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Overview
Inspirational and heartwarming, A Life Worth Living provides a insightful guide to living life meaningfully and well. In a time when everyday life is dominated by the pursuit of material wealth, Dr. Barrie Sanford Greiff has redefined "net worth" as a life not dominated by the financial bottom line. Weaving together memorable stories and insights gathered during his long tenure as a Harvard psychiatrist, Greiff highlights in this though-provoking book nine essentials that make true worth: Loving, Learning, Laboring, Laughing, Lamenting, Linking, Living, Leading and Leaving. By heightening our awareness of these essentials in our lives, he reasons, we can find the path to spiritual worth -- and learn that sharing life lessons is the best way to make our lives worthwhile. Both pragmatic and uplifting, A Life Worth Living offers an inspiring remedy for the spiritual myopia of our time.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062046253 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 04/16/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Honor Thy Father and Mother: Why?
It was late in the afternoon, and we had just finished a company board meeting. A publicly traded division of the company had been sold, and the group toasted the occasion. As a result of the transaction, the two founders both came away with enough cash to finance a king's ransom.
One of the founders and I walked down Boston's fashionable Newbury Street, and a charming peace seemed to hang over that part of the city's Back Bay. Yet as we walked, and decided to take two seats at an outdoor cafe, my friend seemed curiously subdued.
I congratulated him on his windfall as our drinks arrived and offered another toast. He smiled and for a brief moment reflected on his achievement. But then from out of the blue he blurted: "What am I going to leave to my kids?" Briefly, he told me what I already knew-how he and his partner had worked their buns off to build the business, spending enormous amounts of time at the office and on the road, taking tremendous risks and overcoming some pretty hairy times in the market.
His thoughts as he talked about his kids strayed far from triumph, though. He acknowledged that they would be secure now. They would never have to work if they didn't want to, and they would have all the money they would ever need. But my friend was wise enough to appreciate the multiple faces of security.
His concerns, he explained, centered around his kids' sense of self-worth.
Financial armor alone did not protect anyone from the world, he said. Could they make a contribution to society that they would initiate themselves? Would his success-and their newfound wealth -- take away their hunger,their enthusiasm, and their passion? Had he -- through his own success -- stripped his children of the pleasure of achieving something on their own? What kind of an impact would that have On their own senses of self-worth?
Clearly my friend wanted to act as someone who would be more than a "bottom-line" father. In a way, his financial success had crystallized the problem in his quick and active mind: how to pass on values more important than a king's ransom? How to pass on a spiritual cushion infinitely more valuable than his wealth?
In his own way, he highlighted the problem challenging the current generation that will transfer over seven trillion dollars worth of assets to their the largest amount of wealth ever passed from one generation to another in the history of the world.
I had heard these concerns many times before from successful people. Each time I heard them, I recalled the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
My friend knew intuitively that we leave more than money and material objects to the next generation. We leave the best of ourselves. He knew his job was to reveal the best of himself to his children -- and to make sure they knew he was passing that on as the most valuable legacy he could ever leave. Only in that way would the qualities of curiosity and hunger, passion and enthusiasm, risk and reward, disappointment and achievement, be passed down as a legacy to the generation he wanted to receive them.
Thinking of a legacy in its full meaning is the equivalent of moving from a finite analog world to an infinite digital one, from limited options to multidimensional ones, with more leverage and greater flexibility, with more meaning and a lot more clout.
I remember a while ago talking on the phone with my aging parents. At the time they lived fifteen hundred miles away in Florida, and communicating with them was difficult.
Their collective sense of judgment seemed badly impaired. My father carried large sums of money and displayed wads of bills in public; they mixed up each other's doctors' appointments; they made airplane reservations and then forgot about them; they decided to save money by not having the failing brakes on their car inspected. They had always been incredibly close, and their newfound eccentricities only received affirmation from each other. They lived in a self-contained world of their own. And it was a mess.
It's not easy watching the decline of loved ones, especially from a distance -- and especially when they had once been extraordinarily competent and had passed on their guidance, wisdom, patience, and caring to me.
I was worried. I suggested some simple solutions. They agreed enthusiastically -- and then proceeded to follow through on absolutely none of them. Their minds, once like Rolls-Royces, had lost four spark plugs and two quarts of oil, and their lives were sputtering along to a dead halt.
Life was becoming very difficult for them. And for me.
Because we were far apart and I could not monitor the situation, I became increasingly concerned, frustrated, angry, and resentful. I could sense impending disaster. As I was dealing with my sense of helplessness the Old Testament commandment "Honor thy father and mother" jumped into my mind, and I asked myself for a brief insensitive moment, "Why should I honor them? They're making a complete mess out of everything. And they refuse to listen to reason."
I was angry at them, but then also suddenly angry and embarrassed at myself, at my arrogance for allowing the thought of abandoning them to enter my mind -- especially when their defenses were impaired and they needed me. I was thinking only of myself, of my sense of magic at healing, and here it was being taken away from me.