I believe that helping others is the most significant contribution anyone can make in life. I’m grateful that we’ve developed to the point where we’re able to do it.
Just think about the difference this woman’s proactivity has made in her own life, in the lives of the members of her family, and in the lives of all those who have benefited from her contribution. What a tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit! Instead of allowing her circumstances to overpower the vision she had inside, she held on to it and nurtured it so that it eventually became the driving force that empowered her to rise above those circumstances.
Notice how, in the process, she and her family moved through each of the four levels mentioned in the title of this chapter.
Survival
At first this woman’s consuming concern was for the basic need for food. She was hungry. Her child was hungry. The one focus of her life was to make enough to feed her son and herself so that they wouldn’t starve. This need to survive was so basic, so fundamental, so vital that even when her circumstances changed, she was still “obsessed with fighting that monster called hunger” and “could not let that go.”
This represents the first level: survival. And many families, many marriages, are literally fighting for it—not only economically but also mentally, spiritually, and socially as well. These people’s lives are filled with uncertainty and fear. They’re scrambling to make it through the day. They live in a world of chaos with no predictable principles to operate from, no structures or schedules to depend on, no sense of what tomorrow is going to hold. They often feel that they are victims of circumstances or of other people’s injustice. They’re like a person who has been rushed into the emergency room and then put into the intensive care unit: Their vital signs may be present but are unstable and unpredictable.
Eventually these families may hone their survival skills. They may even have brief breathing spaces between their efforts to survive. But their day-in, day-out objective is simply to survive.
Stability
Going back to the story, you’ll notice that through her efforts and help from others, this woman eventually moved from survival to stability. She had food and the basic necessities of life. She even had a stable marriage relationship. Although she was still struggling with scars from the “survival” days, she and her family were functional.
This represents the second level, which is what many families and marriages are trying to achieve. They’re surviving, but different work schedules and different habit patterns result in their hardly ever getting together to talk about what would bring more stability to the marriage or family. They live in a state of disorganization. They don’t know what to do; they have a sense of futility and feel trapped.
But the more knowledge these individuals acquire, the more hope they get. And as they act on this knowledge and begin to organize some schedules and some structures for communication and problem-solving, even more hope emerges. The hope overcomes ignorance and futility. And the family, the marriage, becomes stable, dependable, and predictable.
So they’re stable—but they’re not yet “successful.” There’s a degree of organization so that food is provided and bills are paid. But the problem-solving strategy is usually limited to “flight or fight.” People’s lives touch from time to time in order to deal with the most pressing issues, but there’s no real depth in the communication. People generally find their satisfactions away from the family. “Home” is just a place that has to take you in. There’s boredom. Interdependence is exhausting. There’s no sense of shared accomplishment. There’s no real happiness, love, joy, or peace.
Success
The third level, success, involves accomplishing worthy goals. These goals can be economic, such as having more income, managing existing income better, or agreeing to cut expenses in order to save or have money for education or a planned vacation. They can be mental, such as learning some new skill or getting a degree. You’ll notice that most of the goals reflected in this woman’s story were in these two areas. They involved economic well-being and education. But goals can also be social, such as having more time together as a family with good communication or establishing traditions. Or they can be spiritual, such as creating a sense of shared vision and values and renewing their faith and common beliefs.
In successful families, people set and achieve meaningful goals. “Family” matters to people. There’s genuine happiness in being together. There’s a sense of excitement and confidence. Successful families plan and carry out family activities and organize to accomplish different tasks. The focus is on better living, better loving, and better learning, and on renewing the family through fun family activities and traditions.
But even in many “successful” families, a dimension is missing. Look back once again at this woman’s account. She said, “For some time I was very busy working and raising my family, and I thought: I’ve done it. I got my degree. I have a successful family. I should be happy. But then I realized that my vision had included helping others, and that still wasn’t part of my life.”
Significance
The fourth level, significance, is where the family is involved in something meaningful outside itself. Rather than being content to be a successful family, the family has a sense of stewardship or responsibility to the greater family of mankind, as well as a sense of accountability around that stewardship. The family mission includes the leaving of some kind of legacy—of reaching out to other families who may be at risk, of participating together to make a real difference in the community or in the larger society, possibly through their church or other service organizations. This contribution brings a deeper and higher fulfillment—not just to individual family members but to the family as a whole.
The woman in this story felt a sense of responsibility and began to contribute in her own life. And because of her example, her children developed it in their lives. Families ideally would reach the point where this sense of stewardship or responsibility would be an integral part of their family mission statement—something the entire family would be involved in.
At times that might mean that one family member would contribute in a particular way and the rest of the family would work together to support that effort. In our own family, for example, it meant that we all rallied around Sandra to support her when she spent hours working as president of a women’s service organization. We tried to provide support and encouragement for some of our children when they chose to devote a couple of years to church service in foreign lands. We’ve all felt a sense of unity and contribution over the years as the family supported me in my work—and later some of our children’s work—in the Covey Leadership Center (now Franklin Covey). All of these things have been family efforts, though not all family members were involved directly in making the contribution.
There are other times when the entire family is directly involved in something such as a community project. I know of one family that works together to provide visits and entertaining videos for elderly people in rest homes. This began when their own grandmother had a stroke that forced them to put her in a rest home, and it seemed the only thing she really enjoyed was videos. The family decided that they would visit her at least once a week and bring her different old movies from the video store. It became such a success with the grandmother and with other patients that they started getting videos for others as well. Through all the years the five children in this family were teenagers, they continued serving in this manner. And it helped these kids not only to stay close to their grandmother but also to serve many other older people.
Another family spends each New Year’s Eve cooking for and feeding the homeless. They hold several planning meetings beforehand, deciding what they want to serve, how to decorate the tables, and who’s going to take care of what responsibility. It’s become a joyous tradition for them to work together to provide a wonderful evening in the county soup kitchen for the poor.
I’m aware of many other families in which contribution has meant, at least for a time, rallying around an extended or intergenerational family member in need. One husband and father shared how his family did this:
Near the end of 1989 my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. For sixteen months we fought it with chemotherapy and radiation. Finally, near the end of 1990, he was no longer able to take care of himself, and my mother—who was in her 70s—was unable to provide the help he needed.
My wife and I were therefore confronted with some very serious decisions. After discussing it together, we decided to move my mother and father into our home. We put my father in a hospital bed in the middle of our family room, and that’s where he stayed for the next three months until he died.