Awaken

10Purpose in the Poconos

Tears of Joy

It had been 19 years since I had shed tears of any kind: the last time was when I had been moved by the sadness of the movie Ordinary People, to my wife's consternation. I had developed a seemingly impenetrable shell around my heart. On June 12, 2005, that shell was cracked in the most unlikely of ways.

I was sitting at one end of a rustic wooden dining table, across from David Wolfe, my coauthor on the book that would become Firms of Endearment: How World‐Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose. We were in the Poconos, a hilly region in eastern Pennsylvania. David and I had just returned from a vigorous walk up and down the hills of the ski resort we had come to for a writing retreat. After a hearty breakfast of oatmeal with raisins, we sat down to work on our assigned chapters. I was reviewing a story we had selected for the book and suddenly found myself choked up. It was about a UPS employee named Christine Virelli, a ninth‐grade drop‐out who had been out of the workforce for 16 years. She started with UPS as a part‐time package sorter after her husband was injured and could no longer work. UPS paid for her to get a general equivalency diploma (GED) and then for her to attend college. She said, “I can't leave UPS. They've done so much for me that I can't imagine not working for them. UPS helped me turn my life around, and I'm still growing.” UPS gave Christine hope for the future, and it gave me hope for the future of business. ...