A wise man once told me, “Most people live their lives trying to make something for themselves rather than making something of themselves.” It took me until my freshman year to fully understand the gravity of that idea and that while the two are not mutually exclusive, they also certainly do not go hand-in-hand.
I am not naïve, nor am I suggesting that everyone should drop all of their aspirations of financial and professional success to become full-time philanthropists. Rather, I would tack on a last line to the aforementioned quote: “But some lucky few accomplish both.”
I once had the pleasure of knowing a man who, at a young age, was faced with the difficult task of supporting a family with minimal education and few financial opportunities in rural Missouri. He worked two jobs and never seemed to skip a beat. A family man and an optimist, he always wore a smile.
But his true impact far exceeded his obvious traits.
Every night, when he returned home he would sort through the lint, the scraps of paper and other oddities in his pockets, collecting the coins that he had retrieved from the halls of the high school or along the sidewalks of the neighborhoods, and he would count them.
One by one, he would place them into an old, green-tinted glass mason jar and would close the lid, finally marking the total on a pad of paper to the side.
Once the change reached an appropriate amount, he would take the sum (which was quite hefty in those days) to the bank to get changed.
Then he bought a stranger dinner.
It wasn’t this man’s charity that struck me, but rather, it was the ease of his whole-hearted selflessness. Whenever he was asked the question, “Why?” he merely responded, “Why not?”
He told me once that he had everything he needed –a home, a family and food on the table. Indeed, he had made something for himself, but he never stopped trying to make something of himself.
In the end, the balance between these two routes is quite simply personal. There is no right or wrong answer, no amount that outweighs another.
It just comes down to you.
