It was a warm summer morning and I was just finishing my family chore of mowing the lawn when Mr. Johnson, a neighbor from down the road, pulled up in his car. “Brian, since it looks like you’re done mowing your lawn you can head over to my place and mow my mine.”
I was up early both to beat the heat but also to get my chores done so I could spend the rest of the day at the city pool. And now Mr. Johnson had just given me another chore! Yet raised to respect my elders, I dutifully pushed my mower over to his house and began mowing his lawn.
A short time later as I was heading back to my house after completing the assigned task, I suddenly heard someone yelling my name. Turning around I saw it was Mr. Johnson waving me to come back. As I approached he began, “Yard looks great. Here’s $5 – come back again next week.”
Wait! What? You can get money for mowing lawns? I immediately grabbed my lawn mower and started walking to every other house in my neighborhood to see if I could mow more lawns. And at 8 years old my entrepreneur self was born!
I learned a lot from my little lawn mowing business. Certainly I quickly grasped the potential transactional aspect of work and compensation. Yet it was the deeper learnings around effort and accomplishment that brought an entirely new sense of fulfillment. And the more I became aware of those things I was good at the more I wanted to use those skills – regardless of if I was payed or not.
This connection between our gifts and the opportunity to share them for me is most powerfully articulated by theologian Frederick Buechner, “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” I later learned that this is one of many paraphrased versions of the actual quote. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
I will be ever grateful for the blessing of Mr. Johnson. I worked for him in a variety of capacities for over a decade. He had a knack for seeing and affirming what my gifts were even when they still had some rough edges. He patiently walked with me to refine those gifts which continue to provide me with a great sense of fulfillment and joy.
“Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman
BP