Pointing Toward Maturity
Fred Smith Sr.
To tackle problems in a masterly way, the leader must see things whole as well as in separate parts.
While I was speaking at a church in Cincinnati, a visitor from India walked by the auditorium and heard me. He took a seat in the back.
On Monday morning, he called to ask if we could meet for lunch. I discovered this man was a Ph.D. in chemistry and a devoted follower of Gandhi.
I asked, "What have you observed about Americans?"
"Well," he said, "you Americans are segmented. A large segment of your life is devoted to making money. You have another segment for family, another for social interaction, and yet another segment for religion. But they're not tied together with any philosophical thread. Each of them stands alone, almost as if you are a different person in each of these roles."
"Tell me about Dr. Gandhi," I asked.
"Dr. Gandhi had all the areas of interest I have just mentioned, but in his life, each was an expression of his religion."
I realized this chemist had made a profound observation about American life. I also realized his comment about Gandhi was one of the greatest compliments I had ever heard paid to a person. The focused, unsegmented life is a rarity today.
Even the church, at least in our culture, sometimes has a tendency to segment persons. We take the segment of a person's life called "spiritual" and dress it up differently from the rest. We bring the person into a different culture on Sunday, seat him with people he may not see during the week, and use a peculiar vocabulary. All this has little to do with his job at the canning factory or computer terminal. Few people think of their business as an expression of their religion. Few think about time spent with family as a religious act, or social occasions as ...
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