Is There is Something More?

Is There Something More?

(a lunch conversation to remember)

If I could pick one person to ride along with me as a coach on the deeper things in life, it would be Dallas Willard. Dallas is on the faculty at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, where he has been a professor of philosophy for nearly forty years. In addition to his work there, he has taught at the University of Wisconsin and held visiting appointments at UCLA and the University of Colorado. Dallas has had a profound impact on my faith and approach to life. I find him both deep and approachable— at heart he’s a plaid-shirt type of guy you would love to sit with over lunch and ask big life questions. At my invitation Dallas agreed to break bread together and share his wisdom with me (and now you) over lunch.

Success in midlife is a paradox.

Success seems to make more demands than it satisfies. Over and over I heard successful people at the peak of their power say they’d gotten much further along in life than they ever dared hope, only to discover that it still wasn’t quite enough.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Latin America’s greatest writer, describes in a New Yorker magazine article his life of scraping by as an aspiring young writer in Columbia on borrowed food, borrowed books, and free drinks. Finally he gets a piece published in El Espectador, a leading literary supplement in Bogata.

Uneasy about how well he did, he seeks out a “chance” encounter with a leading critic. Instead of talking to Gabriel about his story, the critic speaks of his audacity: “I suppose you realize the trouble you have got yourself into,” he said, fixing his green king-cobra eyes on mine. “Now you’re in the showcase of recognized writers, and there is a lot you have to do to deserve it. In any case, that story already belongs to the past,” he concluded. “What matters now is the next one.”

The quest for success allows no rest. Our sense of accomplishment seems to evaporate with the achievement of each goal, and immediately the need arises to find another goal. Is there a way off this treadmill? Are we doomed to have every achievement disappear like a soap bubble the moment we grasp it? Success doesn’t seem to produce significance, causing us to wonder: Can we find a goal that really satisfies, so that we are not continually compelled to drop each accomplishment in the dust and plunge after the next one?

Dr. Dallas Willard understands as well as anyone I know the ever-increasing demands of success achieved on our own terms. During our lunch conversation, we discussed the idea that faith, far from being irrelevant, really gives life its purpose and meaning. “Dallas, you’ve said that meaningfulness always requires a context. People feel meaningless if they don’t have either heaven for a context, or a meaningful set of relationships, or a meaningful purpose in life that might relate to their work. Is that right?” I asked him.

“Yes, exactly,” he said. “And if we don’t have some larger context than just the dreary day-to-day facts of life, negative feelings take over our lives, and that will eventually lead to some kind of crash.”

“One of my favorite stories,” Dallas continued, “is about the dog races in Florida. They train these dogs to chase an electric rabbit, and one night the rabbit broke down and the dogs caught it. But they didn’t know what to do with it. They were just leaping around, yelping and biting one another, totally confused about what was happening. I think that’s a picture of what happens to all sorts of people who catch the rabbit in their life. Whether it’s wealth or fame or beauty or a bigger house, or whatever, the prize isn’t what they thought it would be. And when they finally get it, they don’t know what to do with their lives. This is a huge factor in finishing badly: People need a rabbit that won’t break down. But that’s not something the superficial values of this world can really give them.”

“What are the characteristics of a rabbit that won’t break down?” I asked.

“First of all,” he said, “it has to be tied to something that transcends the individual life. For some people it used to be just being a member of a family, or someone saying, ‘I want to leave the world a better place.’ Maybe you heard the story about the guy up in the Northeast whose textile factory burned down, and he continued to pay his workers because he knew they wouldn’t be able to make it otherwise. That’s a beautiful story. This man had a sense of a rabbit that wouldn’t break down, at least in this life. And then, of course, I believe that people ought to have an understanding of eternal life, a context so much greater than this life alone. That’s the rabbit that will never break down.”

“You know,” I said, “your rabbit metaphor works so well! You always want to have that rabbit out ahead of you. You never want to catch the rabbit!”

“That’s exactly right. Just think about what Paul wrote in Philippians; he’s got a rabbit: ‘Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on. That’s where we want to be living, and I’d want to be living there if I lived to be ninety years of age. I want to be living there when I step from this world into the next one.”

“That’s a very visual image,” I said. “Stepping across in one brief moment into that other life, which is eternal.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “And it’s something we should be looking ahead to with confidence, the knowledge that paradise is actually in session right now. When Jesus spoke to the thief on the cross, he said, ‘Today you’ll be with me in paradise.’ It’s ongoing.”

“Well, I’m glad if I’ve helped,” Dallas said. “I think the critical difference between success and significance is that success has more to do with outcomes I’m in charge of, while significance has more to do with outcomes I’m not in charge of. The beautiful thing about significance is that we resign the outcomes to God, and we let a power beyond ourselves take care of them. Success is focused on my action, my control, my outcomes, whereas significance is found in a much larger context. I’m not running that context, and the step of surrender is crucial because surrender allows me to release the outcome.”

Lunch has been consumed along with much wisdom so I said goodbye to Dallas and headed to the next step on my lunch time odyssey for thoughts on significance.

After selling Buford Television, Inc.—a large network of cable systems across the country—in July 1999, Bob Buford has turned to investing the remaining years of his life in the lives of others. He is chairman of the board of The Buford Foundation and Leadership Network, was the co-founder and first chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, and has authored three books including Halftime and most recently Finishing Well. Finishing Well can be purchased at www.amazon.com or wherever books are sold. Bob and his wife, Linda, make their home in Dallas, Texas.