On the bus on the way to work yesterday I listened to a great Social Innovations Conversations podcast featuring Tom Tierney (“Pursuing Social Enterprise, Making a Difference“). In his speech, Tom recounts the strength and insight that he gained from conversations with John Gardner and quotes from ‘The Road to Self-Renewal’, a speech John Gardner delivered in 1993. I was inspired to track down a complete copy of the speech (which you can find here) and I think it’s definitely worth a read…

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.