Almost 20 years ago I was 32 years old, excitedly heading down to Honduras to adopt my first sibling group of daughters. I had no idea they’d be the first of many brothers and sisters to join our family, I just knew that I was very certain, in my heart, that this was exactly what I wanted to do with my life.

I’d Xeroxed an article, July 1988, from Success magazine entitled, “The Myth of the Balanced Life: Happiness is a Hotly Pursued Obsession,” written in response to a New York Times writer who’d interviewed the then new computer wizards and found they were so obsessed with this burgeoning phenomenon that they lived ‘unbalanced’ lives, never going to museums or concerts, preferring to work so hard that she’d feared they’d lost their balance in life; that they’d missed the meaning of life.

George Gilder countered with words that burned deep in my soul,

“Show me a success in any field and I’ll show you an obsessive.”

This explanation alone spurred me on, allowed me to be who I wanted to be and to do what I felt called to do.

In googling George Gilder, I’ve found he was a deeply intelligent, controversial writer who dared to write his sometimes politically incorrect, yet right on target thoughts.

Gilder went on to say,

“The meaning of life does not come from skimming its surface, but from plunging into the depths of a project – from knowing deeply and achieving greatly.”

I’ve read this article hundreds of times since then when it has been suggested to me that I should get a life; not live for my children, go do something for me instead. Oh, yawn.

Psychologist George Vaillant studied the leading achievers in a class of graduates of the Harvard Business School and found they had disproportionately excellent health and satisfying lives despite their 70 hour weeks.

I have 168 hour weeks, even in sleep I’m tossing, turning, obsessing, planning and strategizing our family’s needs.

Gilder claims,

“The ultimate meaning of life come from religious faiths. But our task on earth – laboring in service to others – can only be satisfied through hard and unbalanced work. Give it everything you’ve got.”

Possibly this is ingrained in me, put there at birth or maybe something I’d absorbed along the way. It is what I dearly want to get across to my children - dream big and work hard.

Be audacious. I recently proposed a plan to my oldest daughter, “Let’s change the world.” Having been with me for nearly 34 years, she didn’t even bat an eye. “Ok,” she replied. Bottom line is everyone has to eat, our mainstream diets are causing immense health problems, let’s do something about it.

We’re both constantly amazed and influenced by other people’s ideas. At the moment, Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a Year of Food Life, has us transfixed sending me flouncing out to my gardens to work, propelling my daughter to a CSA and her kitchen.

Every single motivational, inspirational, success-driven book I’ve ever read has not ever led me wrong but rather has fired me up to throw my everything into the mix, leaving me excited about life and all its potential. Boundless enthusiasm, interminable drive, and endless energy became the end result of my personal obsessions. Why would I not want to mentally inject this ceaseless and rewarding wonder into my family? Life is short, do something, make it count for something, there seems to be no other route to happiness.