Three Words: Love, Knowledge and Connection
Early in my career when I was 25 or so, my employer sent me to a two-day management training retreat. It took place at a local hotel where for 48 hours, I joined a hundred other strangers to attend instructional speeches, join breakout chats, and engage in individual reflection exercises.
During a particular group lecture, the presenter focused our attention on the large screen behind him. It was a plain white slide with 500 words of different fonts, colors and sizes placed randomly on the screen.
It looked something like this:
The words were things like integrity, character, honesty, kindness, compassion, truth, wisdom, courage…values words, not adjectives like thin, pretty, athletic, fashionable, smart or funny.
The lesson was that every manager should have a set of values they follow in both their professional and personal lives. The host suggested that we choose 3-5 words from the list, or maybe we choose a word not on the list that inspired us. But the exercise was to find a set of words that spoke to us on a fundamental level so we could develop a personal set of values to guide us as we moved through life.
I studied the list in the darkened hotel ballroom. The first word I chose came to me by the end of the day. It was love. By the time I was a young adult, I had developed the belief that the purpose of our time here on earth is to love; to love ourselves, our spouse, our family, our friends, our community, our country. It’s secular love, romantic love, all of it.
The second word took me another year to decide. At the management retreat, they handed out a paper copy of the image with all the words. I would periodically pull out the paper and scan the sheet, wondering if this time a particular word would touch me on a deep level. It wasn’t until I returned from my 5-year college reunion, when I decided my second word would be knowledge.To me, the other purpose on this earth is to learn, about anything, it doesn’t matter what. It is just simply important to keep learning during our entire lifetime. I realized that just because college was over, it didn’t mean my education was over. It was up to me to keep pushing myself to keep learning, albeit outside the formal classroom setting, about any subject that interested me.
The third word took another two years to decide. The original list was getting a little dog-eared and tattered and I had hand written several other possibilities on the margins and on the back. By then I was married and my husband and I had bought a house and were trying to get pregnant. We were meeting new people, joining local boards, starting new jobs, getting to know our neighbors, putting down roots. Finally, it hit me like an “a-ha!” moment, and I thought, “of course!” The third and final word is connection.
During our short time on earth, we are here to experience love in all its forms, commit to life-long learning, and then take our love and knowledge and connect with one another. Relationships matter. That is the end game, to connect and share with our fellow humans in a meaningful way.
I came up with these three words before my 30th birthday and they have withstood the test of time. I have never felt the need to add, delete or change any of them, and they have guided my decision to attend graduate school, run for public office, as well as prioritize friends and family during times of grief or celebration. What are your three words?