Overview

Video

Table Of Contents

Introduction

View Introduction as PDF 

The concept of Lifeworth grew out of our discussions—as two brothers in our late-fifties—about purpose and meaning in our lives. Over the past few years, we have been talking about and trying to discover what the next phase of our lives would look like. Our children have graduated from school and are successfully making their way in their own worlds. We were both wondering, to differing degrees and in different ways, about the difference between "networth" and the worth of life.

Like most baby boomers, we were approaching a transition point in our lives, the transition into the second half, third quarter, or seventh inning (depending upon your sports metaphor of choice). We began to experience "the Clock." The Clock is the ever present clock of time, the life clock, the clock over which we have no control — the clock our youth had allowed us to overlook for so many years. But, unlike most sports clocks, this clock has no stop time function! At some unknown point, the ticking of the life clock began to echo ever so slightly in the background of our thoughts. We came face to face with our own limitations and our own mortality. We began to experience a desire to live our lives more fully and to make a difference in the lives of others, more so than we had to this point. We began to ask:

• "Is this all there is?"
• "Is there more to life than money and networth?"
• "Am I living the life I want to live, and is it a worthwhile life?"
• "How will I be remembered when I am gone? What legacy will I leave?"
• "Will I have left my world a better place?"

Continue Reading the Introduction as PDF 

Chapter One – Loosing Your Marbles

View Chapter One – Loosing Your Marbles as PDF 

We don't know if you ever played marbles when you were a kid. But as little boys growing up on the prairies, playing marbles was a great pastime. It was fun, competitive, and, in a way, it helped to subconsciously shape our adult lives. We don't see the game being played much anymore. This simple, inexpensive game seems to have been replaced by expensive, fancy electronic ones, often encouraging time alone with very little human interaction.

For those of you who don't know the fabulous game of marbles, there are actually a number of different games to play. Here is one version: Any number of kids prepare the "game board" by digging four coffee cup-sized holes in the dirt at the corners of an imaginary square, with a fifth hole in the middle of the square. Each kid takes out a marble from a coveted bag of marbles and starts at the first hole that has been agreed upon by the group. After deciding who will go first, players cradle the marble in their first finger, held in place by the thumb, ready to “flick? the marble toward the first hole. The kids take turns "knuckling down" to shoot their marble at the next hole, or at someone else%s marble. What skill, technique, and eyeballing of the lay of the land went into those shots! We became eagle-eyed hunters, scanning the game board for any slight dips or humps in the dusty ground, a tiny pebble, or a dry leaf that might deflect our marble from its target.

Continue Reading Chapter One – Loosing Your Marbles as PDF