The Farther You Go the Easier It Is to Love

Several years ago, I was a member of the coaching team at the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the Sam W. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. During that time, I attended and presented at several conferences hosted by the Center. One year, J.-Robert Ouimet was a keynote speaker. His life story was a life-changing experience for me.

J.-Robert Ouimet was a very successful businessman and managed a financial holding company which included the Ouimet-Cordon Bleu-Tomasso Group, founded by his father.

He had lived a privileged life of financial security and brilliant education that included profound faith in his religion. He was unsettled, wondering why he had a life of such riches and there were those who had nothing.

At one point, he intuitively reached out to Mother Theresa for guidance with a question, and a longer story made very short here, he met with her in Kolkata. Her answer included some management advice and a challenge.

His question: “Should I give away everything I have, Mother?”

Her response: “You can’t give anything away. Nothing belongs to you! It’s been loaned to you. However, if you want, you can try to manage what the Lord has loaned you in His way, with Him. And if you want to attempt that, you will have to follow His order of things in your life, an order where Love comes first. You’re married; I am not. So then, if you want to follow His hierarchy of Love in your married life and manage what He has loaned you, you will have to have your wife as the first priority in your whole life, she who moreover doesn’t belong to you; she’s been loaned to you by the Lord. And after your wife come your four children; they don’t belong to you either, just loaned to you! And after your four children come the men and women you work with. They too are loaned to you, and you will have to give an account for them!” Ouimet, J.-Robert. Everything Has Been Loaned to You, Autobiography of a Transformational Leader, Private Edition, To God Go Foundation, 2010, p. 22.

(I get teary-eyed every time I read this!)

“Nothing belongs to you! It’s been loaned to you.”

“Love comes first.”

“’And slowly, very slowly,’ she added, ‘you’ll enlarge the circle of Love because the farther you go the easier it is to love.’” Ouimet, Loaned to You, p. 22.

At that time, he had about 400 people with whom he worked. He also noticed that Mother Theresa didn’t say anything about the community or the country. He had assumed due “to the world’s logic” that one ought to do what one can to serve the greatest number of people and possibly sacrifice “free time and the quality of life with his family,” Ouimet, Loaned to You, p. 23.

As their visit ended a few very eventful days later, Mother Theresa offered, “Don’t try to manage with God without praying a lot; you won’t be able!” Ouimet, Loaned to You, p. 27.

I am not religious, so I interpret references to God as references to Source, Awareness, Consciousness, the Universe, Spirit, whatever name we give to the OneBeing from which all people, animals, nature and objects originate. And I consider prayer to be the listening and asking and being open to the Guidance of Divine Intelligence that comes to us beyond the limitations of our finite minds and thinking.

Albert Einstein said, “I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me.”

I felt privileged to hear this beautiful man speak about his life’s journey and his commitment to love.

A few years later, he shared with a colleague of mine who was on a board with him that his focus was to love more today than he did yesterday.

If each of us did as he, i.e., love more today than yesterday, just imagine … imagine.

If you would like support to more freely live the life you feel called to live, message me.