I had the luxurious good fortune recently to hike the Catskills west of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. The trails were absent people; the forest was lush and green beyond belief. One day we found a trail that changed from a pine needle-strewn carpet to a steep incline where the footpath was replaced by light blue arrows painted occasionally on granite that formed the foundation for the glacier-carved ridges. Up we climbed until the natural rock was replaced by carefully nestled stone steps, each one weighing hundreds of pounds and positioned to make our footfalls an easy ascent to the top of the mountain. That lovingly built stairway went up for another half mile.
As we rested at the summit, the Hudson River winding a couple thousand feet below us, it occurred to me that by the weathered and moss-covered surface of the stone, the stairway's placement must have occurred more than a hundred years ago. Maybe longer than that. The people who constructed that portion of the trail must have had to climb up every day with heavy tools on their backs. No horses or mules could have made it up the granite scramble that preceded the rocky steps. They cut the stone, lifting the huge pieces into place, and carefully leveled them so that hikers could climb the steepest part of the mountain trail as easily as a hotel staircase.
Several years ago, when 11 of us founded a different type of investment company, I attended a business dinner comprised of people who generally represented the leaders of companies, investors and advisers to businesses. Most of the attendees were in the top few percent of the population in terms of personal income and net worth. Some of them would not be recognizable as such, if you met them on the street, while others seemed to go out of their way to present an elite persona. Nearly everyone in the room was over the age of 50.
During the cocktail hour prior to dinner and speeches, a man standing next to me in a natty suit looked over, paused and said, “So, what do you do?”
This is the question that reveals so much. It says that they are not really interested in getting to know you as a person, and that you will be evaluated according to how impressively you might be “doing.” And whoever asks the question first is attempting to be in the dominant position. “I’ll ask the questions here,” says the detective to the suspect.
I explained that I was embarking on an experiment to see if long-term principles were as effective in creating return on investment as I suspected. I described the strategy and philosophy that formed the basis of our investment company’s approach. That puzzled him.
“With that time horizon, you won’t likely be alive to see the return!” he concluded with amazement. “What’s the logic of that?”
It was clear that my answer would be insufficient to explain the rationale, but I replied anyway, “It’s not about me.”
The trail workers who constructed that achingly beautiful path to the sky above the Hudson Valley had set out to create something that would outlive them, possibly for centuries. Cheri and I were the beneficiaries of their anonymous gift. And the people who did the work sacrificed more than those who paid for it. Contributing money is good. Contributing the time of your life is a higher sacrifice, perhaps the highest.
We all benefit from the gifts of those who no longer walk the world and whom we’ll never know. What are we doing right this minute to contribute to those who will come after us? What figurative and literal stone steps, which we have laid, will they climb to view the beauty of the world?
Sewitch is an entrepreneur and business psychologist. He serves as the vice president of global organization development for WD-40 Company. Sewitch can be reached at sewitch1@cox.net.
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