“I don’t know how you attend to all those students as you say you do. I wish I could, but I just don’t have the time for them,” a professor wrote me in response to the words I’ve written since my return from China a little more than ten days ago.

 “For what do you have time? For what do you make the time?” I asked in reply.

 Silence all this past week. Maybe he went off somewhere for a while as I am reluctantly doing literally in a couple of hours for a two week romp through the mid-west this morning. But, four of her words have been haunting me: “don’t have the time.” How many times have I heard and read this limiting and lamenting phrase. How many times did I use those excusing words until I banned them from my vocabulary almost fifteen years ago? So many of us find the time for pursuing that higher degree, for research and publication, for pursuit of grants and presenting at conferences, for doing whatever it takes to get tenure, for that promotion, for that appointment, and/or for that raise. But, when it comes to caring about those individual human beings we lumped together in that stereotyping word, “students,” well …..

 So, let me shoot and run, and ask all who would utter these words and would have let them shackle your attitudes and actions, you’re telling this to a cancer survivor who knows that this precious “now” is the only time he has to do something significant? You don’t have the time to fill the seconds with all the good an uplifting, supporting, and encouraging word or a simple smile, or an acknowledging “hello” can do? You don’t have time to fill the minutes with empathy, kindness, and love? You don’t have time to fill the hours with your truest meaning and deepest purpose of service? You don’t have the time to fill the days with imagination, awareness, attentiveness, creativity, goodness, and joy? You don’t have the time to reflect upon and articulate a personal vision? You don’t have the time to make your efforts follow your vision? You don’t have the time to make a difference in someone’s life? You don’t have the time to leave behind a valuable and significant life?

 I am a cancer survivor. I have learned that it is I who has the time; it is I who finds the time; it is I who makes the time. I learned that I decide how to use each minute; I decide how each moment begins, is filled, and ends. I decide how to live, act, think, feel, and experience that instant. You know my cancer made me take my eyes farther off the clock than I had and to look sharper at my personal vision of what I and what I do can be. It showed me that each moment is an intersection of my vision, my experiences, and my potential. That’s what I call a “wow” revelation! It is amazing how that powerful combination casts aside excuses, cuts restraining manacles, energizes each moment, and puts my talents and abilities and blessings to work.

 Trust me. If you take the time, make the time, for each student, as Dr. Seuss would say, oh, the places you’ll go. You’ll discover a whole new level of possibilities; you’ll see in every direction magnificent opportunities; you’ll find that you’ll transform what might be limited plodding burden into a limitless enriching blessing; and, more important, you’ll find out who you really are and can become; and, then, you’ll have a timeless sense of fulfillment, accomplishment, significance, and joy.

 No, it’s not counting the minutes that matters; what matters is what you put into those minutes, what you do with, and how you live each present minute that you live that counts.

 Does this sound like empty sermonizing? It’s really fully teaching–and living!

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 Thinking of the words those two students wrote, I know that the guiding light of our teaching should be to spread an aura of goodness, to help others become better persons rather than merely more informed or more skilled wage earners we call professionals or otherwise. That’s the stuff of which making a significant difference is made.

 I am convinced that those who can and do make a difference are not just the particularly special Mahatma Ghandis, chosen Maria Teresas, select Nelson Mandelas, or extraordinary Martin Luther Kings. Each person can make a difference if she or he cultivates two intertwined and inseparable inherent human “soul-like” qualities and capacities that lie latent within each of us, which allow each of us to experience a sense of compassion and beauty and sacredness of those and things around us.

 As I just told someone, the first quality is a courage that comes from following a purpose that goes beyond personal concerns. Courage is, to paraphrase James Allen, a drawing of strength from both cherished ideals that beats in our heart and what Peter Senge calls a reflective and articulated “personal vision” of what we want to create of ourselves; it is a loveliness, a tenderness, a kindness, and lovingness that drapes each of our thoughts and feelings; it gives meaning to a person’s actions; it is an unrelenting commitment to doing what is right and when our integrity will not allow us to take any other path. It is powerful and demanding, but reachable truth and purpose put into action. The second capacity is attentiveness to the needs of others. The sin of not be attentive, not being unremittingly aware, alert, or awake, is the sin, as Joseph Campbell once said, of missing and not making use of the only thing that is truly ours: the present moment of life.

 Writing as a practioner and not as a theorist, I can assure you that as you demonstrate courage with attentiveness of, empathy toward, and patience with others. you will find yourself walking inexorably down what I call a path of “do thats”: Do that and everything which passes so quickly in a blur will ever slow down and be sharp; do that and you’ll hear what the daily breezes and constant whispers have to tell; do that and you’ll acquire a sense of indestructible wonder at how startling life is; do that and you’ll see the sacredness in each person; do that and you’ll see the whole future in one person; do that and everyday, you’ll think as you wake up that you are fortunate to have woken up, that you are alive, that you are a precious human life, that you’re not going to waste it, that you’re going to use all your energies to develop yourself to expand your heart out to others for their and your benefit; do that and you’ll see with open eyes and an open heart; do that and you take notice of the unnoticed; do that and you’ll do everything that needs to be done to do all the good that you can do from where you are and with what you have; do that and you’ll fill each day with your gifts of love and kindness; do that and you’ll the experience the real joy of being fully engaged in whatever you’re doing; do that and difficulties will disappear and obstacles will vanish into the thin air; do that and you’ll see the face of meaningfulness; do that you’ll blow away the dark and blinding fog of despairing tiredness, regrets, frustrations, sadnesses, worries, anxieties, complaints, jaded boredom, angers, and resentments; do that and you’ll enter wholly and make loving use of this day, feel a rich texture and fullness of life, have a peaceful heart, and exercise a clear mind; do all that and you’ll opportunities opening up to make a difference in someone’s life and change the world.

 Trust me. All that “do that-ing” is tough. It’s demanding. It gives a lot of headaches. It offers huge challenges. It requires a lot of emotional and physical strength. It takes a lot of work and demands a lot of time. It asks for sacrifice. It even creates a lot of pain and agony. But, if you think of the effort as purposeful and wonderful, and if you feel it as purposeful and wonderful, it will transform what others might ordinarily see as a heavy and laborious burden into a continuous stream of fired energy of joy and meaning that will pour from your soul.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–

 Good morning, night, evening, whatever. We back. It was an adventurous six weeks of eating interesting things, being in interesting places, and meeting interesting people. But, it’s good to be home. Kinda. While Susan and I don’t have to sleep literally on the plywood boards that double as mattresses in the dorms at Zhengzhou University or on hard mattresses characteristic of all the private homes, guest houses, and even five star hotels, our biological clocks are still twelve hours earlier in China. It makes for interesting times. Last night, for example, at 2:30 am EST, as if Susan and I were back in Shanghai’s New Heights Restaurant having lunch, we were wide awake, sipping wine, nibbling on shrimp, and starting to catch up on recorded TV shows we had missed while away. We’ve got to get things right since we’re driving out to the mid-west in a few days for a family gathering.

 Anyway, I found 1837 e-mails waiting for me. Yes, 1837! I forget to set my Outlook on “no mail” and deliberately got near a computer only on the rarest occasion while in China. Though I exercised my index finger and quickly erased most of them, I was struck by three. Two were a deeply touching “thank you” from students, one of whom was in China with Susan and me. The third was from a professor in Ohio.

 “What great difference can I really make? I’m only one person,” this professor had written way back at the beginning of May as I was flying over the Pacific in response to my last Random Thought on first year students. It’s something I hear and read all the time. It’s something I occasionally say to myself when I’m about to get down. Then, I think of such people as these two students. God, I wish I could violate confidence and let her read the two student e-letters. But, thinking of what those two students had said, every answer to her question that I came up with boiled down to simply that so often what we think is small can be unusually large and what appears to be insignificant at the moment can often be great.

 I have a quote from Mark Twain near my computer. It says, “Life is too short to be little.” As a cancer survivor, all I can say is, “Ain’t that the truth.” For me, each day is a unique moment of opportunity in time too precious to be forgotten, too beautiful to be ignored, too meaningful to be without purpose. Sometimes the opportunities that seem the smallest are the most magical and magnificent. Small opportunities can go largely unnoticed. They’re are all around us. It’s the reverse of fishing. Forget going after the rare whopper. Cast for the everyday small ones and don’t let them get away. Even with small opportunities we can create something big. Every encounter, every challenge, every relationship, every situation is an opportunity to give of yourself in the service of others. Each day brings with it new ways to make a difference in people around you.

 That’s not always easy. It takes discipline, commitment, awareness, creativity, humility, preparation, time, effort, resilience, and patience. I was reminded of that last week. I had decided to hike up Yunnan Province’s daunting 3,000 foot Liming Mountain that topped out at almost 10,000 feet above sea level. I hesitated. I didn’t know if I was in shape to make it since I hadn’t exercised in six weeks. The guide wasn’t sure this 66 year old body could do it. Nevertheless, I gave it a whirl. “What the hell,” I told Susan, “If I had to turn back ten minutes into the hike, I would turn back.”

 It didn’t take but a few steps into the hike for my lungs to tell me that I wasn’t superman and in that rarified air I wasn’t going to leap a tall mountain in a single bound. But I found the secret to making it to the top. No bounding, just rhythmic plodding. To hike successfully to what’s called its “thousand tortoise” summit, I just had to patiently and slowly take one small step at a time in a steady cadence. And yet, as I took one small step after another, each slowly lost its insignificance as it became an essential contribution to a great hike.

 Now, you say you can’t do that for each and every student? You say you can’t do it all? You say you don’t have the time? Maybe. But, the plodding was not the real secret to making the climb. It was my attitude. Yep, it’s all about attitude. As I hiked that mountain, my mind and heart were already at the summit. And, I discovered where they went, the rest of me, especially my lungs and feet, followed in their footsteps; that as I imagined being on the summit, I was already well on the way to reaching it. Remember, I didn’t know if I was in shape to make the physical climb, but my imagination was in shape to make the mental and spiritual climb. I set it free and it freed me of limitations. I allowed it to walk the releasing positive path instead of the enslaving negative one. I let it be my guide. It became the push and pull. It gave a purpose to each one step I took. It allowed me to make the climb. It upgraded my vision. It raised my expectations to the heights of that summit. Step by step I made it to the top. And, you know what? All this is not exaggeration. I still vividly remember that as I stood on the tortoise rock formations of the mountain’s pinnacle looking down the vastness of the Yulong Gorge, I uttered a “damn!” I was overwhelmed by a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. My imagination had shown me not just who I could be, but more importantly who I was. And, I will always remember that during any encounter with anyone at anytime in any place.

 Sure, we cannot make a difference in every student’s life. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism, negativism, passivity, avoidance, disinterest, withdrawal, disengagement, disconnection, and inaction. We have to make these efforts knowing that though they may be hard and challenging, “hard” is not synonymous with “impossible” anymore than “challenging” is with “obstacle.” Why? The Talmud has the answer. It tells us that while we are not obligated to complete the work, neither are we free to abandon it. That means we don’t abandon the work because we never truly know if we can scale that mountain, how much work we can accomplish, and who we truly can become. It was and still is and will forever be a metaphoric lesson for teaching never to be lost on me.

Make it a good day.

      –Louis–