Chapter 157

What is your net worth to the world?

Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying that your net worth to the world is what remains when you bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. I am not so sure it has anything at all to do with habits. Perhaps it has to do with contributions and withdrawals.

This is a difficult matter to keep uppermost in your mind, because of our human obsession with ourselves, it is just so hard to think about the wider issues at play with any consistency. But while this is true, our net worth to the world may be the marker of our lives. That which shows all the ways we matter most. Or in the words of Earl, “All we really have is what we give away.”

So what is it that we give away? Our energy, our efforts, our expertise, our education, our treasure and our resources - in exchange for the world to be a better place for millions? But what is our definition of “better”. This is very pertinent, because in my 25 plus years of living abroad, I have seen Americans come and build buildings the locals neither can maintain nor need. I have seen American’s come and build programs and buildings, that are dismantled as soon as the American’s leave. Clearly there are many moments when American’s decide that something is “better” and the recipients of that “better”don’t think it is at all.

This is why I define my work as helping the highly accomplished flourish. Yes I decide who is highly accomplished - by their deeds and actions. But they decide what it means to flourish - or be better. I think my net worth to the world grows each time I successfully complete my work.