What’s In the Box?

Thomas Merton was a highly regarded American Trappist monk, author, and theologian. He once said, “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”

I think we all should confront ourselves with the question, “What am I living for?” We may conclude we are living for something that does not have real value.

There’s a story in my book, The True Measure of a Man, about Bob Buford, a very prosperous businessman and founder of Halftime Institute. In the story, he shares a conversation that changed his life:

A turning point in my own life was a conversation I had twenty years ago with Michael Kami, one of this country’s top strategic planners . . . I made an appointment with Mike to explore my own [future] plans. I wanted to get his professional advice about some of the options I was examining. During the course of the conversation, Mike asked me to describe my basic interests and motivations, so I began telling him about all the things that interested me. But suddenly Mike stopped me in midsentence and asked a question that changed my life— “What’s in the box?” The question took me by surprise. I didn’t get it at first. In the box? What does that mean? So I asked, “What do you mean by that, Mike?”

“What’s central to your life at this point?” Mike said. “If there were only room for one thing in your life, what would it be?” He took a pencil and sketched out a small square on a sheet of paper and said, “From what you’re telling me, Bob, there are two things at the top of your list of priorities, your religious faith and your career.” Mike indicated that the shorthand for that was a dollar sign and a cross. And he pointed at the box and said, “Before I can help you decide how to focus your interests, you have to decide: What’s in the box?”

Would it be the dollar sign or the cross? Suddenly I knew I had a choice to make.

Now and then, in the midst of life’s complexities, we come to a point where the options are limited and clear. This was one of those moments. What would it be for me—more money, more success, or more energy transferred to the calling I sensed so strongly? I considered those two options for a minute or so— which seemed like an eternity—and then I said, “Well, if you put it that way, it’s the cross.” And then I reached over to pencil a cross into Mike’s box.

That one decision helped to frame everything I’ve done since that day. It wasn’t that the small cross indicated that the work I felt called to do, to serve God, was my only loyalty in [life]. There were also family, customers, employees, recreation, and the like, but that little cross has designated the primary loyalty for my life between then and now.

This is, I believe, one of the most crucial issues in all of life. What is in your box? What is the primary loyalty in your life? For each of us, something is in the box, but are we willing to confess that it might be something other than God?

The True Measure of a Man is available on Amazon and our website. Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.