Why? (follow up to post A Promise Is A Promise)

This wasn't a normal job interview.

In fact, there was nothing normal about this meeting at all.

I sat across from a man that owned and ran a 600 million dollar business that was growing to over a Billion (yes with a Big B) this year.

The job was to run a team of recruiters, mostly men and fill over 200 open jobs. I had to lead them. Coupled with the projected business growth and industry trends, I expected this interview to be more about my qualifications.

But it wasn't.

Instead the man sitting behind the big desk asked me to tell him about myself.

Like most applicants, I am polite and started to talk about my career path, outlining what I do and how I did it. It was a sterile, egoistic interpretation of accomplishments I had made since 2000. Ironically enough he didn't care.

With dark eyes penetrating my soul he corrected me, "No, Elizabeth. Tell me about you. Do you have family? Children? Where did you come from?"

I squirmed. There was no way I could honestly disclose all of that. And, I there are few people walking this earth that actually know this about me.

Frankly, it never comes up. And, honestly, I don't disclose. That's my hiding place. I figure no one really cares, so why disclose.

He pressed on, "Tell me about you."

"Well, I'm not sure where to start."

Yeah, that was an understatement.

How do you tell a man that is a father of five that you have no family and they are all dead?

How do you begin to recount what drives you and what keeps you pressing on and that their deaths were the most blessed thing, other than cancer, that ever happened to you?

And how on earth do you weave that into a JOB INTERVIEW???

I took a long deep breath and looked out his window. The sun shined on the grass and I watched the warm Texas air blow the tree tops in the distance.

"I don't have any family. My tribe is dead."

He didn't seem shocked or uncomfortable, so I continued, carefully.

"What happened? Did they all die in a fire? An accident?"

Continuing to stare out the window, I responded, "No, I wasn't that lucky."

"Like any normal kid I went to high school and graduated at 18 in June. A month later, my oldest brother, Jimmy, died of drugs. By November of the same year, I buried my mother from lung cancer. I went to college in the fall and it continued. Within another year my other brother and grandmother died. From 18-21 years old, I was responsible for the burial of my entire family. So, while others were drinking beer and coupling off with who would be their spouses, I was a funeral director."

I swallowed hard and thought for sure this would cost me the job.

He asked....I told myself snidely.

That's about when I noticed religious articles in his office, like crosses and pictures and quotes. They were physical statements of him and his life, of his beliefs embedded his surroundings.

I continued, "For many family is their focus. For me, I have deep purpose."

It is my purpose that causes me to continually drive to leave something greater behind that is much larger than myself.

The drive is so big and the vision is so clear that each day at work or at home I am headed a direction.

The purpose, over time, has become my compass.

It runs into the deepest corners of my mind, heart and soul.

Without it, I would have been lost.

Few can survive the death of their entire family. Especially when you lose them all before legal drinking age.

This internal compass guides me in each moment of my life, knowing my time here is short. I learned life was short by 21 when I buried my own family. I learned that life itself is impermanent and that thinking it is otherwise is a grand illusion. And as if I had forgotten that, I experienced my own mortality in 2009 when I had skin cancer.

Nothing like imagining your own obituary and what it would state. At 40.

In the background I keep hearing the childhood song The Cheese Stands Alone.

I get, clearly that each breath in my body is not a dress rehearsal, but a moment in time where I may be able to make a difference, help heal, heal myself or give the gift of listening.

I choose, carefully, people that surround me. I will not allow people to treat me poorly, and I constantly monitor my own errs in my behavior.

I choose carefully my work, who I work for and what I produce. This is much more than a job, but about leadership and bringing others back to themselves for the good of others and for the company.

But make no mistake. My work is my expression through my life in which I measure what I leave behind. That and my marriage which is paramount to me.

Oddly enough, I got the job.