This beautiful poem was shared with me by Robert Michael Fried, Author of Igniting Your True Purpose and Passion.

As we reflect on matters this holiday, I felt that this was fitting:

Ready or not, some day it will all come to an end.

There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours or days.

All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten,

will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed.

Your grudges, resentments, frustrations and jealousies will finally disappear.

So too, your hopes, ambitions, plans and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won’t matter where you came from

or what side of the tracks you lived on at the end.

It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant.

Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter?

How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought

but what you built, not what you got but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew,

but how many will feel a lasting loss when you’re gone.

What will matter is not your memories

but the memories that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered,

by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.

It’s not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

A head, a heart and a helping hand… Growing up, this was all my mother urged me to be. This was her legacy to me, as it had been her mother’s to her.

I was born on July 2nd at Agha Khan Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. I spent the formative years of my youth trailing my mother on her endless escapades to Mathare Valley, a shantytown on the outskirts of Nairobi, where she worked with women.

Mathare is a desolate place. People live in abject poverty with no functional utilities; no clean water, no sewage system or electricity. They live in shacks made of mud, bits, and cardboard and rusty corrugated iron. Crime is rampant and the streets are permeated with drugs, prostitution, and a lethal brew of illegal alcohol called Chang’aa. Over 90% of the households are headed by single women, many of whom have been in abusive relationships and now engage in these illicit activities to survive. Their children witness the deprivation and inherit the hopelessness.

My mother set up a grassroots program, which became known as Maji Mazuri, good water in Swahili, to empower the women through alternative economic and social activities. Years earlier she had come to the United States with an improbable dream to learn, return, and transform her country of birth. The third child in a family of eight siblings, she had grown up with endemic poverty in a sweltering rural squatter town during the colonial era. On the day of her birth, the country was rife with political strife. The state of emergency had just been declared. Houses were searched at random, property seized and people detained without trial. During these years her parents were imprisoned several times leaving the children to fend for themselves.

Ironically, in a sense, both my mother’s character and the community she serves stemmed from this existence.  In my mother’s situation, because of her own mother’s tenacity, vision, and resilience, the tenuous situation calcified her character. Many were not so lucky.

When fathers were detained in British gulags during the colonial occupation of Kenya, women migrated to the city where they sought jobs as nannies, hawkers, cooks, and cleaners. Perhaps because of their sheer numbers or the scarcity of opportunity most were unable to find work and had to resort to other ways to subsist. They camped in the barren lands skirting the city, forming shanty villages that were not quite rural, not quite modern. As their numbers exploded and resources became scarcer these settlements mushroomed into squalor towns. Poverty wrapped its gruesome tentacles around their lives, snuffed out their hope and despondency paralyzed their desire to do or be more. Families cracked under the pressure of paucity and their children fell through the cracks.

While I cannot compare my childhood to a child’s in Mathare, my own lifestyle was not lavish by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve often recounted my high school years with an incredulous feeling that I actually survived carrying buckets of water half a mile to my dormitory so I could take a cold bath in the grimy shower stall that looked like it had not received a good scrub since the British left campus in 1963. I remember scraping salt off the brown beat-up benches that served as dining tables (without chairs) so I could spice up the boiled kale we called bitter herbs and devoured almost daily. I never complained because I knew I was part of an elite group; among the fortunate few, who even got to high school. I had my eye on college. Then the prospect of coming to America was grim and unlikely. My mother’s income as a social worker was minuscule, in fact sometimes non-existent. College was costly and even small scholarships were few and far between. I must have sent out over a thousand applications in vain.

Then the letter came, they had a spot for me in a small Liberal Arts university in the Midwest called Ohio Wesleyan. Tuition was paid. I owed that to an incredible couple I met on their visit to Kenya. They had promised that when they returned to the U.S. they would keep in touch and when they did they did more than keep their word. They rooted for me, spoke to everyone they knew, scoured schools, and searched for an opportunity. They found one. Four years later I thanked them from the podium where I delivered a graduation speech as the president of my class. I had my degree in Chemistry and a minor in Philosophy.

As I stand here straddling two nations I often wonder what shaped my destiny. I have one foot in the world’s wealthiest economy and another in one of the world’s poorest.  In America men live free in dignity and security, striving for self-actualization. As a child, my peers from Mathare were barely subsisting. With over 60 percent of the population in Kenya living below the poverty line, how was it that I escaped into the new world and was not the pregnant teen in the slums of East Africa?

I have engaged in many passionate arguments about why Africa is engulfed in the jaws of calamity. I know of many of my countrymen whose lives are scarred and twisted, in spite of their intelligence and ingenuity. Why? What went wrong? Why has the sleeping Giant still not stirred? The answers remain elusive to me. Instead, all I have is a passion for peace, a hunger to help, and a sense of hope that there’s got to be a new beginning. One day our children will have the future they deserve. Curbed in a clock of global responsibility by my international experiences, I like to think I have moved beyond my race, creed, and tribal allegiance. In the faces of so many people I have met around the world, I recognize pieces of myself. I believe we are all bound by our unwavering humanity, all different yet all the same and significant.

My mother taught me many things, for which I am immensely grateful. She taught me to live simply, speak kindly, love generously, and care deeply. She shared with me her abiding faith in the possibilities this nation provides. She imagined me running with the best because she believed, not only in my abilities but in the generosity of this nation. What she lacked in material wealth, she has an abundance of in wisdom. She taught me to question my motives and put what I deem important at the heart of my mission.

So, I often ask myself, what are my core values? What do I want to achieve? Like many of my friends and peers, I come up with a personal game plan at the beginning of the year and evaluate how I’m tracking every quarter. I also have five, ten, and twenty-year goals but my attitudes and opinions morph at every stage of my life. Whether I choose to work for a for-profit, non-profit, or government organization, I feel called to make a difference. My heart remains open to counsel and the instantaneous advert of a new adventure. I am curious about the possibilities and thrilled with the promise of the future.

My story began with my grandmother. Her story was one of willpower persistence and principle. She pushed herself past anyone’s point of endurance so her children would have hope, a future. She worked day and night on her farm so that she had enough for her children, enough to share, and enough to sell. She had her children out of bed working before dawn. Late at night, they all studied by the light of a kerosene lamp with their feet dipped in cold water to focus and ward off sleep. She instilled in them the value of sweat, smarts, service, discipline, and delayed gratification. They in turn passed these values on to us.

Today arthritis has stolen the spring in my grandmother’s step and age has mellowed the intensity in her eyes. It is hard to believe she is the same lady who tore through the fields with a hoe or a sickle and taught women in the village zero-grazing so they too could provide for their children.

Still, she carries herself with grace, and the determination that rings in her voice speaks to her pioneering spirit. My grandmother was the first lady in her country to cycle to the dairy and drive to the market. She was the woman who saved her scarce pennies for a sewing machine so her children would not go naked. She is the only Kikuyu grandmother I know who can talk to her grandchildren intelligently about Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez, revolutionaries who fought for freedom many miles from her East African village.

I hope that my life is a tribute to my grandmother, who showed me persistence and valor, my mother who has the love of life, and the people along the way who have given me joy and meaning to it all. I hope that my life says I had a generous attitude, that I worked hard loved much, and learned from my mistakes. I hope my legacy is that I had a vision and lived with a mission and that my perpetual optimism was a force multiplier.

In America, I have had a decent shot at life and I am certain the doors of opportunity remain open. As I pursue my own aspirations, I still hold the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper. My experiences have tested and transformed me. I have been very fortunate and successfully navigated many of life’s land mines. I know there’s more to come. An old Swahili adage translates to “ore must go through fire to become gold.”

My past has taught me many lessons. I know, as the ever optimist I am, I will have faith in the face of uncertainty and hope will remain the wind beneath my wings pushing me far beyond where I garner my own immense potential can take me. I know the best is yet to be and this awakens in me a sense of urgency that will not be squelched.

I have built my castles in the air. It’s time to put foundations under them.

Bishop Spong was a big inspiration to me in college, when I was seeking, questioning and evaluating my religious believes – attempting to reconcile my scientific inculcation with my spiritual sentiment.

At the time I was trying to fathom the mystery of the divine-human interaction.

In his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Spong asked questions that stuck with me:  Do we cling to our childish fantasies of a supreme being because they are the last such fantasies it’s ok to keep? Were these theistic images of God the Father, Protector or Punisher so imbued in us since childhood that we are hesitant to challenge them because we fear we might get punished?

An atheist leaning would postulate that if this is the case then the center of religion is the power of human reason. I’m not certain I’m willing to go that far. So in conclusion I figured the childhood lessons were too imbued in me to contemplate otherwise or I want to believe in an all powerful being that is in control when I am not. Like a year round Santa – dishing out gifts for good behavior.

Still I question the literal acceptance of the biblical tales I grew up learning and regurgitating. I’ve often wondered if Jesus had really ascended into heaven, wouldn’t he still be out there, in the galaxy, moving at a meteoric speed somewhere past the milkyway? At the time the story was told people believed the earth was flat. Now we know it’s a round infinitely small aspect of the universe.

Yet I want to be good, serve my sister, care about my neighbor. I want to believe that I am accountable to something or someone for the way I choose to live my life. I want to have a moral compass and the one I know or understand is the Christian one.

So today I am a Christian because to me being a disciple of Jesus does not require me to make a literalized credal affirmation of a theistic God who supposedly invaded our world and lived among us for a time in the person of Jesus. It only requires me to be empowered by him to initiate the presence of God in him by living fully, loving wastefully and by having the courage to be all that God created me to be. It means that I will commune with God only to the degree that I can give my life, my love and my being away to others without fear of losing myself.

A friend sent me a story today that certainly struck a cord. It questioned whether non-profit organizations serve or harm Africa. That question has been at the crux of the internal battle of my life, given that my mother is a social worker who has dedicated her life to the service of folks who are suffering and I spent several years of my youth at global multicultural conferences, telling the “African Story.”

The African Story is not dissimilar to that of many places. It’s not one story. It’s a story of many faces and places, beautiful and gruesome.

I’ve certainly been blessed to be in a position where I’ve witnessed some of these faces, and told the story from many places… I’ve spent lots of time reflecting on the African Story, with the unequivocal realization that there is no African Story.

Ah, the “African Story” – Allow me to explain… or can I?

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I’ve told the story of a desolate place where a helping hand sometimes not-so-momentarily means a hand-out, and even there, sometimes in spite of the insurmountable obstacles I’ve seen consistent glimmers of ingenuity, creativity and innovation that truly inspires.

I’ve told the story of blatant exploitation by businesses, expatriates, politicians, and ordinary people pit against each other. I’ve told the story of negligent leadership, spineless governance, and pitiful resource management.

But there’s also the story of scarcely decorated “ordinary” African, doing extraordinary things: phenomenal African innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers and does – movers and shakers.

Here are a few in my Facebook network I think the world should know about:

Deejay Slim  |  Anthony Mukuria   |  Joseph Mucheru

Miriam Chemmoss   |  Andrew Macharia | Trevor Katende

Bernard Kahiga  |  Wandia Mbuvi  |  Bernard Wandie 

Lemayian Chris Kimojino  |  David Kobia  |  David Kuria 

Kiriro Samuel   |   Mawuli Dake   |   Allan Stylez

Emma Too  |  Petronella Lugemwa  |  Grace Maina

May Lugemwa   |   Chibuzo Atukpawu   |  Kike Aluko

Ato Ulzen-Appiah  |   Adaora Asala  |  Lesley Gene Agams 

Timothy Thairu   |  Onome Ofoman   |  Robert DjFresh Ndungú

Gifty Kwakye  |  Juma Mbwana  |   Mũthoni Ngatia |  Temitope “Pleasesaythe Tope” Sho | Wangui Chiuri…

In her TED talk (one of my favorite, this year!), Ory Okolloh tells the story of her life and her family — and of the complexity and contradictions in the African story.

The African story has often been about crises, war, poverty and pain, often times at the root of which people sought to profit.  In truth the African story is not like so many others around the world – it’s the human story, laced with change and challenge, in which people have faced many hurdles, but somehow made things work.

The African story is as vibrant as a savannah sunset – fiery red in places, glowing yellow in others… a story where some way somehow the horizon holds a golden promise. Tomorrow is yet untold.

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW, THE HAZE IS GONE!

Wooohooo! I can see clearly now. The haze is gone! For 10 years I’ve been unable to focus, literally.

Well, at least not on anything that wasn’t right in front of me. Woke up every morning and the alarm clock on my bedside was hazy. I fumbled around for my glasses, which I had dropped somewhere the night before. Often they had fallen over the edge of the bed or were lying beneath a hip, mine or the person’s I was lying next to (when I woke up next to someone). Kinda felt like the equivalent of asking for your dentures or your hair piece. ” Would you scoot over please, you’ve got my eyes beneath your thigh?”

I’d popped the lenses back in numerous times and now they jutted out rudely from the frames, reminding me of the cruel treatment I had subjected them to. Then finally they were so warped that the lens would not stay and tape, glue tac, even super glue offered no solution. So I had to fumble around for the first two hours every morning, until I could wear my contacts – which I tried not to wear for more than fourteen hours straight but often did. Because in the evening I’d be so exhausted I’d fall into bed with my contact lenses on – for a “nap,” which I consistently woke up from at 3am.

So finally I had Lasik done. For a case like mine it truly wasn’t just cosmetic. Heck, it was dire a medical necessity. Couldn’t phanthom going on the way I was and keeping my eyesite for much longer. In fact I noticed as I was getting rid of my contact lens solution it had expired 2 months prior. I was definitely a bad case of blindness in the making.

Then Lasik. Not just any Lasik …Limberg Lasik! Ten months of anticipation, 10 weeks of preparation, 10 minutes on the operating table and it’s over. Just like that! And I see. Clearly now. Five days later my vision is crisper than it’s ever been in my life. They tell me from here it just gets better and better.

Woohooo! I’m living life and lovin’ it!

The best things in life are worth waiting for. So wait for me, I’ll be right back.

So I’ve learnt a few things in my life – I’ve learnt that kisses aren’t contracts and presents are promises. And after a while even the sunshine burns if you get too much. But life is too short to live with regrets. Love the people who treat you right leave the ones that don’t. Believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance take it. If it changes your life let if. No one said it would be easy. They just promised it would be worth it!

When saying less is more: Here are five situations from Tamara J. Erickson, a McKinsey Award-winning author, when saying less would have been more. What would you add?

1. Describing one more product feature, after the customer’s facial expression indicates that she has already decided to buy. By describing an additional feature, the only thing you can possibly do is trigger an objection the customer had never considered.

2. Beginning any meeting or speech by letting your audience know that you are poorly prepared or prepared at the last minute. At a minimum, this demonstrates a lack of respect for the importance of the event or other participants. In most cases, you also decrease the authority of your conclusions. My partner did this, I wanted to shoot her.

3. Asking a question that shows you have absolutely no idea about something you really should understand. I know, people often say there’s no such thing as a dumb question. But, frankly, that’s just . . . well, dumb. Sometimes it’s much wiser to do some research (or ask a friend) to get grounded, and then go back with “smart” questions. Wish someone had handed me the manual with that rule.

4. Trying for a second laugh after your first spontaneous comment proves amusing. (Think of this as the George Costanza rule for any of you who are Seinfeld fans.) It almost never works. Quit while you’re ahead.

5. Assuring people things won’t happen that people never imaged would. Like, “Rest assured this plane has sufficient fuel to get us to our destination.”

Shhhhh . . .

I can’t pretend I know much about the War in Iraq, even though I’ve read Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies, and Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack… Well, I had to read the latter for a class in college that I really can’t remember. I even read Michael Gordon’s Cobra II – yea, obviously on occasion I have too much time on my hands.

Still there’s definitely one thing that gets me – the cost of the war.

What would I spend my tax dollars on if I had the choice?

Cost of War: 720 Million/Day

How would you spend it?

FOR THAT PRICE, YOU COULD PROVIDE:

34,904 FOUR-YEAR SCHOLARSHIPS FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

1,153,846 CHILDREN WITH FREE SCHOOL LUNCHES

1,274, 336 HOMES WITH RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY

95, 364 HEAD-START PLACES FOR CHILDREN

6,482 FAMILIES WITH 3 BEDROOM HOMES

12, 478 ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

423,529 CHILDREN WITH HEALTHCARE

163,525 PEOPLE WITH HEALTHCARE

84 NEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

EVERY DAY

Source: Based on the work of nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and colleague Linda Bilmes – The Cost of War Project.