition. She said the number one fear of a grieving child is that the dead parent will be forgotten and that implies that inevitably so will the grief-stricken child. Kate said our greatest inner fear is that we don’t matter, that in the end we are insignificant. What most of us do to shield ourselves from this fear is to amass wealth, power, and fame as a defense against being forgotten. This coping strategy is the cause of nearly all of our world’s problems and most of our personal ones. In a desperate bid not to be irrelevant we become so.

But all of us have a legacy. All of us have a unique purpose. All of us have influence far bigger and broader than we imagine. As author Matthew Kelly passionately puts it, our purpose, the universal purpose of each of us, is to become “the best version of ourselves.”

We are unique for a reason. Each of us has a unique Greatest Total Value equation where the sum of our gifts, talents, actions, and relationship add up to infinite, irreplaceable value. No one can take that from us. We can only abandon it ourselves. And yes, our choices do matter. As Kelly reminds us, every choice either brings us closer to our best health, best work, best relationships, best lifestyle, best thought, best spirituality, or it takes us somewhere lower. Every choice takes us toward integrity or assaults it. Only integrity will make us happy.

So in an age of social insanity, political chaos, and economic insecurity, it is a time to look inward. We need to remember the wisdom of Kate Atwood. “Insignificance is an illusion, we all matter in exactly the way we are designed to.” Live the life your inner integrity is calling you to.

Give your gift.

Serve others.

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