This Is Your Crowning Glory

It might have been in Winter, when we could build walls from mounds of snow.
It might have been during Summer Holidays, when we clambered onto fallen tree trunks in the woods.

Anywhere that allowed us to climb higher, and look down triumphantly on those around us.

Last week I wrote of childhood games.
This was another.

We’d stand there breathlessly.
Raise our arms. And cry:
”I’m The King of The Castle! (And You’re Just a Dirty Rascal!)”

Except we’re not. Are we.
King of The Castle, I mean.

As I mentioned in my recent podcast ‘Monday Moments’…
We’re in the fight of our lives. Particularly here in the UK.
And our opponent (about one-thousandth the size of a grain of sand)…
Is knocking seven bells out of us!

This tiny being has undeniably brought seemingly-advanced populations and global economies to their knees.
it has taken “One from a family, and two from a village”
It has reached into our street.

It has even reached its tentacles into our home.

It seems unimpressed by our opinions and views.
(Particularly about comments along the lines of “Our lads will be home by Christmas”)
It seems uninterested in listening to government guidelines or parliamentary proposals.

Yet, from all of this we’re seeing different forms of Good and Goodness emerging.

Now, I don’t mean the increased efficiency (even effectiveness) arising from better use of communication technology
Nor do I mean our ability to maintain revenue or profits or compliant productivity.

Nobody will stand on their doorsteps and clap about that on a Thursday night.
Nobody.

That’s not the measure of a leader… a family… a community… a population… a nation.
That’s not what creates majesty – and an outpouring of gratitude – amongst people!

We don’t continue to make films about World War Two because we want to marvel at the radar we used…
Or the tonnage of munitions we were capable of churning out from our factories.

Seventy five years later… We find ways to capture riveting human stories, again and again…
because we want to remind ourselves of how individuals can rise from threat and grief and horror…
To behave in glorious, heart-rending, selfless, compassionate, triumphant ways.

Ways that rescue and bless and protect and transform the lives of those around them.

What we do outside ourselves – however praiseworthy and full of achievement – will figure very little in the stories we pass down to our grandchildren.

But, who we are BECOMING – particularly in the face of crisis…
Ah! Now, those are the stories that people will love to tell of us.

We’re being asked to change.
To grow up.
To become more selfless and loving and empathetic, in business and life, than we naturally are.

We’re being tested…
to see if “Us” can become more meaningful than “Me, Me, Me”… or even “Me and Mine”

To see if we have the courage to design and build businesses which are conduits for lifting our ‘neighbour’
Rather than instruments designed to aggrandise our intellectual prowess and commercial savvy.

When we rejoice each month, each quarter, in the recounting of folk (and families) whose lives are more joyful because of our work…
Rather than celebrating the assets and portfolios of theirs that we captured.

Then.
Then.
Then… we will have risen to the regal behaviour the world aches for.
Then we can start to sing songs of triumph.