I interviewed 14 individuals living in our community and asked them each how they would describe what it means to be professionally successful, successful in learning and education, personally successful, successful in relationships and financially. Their answers were given by their telling their personal experiences and stories.
I have copied below part of the preface to the book. I urge you to get a copy. You will enjoy!
* * *
Happiness may well have a lot to do with how one defines the word. Likewise, whether one is successful in life certainly depends on how one defines success. If we look around us, it’s easy to believe that Americans are affected with the need to acquire “stuff.” Who has the biggest house? Who has the most cars in the driveway that aren’t junk? If those Americans whose life stories fill this book are representative, you may be surprised at what you hear.This book was written with two purposes in mind. The first, of course, is to explore the meaning of “success”. Everyone interviewed for this book lives in the small corner of Western Colorado known as the Grand Valley. The process involved my interviewing each of them privately and all were asked the same questions and in roughly the same order. I framed the questions in such a way as not to influence or guide the response. Without qualification, the telling of one’s story is the single best and richest route to learning the heart of that person. In a book written in 2008 by Scott Farnsworth and Peggy Hoyt, Like a Library Burning, a Middle Eastern proverb is quoted: “When an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.” That proverb is especially true if those old people have never shared their wisdom, their principles, their life’s learning, and their values by telling their own histories. World War II veterans leave us every year in great numbers, the libraries are going up in smoke.
Listening to a life story, even one, will reveal important lessons and values of the storyteller, even though that may not have been the purpose in the telling—and that telling is far more interesting to a listener than a two-line response to a direct question. Listen to the following story from my own childhood,—and please note that I asked you to listen, not just to read—and see what you hear and learn about the storyteller.
One day when I was probably nine years old I found myself downtown in a toy store—not that unusual for me. Of course, there was no such thing as a shopping center, so all the shopping we’d be doing was downtown. Well, I was in this toy store, which was probably the dime store, and I discovered a wonderful red tractor. It was plastic, it was dark red, and my memory tells me it was about eight or nine inches long and three or four inches high. It had black rubber treads and looked like a Caterpillar tractor, except that it was red. It cost $4. I had $3, probably all I had to my name.
What was I to do but go across the street to my dad’s office and ask him to help me out? I have no idea what I was expecting he would say or do, because he was not the kind to just reach into his pocket and dole out money to his kids anytime they thought they wanted something. But I only needed a dollar.
He was in his office wearing his white shirt and tie with his sleeves rolled up and working away on something or other. I don't remember the conversation or how I pitched it, but I remember him turning to his typewriter. I don't think he said a thing. I wish I could describe the sound that typewriter made when he inserted the paper and rolled that black roller so that the paper was ready to receive the striking keys. This was a typewriter you would expect to see in a newspaper editor's office in 1949. It was pretty big, made a lot of noise—a rhythmic clacking noise—and my dad was a superb typist. He could really make those keys sing—clickety-clack, clickety clack—and there was always that "ding" when the typewriter would near the right margin, and then that short break in the clickety-clack when Dad would reach up with his left hand, push the silver return lever so that the typewriter carriage would return to the left-hand margin, and the rhythmic clickety-clack could begin again.
So it didn't take long for him to complete the task, and when he pulled the paper from the typewriter he handed me what was titled "Chattel Mortgage." It was two short paragraphs, double spaced and essentially said that I acknowledged borrowing $1 from the "party of the first part, Kenneth A. Gammill" and promised, as the "party of the second part," to repay "said debt " by Sunday, July 3, 1949.
The second paragraph said that if I didn't pay by the due date, plus 5 cents interest, I would release title to my new tractor and give up possession until such time as the debt had been paid or "at the discretion of the party of the first part."
I know that I got the tractor, because I remember playing with it out in the front yard where I had quite a structure built in the dirt for my toy cars and trucks. I have no recollection of paying the debt or of having the tractor repossessed. I'm fairly certain, knowing my dad, that I did, in fact, pay the debt.”
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen has written a wonderful little book about storytelling called, Kitchen Table Wisdom. In it she says, “I have discovered the power of story to change people. I have seen a story heal shame and free people from fear, ease suffering and restore a lost sense of worth. I have learned that the ways we can befriend and strengthen the life in one another are very simple and very old. Stories have not lost their power…stories need no footnotes…. I have become prouder to be a human being.”
As you begin making your way along the pathways within these chapters, expect a joyful journey. You will definitely learn what some people believe it means to be successful in various aspects of their lives—professional success, financial success, success in learning and education, and personal success. And I hope you experience oh-so-much more.
This book has made me “prouder to be a human being.”
—Steve Gammill
