This is a note from Jon Fieldman, a senior leader in the Wright Foundation community, about setting a context for our “4 WIINs” contest:

There’s a bigger context. Much, much bigger context.

The first context is our self.

We develop our capacities and our substance. We build our personal power.  We grow and transform. We harness our gifts and the dreams of what we were born to be.

But at Wright, we grow our responsibility in equal measure with our personal power. This is the second context. We grow in our contribution to others, to the people in our lives. We strive and succeed, to help to make our friends, families, companies, and organizations better. Better for everyone. We grow our power bounded by purpose. This is a huge statement.  Our power is not the end. It is the tool of our higher purpose, a higher purpose that is intrinsically about contributing to others.

In many ways, the trajectory of our growth is measured by the depth and scope of our growing impact.  We deepen inside of ourselves, deepen in our relationships, deepen in the depth of our meaning, deepen in our caring, deepen in our impact and influence, deepen in our contribution.  It is not a coincidence that the folks who have done the most work tend to have broader and deeper impact. They have deeper personal power with which to impact more people more deeply.

But there is yet a third context, one which is woven of all the organizations and relationships we navigate on a daily basis. We are part of a huge and hugely important, community that profoundly impacts every last one of the people we know in ways hard to fully comprehend and understand: our national community. Our national community is a group – a group of staggering complexity – – setting the fundamental context of every other group and organization we are part of: our families, our companies, our churches and synagogues and every other organization we are part of.

And our duty to contribute, our duty of responsibility to contribute our gifts, our power and our values —  all of this extends to this national community.

This third context is one that most of us do not engage with significantly as part of our daily lives.  But from the far wings of our daily lives, our national community is growing in its presence, moving  closer to the center, now coming into our own personal identities and values.  The national community is coming, coming to of each of us.

Now, our responsibility has become larger, much, much larger.

Our duty as citizens is upon us.

For more words and thoughts from our students: CLICK HERE.