This morning I stumbled across a box of more than 60 wall posts and notes that Anita left in a folder called “Personal Bible”. In 1999, I introduced Anita to the idea of a personal bible from a book I was reading called “Secrets of the Great Minds”. This idea was to write down in one place passages from books or things people said that are meaningful to you. I kept one for about 3 years and I still love looking back at it. Anita had a more literal approach since most of the passages that spoke to her were from the actual Bible.
This folder contains wall posts from late 2005 and early 2006.
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like an answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of the affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and udnerstanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are th eonly one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that had dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
– John Garner
I can’t be sure where Anita found this quote initially. I’d like to think it was on this page: http://www.word-works.com/simple/others.htm Not only was Anita concerned with simplifying her life, another of her frequently uttered quotes is on this page: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” (I’m still working on that one…)
(Aside: I do recall talking about John Gardner with Anita and in reviewing his biography, he seems like exactly the kind of person Anita would admire – writer, civil servant, leader. I think I will look up some more of his writings. Check out this page: http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings.html)
Meaning to her life was something Anita spent a great deal of time pondering. She was pretty sure that her life’s meaning was not getting one Fortune 100 company to pay a smaller settlement to another Fortune 100 company. But what do you do when you spent seven years in school and seven years in a career and that’s all you know? If it’s not fulfilling, how do you find fulfillment?
This is what Anita wrestled with from the end of law school (1999) until this year (2009). Gardner’s quote gives a fantastic framework for building a meaningful life. In the 2007-2008 time frame, Anita adopted another framework. She said, “Do not seek to find yourself. Seek God and in Him your true self.”
