Month: July 2017

I didn’t.

I contributed. I worked hard to acquire the best education possible. Yet, virtually everything I know was first developed by someone else, and taught to me by someone else.

Today, I’m a talented, experienced small business banker. I still remember the person who hired me in my first position as a Disaster Assistance Loan Officer for FEMA. I remember each person who hired me for each position I held thereafter, including the one I hold now.

The most impactful contributors to my career have been the borrowers who came to me for the financing they needed to rebuild their lives or achieve their goals.

I vividly recall the school teacher who lost his home and most of his possessions due to devastating floods that hit southern Georgia in 1994. He and his wife had been married for a few years and were expecting their first child. They had invested all of their savings in their modest home. There was no way on a teacher’s salary they could afford to rebuild their home and pay the existing mortgage. The Disaster Assistance Program offered a 30 year mortgage at the government’s cost (30 years fixed at 4% vs. Market rates of 10%) that financed the total reconstruction of the home, refinanced the existing mortgage, and replaced the destroyed personal property, all for less than the original mortgage payment. I was able to approve an exception to policy to lower their final payment because their original mortgage payment was half of their monthly earnings. When I told the borrower what I was able to approve, he cried. I’m crying now just thinking about it.

In 2015, I had a borrower who came to me for financing to buy 5 Domino’s Pizza franchises in Arkansas. The borrower had no significant collateral to secure the loan but was offering his life’s savings as the down payment. This borrower had started working at one of the Domino’s stores as a pizza delivery man twenty year ago. He worked his way up to shift manager, then store manager, then larger store manager, and finally general manager of all 5 stores. The franchise owner was retiring and wanted to sell his stores to his best employee. I never met this borrower personally, and he never met me. But people like him are why I became a banker. His was the proudest loan of my career.

No, I didn’t build this.

All the people who paved the way for me; All the people who taught me; All the people who believed in me; All the people who hired me; And all the borrowers who gave me the opportunity to provide financing…together we built this.

How about you?

Has time ever stopped for you?

Your mind was quiet. What’s next didn’t matter. You even forgot where you were. And for a moment, you almost felt boundless.

It didn’t have to be a romantic moment. It could have happened any where. The one compelling feature was the capture of at least one of your senses. But in that moment, you only felt connected to someone…to some thing…and in that instant nothing else mattered.

Then life began again. The noise returned. Yesterday defined tomorrow without consideration for today. And the serenity you felt in that instant receded just beyond your reach.

Modernity deceives us into believing…doing breeds fulfillment. Yet actual experience teaches us… being is our ultimate experience. Consider the last time you felt abundant fulfillment. Regardless of the reasons that led to your ultimate satisfaction, you only realized it when you stopped, and let it soak all the way in.

In that moment you felt love. There is no happier feeling than when we suspend our busy lives and connect with the world that surrounds us.

Inversely, every other moment is defined by our preternatural loneliness, disguised as boredom, or listlessness, or anxiety…

President Kennedy was right. “Our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by man.”

As we consider all the problems effecting our lives, let our consideration start with ourselves. What about our situation, our values, and our choices are contributing to the problems we see? For me, most of my choices have been consumed with providing for myself and my family. And as I look back over my life, I realize how much pride and satisfaction I experienced when I achieved success. Yet, with each success, I foreclosed the same opportunity for every person who didn’t get hired or competed but failed to close the big deal. I’m familiar with their misery because I too have been defeated on many occasions.

My takeaway is something is deeply wrong with people having to compete to provide for themselves and their families. The competition is inherently unfair because our access to education and skill development is tied to the randomness of birth. Therefore, our success in the competition of life is more driven by luck than talent or hard work. My pride in providing for my family is a celebration of good fortune at the expense of others. As I am confronted by the problems resulting from the accumulated misfortune, I must own my contribution and do something about it.

The first step of fundamental change is realizing where you stand is no longer acceptable. But if not here, then where?

Good fortune is a function of this life no matter what we do. Some people are healthier, stronger, faster, possess greater aptitude for learning, etc. For people who are fortunate, the opportunity to make great contributions to society are likely. But good fortune should not determine our ability to provide for ourselves and our families. There is no honor in denying the less fortunate the resources they need, especially when we possess the technology and resource capacity to sustainably provide for all of humanity.