Hello there,
I’m sure you know about Captain Tom Moore, but if you don’t let, me tell you a little story.
Back at the beginning of April, Captain Tom Moore decided that he wanted to do his bit during the coronavirus to help raise money for charity. He was 99 years old and decided that he’d try to raise £1000 by walking one hundred-metre laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. He was going to do this by walking 10 laps per day, with the help of a walking frame.
So Captain Tom started walking. His family set up a JustGiving page, and a few donations started coming in.
Then something wonderful happened.
Captain Tom’s walk was shared by someone, and then someone else. Captain Tom was asked to be on a radio program. Then Captain Tom was asked to be on the BBC breakfast program. The donations started to pour in and they kept upping his target. On the 16th of April, Captain Tom completed his 100 laps, watched over by a guard of honour from the 1st Battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment. I watched the news all of the way from Costa Rica, and cried.
He pledged to keep going. If the people would keep giving, he’d keep walking!
By the evening of his 100th birthday, Captain Tom Moore had not only walked his 100 laps (totalling 1.6 miles), but he had raised – wait for it – £32,796,475.
Read that part again: at 99 years old, walking back and forth in his garden, he had raised £32,796,475 for charity.
What happened? There are many articles that talk about it, but when you boil it down, Captain Tom Moore charmed the nation. In a time of uncertainty and grief, he gave a country something to believe in.
Not only did he make that money, he’s now been made an honorary Colonel, received a Pride of Britain award, had a number one single (I’m not kidding), got his own postmark, holds two Guinness World Records, had a bus, two trains, two horses, a powerboat and a police dog puppy named after him, received over 150,000 birthday cards – mostly from children – AND has been knighted.
Why am I telling you this?
I talk about Purpose with people a lot. It comes up in self-help books and business books and on websites and in Instagram posts on a very regular basis. Many of us want to know our Purpose, and many people believe that they have to answer to that and try to sell it to us as the be all and end all.
But what if we will never really know? What if we can never know what effect we will have and when? What if you just following your heart moment-by-moment and doing you with all you’ve got is enough?
Most of us would think that at 99 years old we would be past the point of making a difference in the world. Think again. I’m not saying that THIS was Captain Tom’s life’s purpose, but him showing up and honestly doing what he believed in made a moment of magic for a whole country (and beyond) at a time when they needed it the most.
Will you ever have a police puppy, a horse, a train, a bus, and a powerboat named after you? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s not really those things that matter. What matters are the words that children wrote on his birthday cards. They told him thank you. They told him that he had inspired them. They told him that he had made them think of old people differently. Who knows what ripples Captain Tom deciding to walk 1.6 miles in his garden will have in the world as those children grow.
All I know is that I watched every single thing about him with tears in my eyes. He even changed me.
You might never know your Purpose with a capital p, but I really believe that if you do you with all of your heart and all of your truth with all you’ve got as often as you can, you will live with purpose. Even then you won’t know what effect that will have. Do it anyway. Live your life with love and truth and kindness. Show up. The ripples that will make could literally change the world.
Thank you Sir/ Colonel/ Captain Tom Moore. For everything.
*For some reason I can’t add links to the photographs. The first one is from here and the second one is from this article.
