I had a technical difficulty yesterday and my lovely daily blog post was quickly and unceremoniously erased by the blue screen of death. I didn’t know that actually still happened. I think I will rewrite that one because it’s important. I want to write down what I learned about purpose in the last few months. I learned this from my wife.
We send our kids to a Waldorf school in London, Ontario. We’ve chosen to do this for many reasons and we couldn’t be happier. It’s the right place for our children and it’s the right place for our family. My wife has embraced everything about the school from the philosophy behind it to the community of people. She goes to reading groups, attends yoga and meditation classes, and participates in financial conversations at the school. She is all in. I tend to look at the tuition as my contribution. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize Tanja’s approach is more nourishing for the soul.
Every year in May there is a festival at the school called Mayfair. The Grade 4 class does a performance and then it is filled with fun and games. A great time is always had by all. All this fun takes a lot of work in planning. Tanja was part of the team that did the planning. This year was much more than just planning. It started by reimagining what Mayfair could be and taking an honest look at if there were any existing paradigms and believes that could be discarded. This caused some serious consternation within the group. Change can be scary. Mayfair is also a big fundraiser for the school which needs every penny it can get so the consequences of coming up with a concept that didn’t resonate with the audience could be serious.
Naturally the group came to a consensus and the ball got rolling. I won’t go into all the details of the planning – mostly because I don’t know them. I am in no way to trying to minimize the herculean effort of everyone else involved either. It’s just that Tanja is my wife and she is one of my favourite people to talk about. I really want to talk about how amazing it was to watch Tanja work her magic. She poured her heart and soul into this for months. From writing brilliant copy for the communications, to making signs to hand chopping 3 million heads of lettuce for salads – she did it all.
She was committed to levelling Mayfair up. She helped create an event where more people came, they ate better food and everything was grounded in love. During the last few days she put in a one 17 hour day and on the day of the event she probably worked another 12. What a success it was! There were tons of people having a wonderful time. All the volunteers knew were they needed to be and when and were committed to what they were doing. There were many times I stopped and looked around me and was simply blown away by the fact that Tanja helped created something that created so much good for everyone involved. We had at least 3 families express interest in joining the school, the kids had a memorable day and Melody talked to me afterwards and told me she couldn’t believe Mommy did this.
I guess my point is that this is what you can accomplish when you have a purpose. Not just a task or target, but a purpose. Tanja didn’t just create an event. She added beauty to the universe. She grew and nurtured our community. She filled people’s bellies with food made by hand and with love. She created a sense of abundance and people repaid that abundance in spades. Those are the things that are important to her and she never lost sight of what she was trying to create and why. That is purpose and when you have clarity of purpose and commitment to execution we are capable of achieving anything.
I’m damn lucky to be married to someone that reminds me of this. It makes me be better.
Lurching Forward 