When it comes to jobs really what does matter?

This morning I received an email from a friend who has built a great agribusiness career and is now working in rural China.  I'm working about 100 miles from my home town and all my significant jobs and small business activity has been in a ten mile radius of where I live now.  That's not all that unusual.  We all have a relatively small footprint when considering the teaming mass of humanity.  The friend in China might say that all his work has been within a hundred yards of two or three locations.  His work impacts the food opportunities for thousands. A recent acquaintance, an F-16 and Airbus pilot has spent his entire working career in a cramped aluminum cockpit traveling at 500 MPH, his real work all within arm's reach.  Other than that confining spaces, he jokes, as all pilots joke, they simply want as many landings as takeoffs.

This afternoon I received another email from a classmate who started working at Intel early, when that company thought their future was putting computers in washing machines. Following a stint working internationally for Siemans he now heads his own Malaysian LED commercial lighting company.  His community contribution is commendable.

Even within a large organization our influence and accomplishments are measured normally by what were are doing today, even at the moment.  Our lives, too, are probably judged by others not in total but in the points of contact with each of them.  I know that gifts to the disadvantaged are forgotten, not even acknowledged, lost in the many.  There have been opportunities to mentor and be a good manager.  Those I feed good about.  We had more than our share of family challenges, taking care of seniors and chaos,  our circle of benevolence and community small in diameter.

Oddly two of my friends, each the same age as me, are facing health challenges.  One following heart surgery now has blood cancer and while improving thinks it might be time to sell the boat.  The other struck by an autoimmune issue in his liver might be adjusting his plans, now more conscious of his future and mortality.  Each of their friendships, each different, is more important than what I may or may not have accomplished from a business or economic sense in my working career.

This time away from an office, cubicle and predictable 'teaming spaces' and conference rooms, status meetings, PowerPoint presentations, planning sessions and networking opportunities has awakened me, too, to my mortality, the time left.  Independent of all financial obligations my choices would be different.  It's time to work backwards from that inevitable mortality date, focusing on the creative and innovative and giving back before being gone.