Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
Have you ever felt the gentle yet persistent tug of time passing? Do you ever question how you are spending your one wild and precious life? Recently, I found myself revisiting Mary Oliver’s soul-stirring poem, The Summer Day. The question of how am I spending my one wild and precious life has been echoing in my mind as I have recently engaged with two profound works that explore our relationship with time, purpose, and what constitutes a well-lived life.
Each year, as I celebrate another trip around the sun, I find myself taking inventory of the experiences that have shaped me and the impact I may have had on others. My return to a full immersion into Essential Leadership, the philanthropic coaching firm I founded that draws on my three decades of experience in the field, has provided me with the opportunity to ensure that I am investing my time and resources in alignment with what I truly value. I now have the latitude to choose the challenges that help me to grow, get stronger, make an impact, and bring me joy.
In a culture that often measures success by accumulation—of wealth, achievements, or status—I’m drawn to voices that urge us to measure our lives differently: by embracing experiences, by the courage to pursue meaning and purpose especially when enduring voluntary difficulties on that path, and by the wisdom to deploy our resources where and when they can create the most fulfillment.
“I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.”
—Anne Lamott
What I’m Reading: The Courage to Choose Difficulty
David Brooks’ recent essay “A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible” explores why people voluntarily choose paths of difficulty and pain. Brooks uses the example of writer Haruki Murakami, who runs marathons despite finding them consistently miserable. “At around 23 miles I start to hate everything,” Murakami confesses in his memoir. Yet he continues this punishing ritual year after year.
Why would anyone choose suffering? Brooks suggests that at life’s deepest level, “we live on the axis between intensity and drift.” The most fulfilling lives aren’t necessarily the most comfortable ones, but rather those animated by passionate commitment to callings, projects, and people. As Brooks observes, “When you’re committed to some big project, your relationship to pain changes.”
Brooks concludes that “the greatest achievement is the person you become via the ardor of the journey.” This reminds me that the purpose of challenge isn’t suffering itself, but rather what that challenge allows us to discover about our capacity for growth, resilience, and ultimately, meaning.
While marathon running is not the pain that I choose (that was made very clear when cheering on three of my closest friends at this year’s New York Marathon), choosing the difficult path resonates deeply as a pattern throughout my life including my decision to launch Essential Leadership several years ago. There were countless moments when I questioned the wisdom of leaving the security of full-time employment to create something new. The endless learning curve (I’m still on it!), the vulnerability of putting my own vision including my name and reputation forward, the responsibility of guiding others and their families through their unique philanthropic journeys—all of these created a particular kind of productive discomfort. I now know that it is precisely these challenges that have been most transformative. The difficulties I chose have shaped not just my work but who I am, connecting me to a purpose larger than myself and creating meaning that seeking comfort would not have provided.
What I’m Learning: The Urgency of Living Fully
Bill Perkins’ “Die with Zero” has dramatically shifted my thinking about how we allocate our life energy across time. His core insight, shared recently on a call, is both simple and profound:
“My fear is not running out of money. My fear is wasting my life.”
Perkins challenges the conventional wisdom that endless accumulation represents success. Instead, he advocates for strategically deploying our resources including time, energy, and yes, money when they can create the most meaningful experiences and impact.
What strikes me most about Perkins’ philosophy is its urgency. “Life is now,” he reminds us. Our capacity to convert resources into meaningful experiences follows a curve, rising in our youth and middle age before gradually declining. This means there’s an optimal timing for different life experiences, and waiting too long means potentially missing the window when they would bring the greatest fulfillment.
This perspective applies equally to our philanthropic endeavors. Perkins asserts that “giving less now is more impactful than you giving more later” because of the immediate positive change that can ripple outward. “It doesn’t make sense to hold on to money,” he argues. “It makes sense to make an impact.” Clearly, deferring one’s philanthropic immersion until sometime “down the road” runs counter to living life now.
I experienced my own ‘Die with Zero’ moment of clarity during my recent career transition when we were deciding whether to travel internationally with friends. As we start to lose relatives and friends to the unpredictability of life and our own fate, the imperative of making memories became impossible to ignore. I found myself postponing “big” things, telling myself that ‘someday’ when circumstances were perfect, I would dedicate more resources to it. I realized that there was no perfect time in the future for peak experiences, but that the time is now. It was a profound shift in my thinking, and I am pleased that I have been moved into action and an understanding that for most experiences from now on, the time is always now.
“Seize the day…make your lives extraordinary.”
–Robin Williams
What I’m Practicing: Paying Attention
Mary Oliver’s poem begins not with grand statements about purpose, but with deep curiosity about the world around her—the grasshopper eating sugar from her hand, the swan, the black bear. “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is,” she writes. “I do know how to pay attention.”
This practice of paying attention, of being fully present to the world around us, seems essential to living with purpose. If Brooks reminds us of the value of chosen difficulty and Perkins of the urgency of living fully, Oliver teaches us that the foundation of both is the capacity to be awake to each moment.
Perhaps this is where it all begins- not with grand plans or dramatic realignments, but with the simple decision to be more present to our lives as they unfold. To notice the grasshopper, to feel the difficulty of the marathon’s final miles, to recognize when we’re postponing joy or impact out of fear rather than wisdom.
As the seasons change, and as we added a new canine (welcome, Riley Maude) to our family, I challenge myself to be more awake in each moment. I continue to practice presence with my gratitude journal, writing three things daily for which I am grateful. For instance, being excused from reporting to jury duty last week opened up an entire day, a glorious day on which I could literally stop and smell the roses. It is on days when I can be present that I find myself making choices that are truly aligned with my values and less driven by urgency or habit. This attention to the moment serves as the foundation for both the challenges that I choose to embrace and the impact that I seek to create. I’ve found that this mindful presence is also the key ingredient in my work as a philanthropy coach—it enables me to truly listen to clients, to notice the subtle cues that reveal their deeper values, fears, and aspirations, and to create space for authentic connection that leads to more meaningful giving.
What I’m Wondering: Your Reflections
As I sit with these intertwined ideas of chosen difficulty, strategic living, and present attention, I’m curious about your experience:
- What difficulties have you chosen that have ultimately led to greater fulfillment?
- Where in your life might you be postponing experiences or impact that could be embraced now?
- What is going on right now in your community, country, or world that might be calling you to engage more deeply?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I’d love to hear your reflections as we continue this conversation about living with purpose, courage, and presence.