Plan To Leave a Big Gap!

I still remember doing it with each of them.

Tip-toeing around the bedroom.
Gazing at their soft features.
Little, dribbling mouth wide open in slumber.
Dark hair so soft and fluffy on white pillow

(I was allowed to do that in their early years, you see.
Parent’s privilege.
But they’d be furious if they sensed me hovering there during their tumultuous teens!)

I would stand and stare and think.
I would think this…

”How could the world spin without them now?
To consider existence without them…
Well, now that they’re here.
It’s unthinkable!”

And that question reminds me of that perennial film; that corny Christmas classic …
’It’s a Wonderful Life’.
The film that I find myself glued to every year.

George, the hero, trapped in a small town financial scandal.
Poor, broke, wonderful George, distracted from planned suicide by his Guardian Angel.

He’s shown the world he knows… without him.
It’s an ugly, miserable place: empty of joy and compassion.
A selfish world, shaped by homage to the Almighty Dollar.

I imagine the world without each child I’ve had placed in my arms.
Oh my! There would be such a terrible gap!

Then I consider what I’m doing today, with all my strivings.
Doing with this thing I call ‘Our Business’.

And I wonder.

What we’re doing.
You and I.
What we’re doing with our strategies and tactics and systems and projects.

I wonder who cares?

Are our noble intentions (you know: the stuff on our websites)…
reflected by what’s happening on the ground of our team’s daily To Do Lists?

Are there lives – individuals… families – out there, who give thanks.
Because of the work we do?

Lives that might not be dependent upon us for their daily bread.
But are mighty glad that our paths have crossed?

This world which gives us far more than we deserve…
Would it miss our career’s consuming creation – our smiling firm – if we disappeared?

Whatever my definition of ‘Success’,
I imagine that this is a test I need to pass…

A test with a headline something like this:
”How Big A Gap Would My Work Leave In This World… If It Had Never Been Started?”

The beauty in the question is this:

Once we’ve asked it…
We can do something about it.
We can plan and work to answer the question with a bellow of rejoicing and fulfilling and triumph.

When you look at a child today – particularly if that child is yours…
You might let that sobering question settle on your heart.

(Just don’t wake them from their slumber!)