Mi religión es buscar la verdad en la vida y la vida en la verdad, aun a sabiendas de no he de encontrarlas mientras viva; mi religión es luchar incesantemente e incansablemente con el misterio.
Roughly (my own translation, sorry): My religion is searching for the truth in life and life in the truth, though knowing that I do not have to find it while I live; my religion is fighting incessantly and tirelessly with the unknown.
The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory."
Each time I replied, "You're crazy! Preparatory for what--and where--and why?" There was no answer, only silence. In time the voice became incessant and demanding.
"You don't understand, VISA's not an end. It's only an archetype. Give it up, and the business world as well--completely--irrevocably--now! Then you may understand!" It was frightening. It was maddening. I felt a damned fool to even think about it. A rational, conservative, pragmatic, hard-nosed, fifty-five-year-old businessman who'd never smoked a joint or dropped a drug, listening to "inner voices?" Absurd! Throw away a lifetime of work--success, money, power, prestige--as though it had no value in the vague hope that life had more meaning? Madness!
The thing that matters is meaning! It drives everything. Builders align their attention to the things that matter to them, and they know a lot about that stuff.
Jerry Porras
Source: Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters, Pages: 207
Eternity waits for your release. It dawned on Enoch that all signs, all advertisements, with all their strategic marketing phrases, still had a beauty that came before and beyond the madness of taking the power of the words and using it to sell some product, some thing. The words may have been selling something, but they were still beautiful words that spoke some other truth. Enoch felt his heart quicken its pace at the understanding, the fresh insight, realizing that he could learn from that commercial world that had always scared his soul. The world was alive and speaking out to those who would listen, and it spoke spiritual even in its containment of the external... ~ Chad Christopher Cobb, "The Sea of Milk" ~
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
John Gardner
Source: speech delivered to the Hawaii Executive Conference in Kona, Hawaii in Aprill 1993
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