Photo Credit Willie Holdman Tough Times Test our Propensity to Trust
March 7th, 2009 by linkAre you more suspicious? Who can you count on?
We all are sitting straight up right now and have a high level of suspicion of others especially as it comes to our money. I was just listening to Tom Brokaw’s commencement address to Emory University from 2005. He said this about money to these graduating seniors as they started their new life: “In this new life you will also have to think about money in a new way, life after all is not an ATM, now you have to earn the money. Think about how you can hang on to some of it, and if you are fortunate, use the money that is beyond what you need, to save a life, to save a neighborhood, to save the world. You may be surprised to learn that it is that use of money, that is the most satisfying and gratifying. In our family where we began with no money, we like to say that we have discovered that God invented money so those that have it can help others. More over while money helps, it is discounted somehow if it does not carry your full personal value and commitment. A few years ago in a ceremony similar to this one, I declared: ‘it is easy to make a buck but it is tough to make a difference.’ A father of one of the graduates, a Wall Street success wrote to me suggesting a rewrite of that line, he said it’s tough to make a buck but if you make a lot of bucks you can make a hell of a difference. A or B because there is no wrong answer.” Tom went on to tell this, “Class of 9/11″ as he called them (because they entered college the month of 9/11) that they had a responsibility to rise to the occasion to right the global ship of state.
Now is the time to have a propensity to trust each other and risk again. Now is the time to give to others and have an abundance mentality, when everything in us and around us, screams for us to have a fear based scarcity mentality. Now is the time to use our time, not for worry, but for lifting others with our time and our treasure as history tells us we have again and again. Trust that the ripple effect of extending trust will create a tide that will raise all of us–again.
This brings to mind a quote from George Bernard Shaw that my wife Annie and I love so much. We first heard it from Werner Erhard in the 70’s and Annie shared it with Stephen R. Covey who quoted it in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It sums up my feeling today as it has these last three decades. We invite you to join us in sparking a global renaissance of trust.
George Bernard Shaw:
“This is the true joy in life–that being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it what ever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s sort of a splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
May we all be a force of nature.
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