I got home today, just before lunch. I had just returned from a very significant and exciting business meeting. I was a little revved up. A business idea I am working on is really taking shape and I was caught up in the moment.
But as I started to go to the kitchen, I realized something I had never noticed. For the first time I can remember, I stopped in the living room and looked around the room and sized up what I saw. The room and the things in the room are very ordinary and a little out-of-date style-wise.
The house is a nice house but not extraordinary. We have had the furniture for a few years and it is showing a little bit of wear and tear. But it is home. It is familiar and comfortable. It has the feel of my comfortable loafers, which are a bit worn, but they feel great on my feet. And in this setting and to the people who share this space with me, I am viewed as mostly a known quantity, without huge distinction. I am defined by the people who share this place with me not by my accomplishments or my possessions. I am defined by my relationship with them.
In that moment, I was forced to put several things into perspective. Out in the business world, I cultivate a particular image. My reputation and my accomplishments precede me. As a businessman, there are issues of image and status and position. In the business world, I am also judged by the clothes I wear, the car I drive, where I live and how well I follow through on a project. At home, those things do not count as much. The standards by which I am judged at home are set to a much higher benchmark. What happens in my home ultimately proves to be infinitely more important to me than anything which happens in my professional life. That is as it should be.
In that moment of realization today, I thought about Warren Buffett, one of the most successful and wealthy men in the world today. He lives in the same house he has lived in for fifty years. That speaks volumes to the substance of the man. He knows what is important. He could well afford a home worth millions of dollars. But he chooses to remain where he is.
Today I understood maybe for the first time, why when we are at our home, it is a very different experience. We are more grounded and forced to keep things in perspective. We are not allowed to become too full of ourselves or to strut around with an inflated ego. At home, no one will or should put up with that sort of attitude. It is a place where the only person each of us is allowed to be is ourself. Home is a port in the storm where we do not have to wear a particular mask to fit in or make it. Home is a place where we can find acceptance without judgment and a refuge from the hurly-burly of the world.
There is that part of our lives which thrusts us into the frenetic world of business with all the excitement and the stresses. There is that part of our lives centered on our family, our friends and the people who mean something to us. For some people, their work has become their lives. That isn't what our lives should be about. We must always remember that we work so we can have a life, not the other way around. And if we are going to find the balance we so desperately need in our lives, we should always view our home as the central place in our lives and not an outward reflection of our professional status or our successes in business.
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