As Our Stakes Rise

As we age, our stakes rise.

We have more people and communities we are responsible for. We have more influence over the people who look to us for leadership and care. We have more players to coach and develop. We have more mouths to feed.

Then comes a breaking point—we all have one. The point at which we feel we can’t carry any more. And yet, if we reach this point, it’s often because we’ve proven ourselves trustworthy enough to carry heavy responsibilities. So more come.

As we pass this breaking point, the temptation is to become more transactional in our affairs. To close our hearts. We try to conserve and retreat. We try to be more efficient in our interactions so we can save what we have left.

It’s like Bilbo Baggins says—we feel like too little butter scraped over too much bread. And so we lock ourselves down and keep as much as we can at arm’s length.

But this is precisely the temptation we can’t succumb to. People need more from us as our stakes rise, not less.

They need us to open our hearts more, not less. Our patience, our courage, our care are needed in fuller measure. Those we serve—our family, our friends, our neighbors, even kind strangers—need our spirit more deeply, not less.

As we age, our stakes rise. And so the demands on our spirit increase.

As I’ve aged, I’ve needed a spiritual practice more, because the demands on my spirit have felt enormous. The choice, at times, has been to shrink—or to meet the moment by leaning into faith to nourish and strengthen my spirit.

I wrote Character by Choice: Letters on Goodness, Fatherhood, and Becoming Better on Purpose in a deliberately secular way. For my sons, I wanted to argue for choosing goodness over power without simply saying, “this is what God’s word teaches.” If faith didn’t call them, I wanted the argument to stand on its own.

But the more I wrote, the more I felt called to the divine, and to communities of faith and spirituality. The deeper I went, the more I realized I couldn’t strengthen my spirit alone.

If you’re someone who takes responsibility for the needs of others, my point here isn’t to proselytize or pull you toward the traditions that have shaped me—Hinduism and Christianity.

My point is this: we need strength of spirit.

As our stakes rise, we don’t just need better leadership or managerial skills. We don’t just need better tools or mental models. We need strong, durable spirits—strong enough for others to lean on, and strong enough to keep our hearts and arms open even when the temptation is to become transactional.

How we do that—whether through God and religious traditions or through secular means—does not matter as much as the fact that we do it, that we strengthen our spirit.

Leadership books do not talk about the soul. Spirit isn’t in most lists of critical leadership and managerial skills. But if we choose to take responsibility and lead, we need a spiritual practice too.

As our stakes rise, and we pass our breaking point, the people depending on us need our spirit to meet the moment.