What Will You Do With Your One Wild & Precious Life? Harvard MBAs Answer

Harvard MBA Tom Humphrey recalls a childhood experience that guides his life’s philosophy (Photo by Tony Deifell)

Scarbrough who had worked at Credit Suisse for five years before going to HBS, says that the following months and years were difficult for her. “I took comfort in the warmth of her last words to me, but couldn’t help but doubt their truth,” she writes in her essay. “How could she know? The hole left in my heart is filled by knowing that Love cannot disappear.  I can feel her love now as strongly as I did then. It connects us still, as she knew it would. I will let go of my doubt. I will live without fear. I will honor the strength given to me and the sacrifice made for me. I will be grateful for the experience each new day brings.”

THE ADVENTUROUS BOY WITH THE CAPE

Not all the stories involve overcoming misfortune. Many unfold in surprising and unexpected ways, rooted in childhood experiences that remain indelibly alive in how a person lives his or her life.

When Tom Humphrey was all of five-years-old, everyone called him Zac, a boy in a book who battled imaginary dragons to save his town. Humphrey would run around in a cape, pretending to be the little boy in the book read to him by his mother at night. But the boy became a consultant with Booz & Co. and then the chief operating officer of an Australian group buying company and one of his greatest fears is losing that sense of adventure that made childhood so passionate.

“An army of suits has replaced my cape, back surgery has substituted cartoon Band-Aids, and I can’t remember for the life of me the last time I built a sandcastle,” writes Humphrey. “Today, I answer to Tom, but more than ever before I aspire to live my life with the zeal of Zac. My promise is to never cease to treat life for what it is, an adventure. To discover new ideas. To imagine great things. To be an entrepreneur, write a book, start a blog, paint and climb a really big mountain. To slay, as it were, imaginary dragons.”

 A SENSE OF LOSS LEADS TO A PROFOUND REVELATION

Or consider May Lam who came to realize later in life that life’s greatest rewards are not to be found in reaching a destination, but in the often wondrous journey to get somewhere. Lam, who had been a Bear Stearns investment banking analyst and an associate at venture capital and boutique investment firm Fisher Lynch Capital, recalls the time when “a sense of loss” swept through her.

“The Tibetan monks had just washed away a sand mandala, an intricate art piece that took them weeks to build using millions of grains of colored sand,” writes Lam. “This process of creation and destruction was an exercise in living in the present without attachment. Attachment, according to Buddhist philosophy, causes suffering when change inevitably comes.

Harvard MBA May Lam learned to live in the moment, feeling and being, not just thinking and doing (Photo courtesy of Tony Deifell)