Anything Useful in Your Jeans?
We have genes for usefulness.
— Lewis Thomas, Lives
of a Cell
My world changed when I read Thomas Lewis' Lives of a Cell. It's a
collection of essays by a world-class physician, researcher and administrator
(Director of the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Research Center in New York).
One summer night, driving through rural Connecticut, he was struck by how the
fertile earth seemed to him like a living cell, exchanging nutrients and energy,
cooperating in an orgy of chaos and order.
"Service is the rent we pay for living. It is the very purpose of
life and not something you do in your spare time.
Education is for improving the lives of others and leaving your community
and world better than you found it."
— Marion
Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund
There's a theme here, about service after success and based upon that success.
I was trained that the ultimate privilege is to be so successful that you had
the means and mentality to serve the community, one way or another. Those who
so served therefore distinguished themselves from those who either could not
or would not serve the community.
In that way they distinguished themselves from less successful people, who
lacked the outer or inner wealth to serve others' needs. Another way one might
distinguish oneself would be to not cheat or lie. When receiving incorrect change
in your favor, one had two choices: correct the error or pocket the tiny windfall
which declared you to be someone in such poor shape that the pittance mattered
to you.
Loyalty Downward
Aaron Feuerstein is in
the news again this spring. Mr Feuerstein is the owner of Malden Mills in
Lawrence Massachussets, founded by his family in 1906. The last time you heard
of him was in 1995, when the mill suffered a disastrous fire, yet he kept the
payroll going and fired no one. That would be extraordinary enough, but it's
downright miraculous when you discover that Malden Mills is one of the last
textile mills in America. This is an almost impossible business under the best
of circumstances.
Malden Mills' insurance covered only 75% of the rebuilding costs, so Malden
filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001. Its creditors include GE Capital, SunAmerica
and some private investors. Are we surprised that the creditors fought the reorganization
every step of the way?
Let the Lady Speak
I can't improve on the sentiments expressed by Marion Wright Edelman on her
quotations
page. Read her wisdom. Is there anything each of us can do, today,
to make the world a little better. Not just social software or revising the
world economy, but something here and now.
We have genes for usefulness.
11:32:53 PM 
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