Guest Post

I was always the youngest amongst my peers at work. At age 19, I was the youngest manager of a retail business. Age 29, the youngest director they’d had at the multibillion-dollar company where I worked. Age 32, the youngest executive MBA in my graduate class. Age 36, I was the youngest VP in my organization.

With the holidays coming up, we've been thinking about the perfect gift. The kind that makes you go, "Wow, this is exactly what I wanted!" None of those awkward moments when you're smiling on the outside but secretly wondering, "What am I going to do with this?"

It’s been a few weeks and I’m still reflecting on Saturday night’s high school reunion. Forty years ago, a group of 84 young women left for university believing they would seize the world. Then last Saturday, 56 of them, exactly 66%, reunited in Sydney, Australia.

I’m reading more books than ever. I have a long list in the not-yet-purchased queue, and a good 8+ that I’ve started but not finished. I wander between books rather than hunkering down with one at a time. It’s a bit of my wiring, I suspect. My style has always been to maintain a plethora of options, to ride each wave to the next wave to yet another wave, rather than riding one crest all the way to the comfort of shore.

A few weeks ago, I made my usual trek to work. I got in the car and tried to catch up on texts and emails pausing to remind myself of my goal for the week. What I had re-defined success would be for me twenty-four hours later. I took breaths, found integrity, thanked my driver, and hurried across the stars that line the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Somehow, I was already normalizing passing by the giant marquis inviting others into this project, through the lobby of the iconic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, past the Marilyn Monroe mirror, down the steps Shirley Temple learned to tap dance on and into the theater.

Since I’ve become a part of the MEA community the past two years, the notion of “purpose” has become more conscious to me since it's one of the MEA pillars. I’ve enjoyed hanging around with purpose…learning about others’ relationship with purpose and exploring mine.

This was shared by a friend. The source states that it was borrowed and they don't know who to credit it to, but thank you, whoever you are! If you have not yet seen this, you may find some important life lessons. It feels like a good Thanksgiving lesson.

At the beginning of the holiday season, transitions seem particularly difficult. What we are exposed to and learn at MEA is how the “messy middle" is a challenge that we are often not prepared for.

When I turned 60, I hoped for a river cruise down the Seine. But instead, this midwestern wife, mother, GG to her grandbabies, devoted yogi and magazine writer discovered that her husband, the one who never looked at another woman in my presence, was leading a secret life.

One: “According to Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species,’ it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives. But, the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” - Leon C. Megginson