At a dinner recently, guests were asked to go around the table and share what was on their mind. One guest said,
“I often imagine myself on a platform, waiting for a train, with 100 other people. And I think that I am the most fortunate of those 100 people, which makes me feel blessed and also gives me a tremendous sense of responsibility of what to do with that good fortune.”
At first when I heard this, I thought the good fortune she described was economic, which would make sense given the distribution of wealth globally: you only have to earn $49,000 to be in the richest 1% of the world’s population.
The facts on income alone are sobering. But I think there’s more to it, and it gets you past the 1% mark to the 0.1% mark or even the 0.01% mark – the knowledge that you are an agent of change, that the tools are available today in a way that they never were before that allow you to take all that you have been given and make an enormous impact on the world.
There has never been a moment in history when a single person can do more.
The knowledge of this simple fact, and the impetus to back it up, is the real 1 in 100 revelation.
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I often get caught up in my middle-of-life baggage.
“If I was younger and without a family to support I could quit my job and give my time to change the world.”
and,
“If I was older and wealthier I could retire from my job, and give my time and money to change the world.”
It seems like there are a lot of us with middle-of-life baggage. We don’t really appreciate how much we have because of the context in which we live. We are paralyzed by the context in which we live.
I am often paralyzed with choices. I am often paralyzed with perceived life limitations. I am often paralyzed by mistrust. It is all part of my baggage. How do I overcome it?