Showing Up for Life: Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0385527020
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A heartfelt, deeply personal book, Showing Up for Life shines a bright light on the values and principles that Bill Gates Sr. has learned over a lifetime of “showing up”—lessons that he learned growing up during the Great Depression, and that he instilled in his children and continues to practice on the world stage as the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Through the course of several dozen narratives arranged in roughly chronological fashion, Gates introduces the people and experiences that influenced his thinking and guided his moral compass. Among them: the scoutmaster who taught him about teamwork and self reliance; and his famous son, Trey, whose curiosity and passion for computers and software led him to ultimately co-found Microsoft. Through revealing stories of his daughters, Kristi and Libby; his late wife, Mary, and his current wife, Mimi; and his work with Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter, among others, he discusses the importance of hard work, getting along, honoring a confidence, speaking out, and much more.
Showing Up for Life translates one man’s experiences over fourscore years of living into an inspiring road map for readers everywhere.
As Bill Gates Sr. puts it:
I’m 83 years old. Representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and everyone who is a part of it has given me the opportunity to see more of the world and its rich possibilities than most people ever do. I never imagined that I’d be working this late in life, or enjoying it so much.
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That the goal of the committee I was chairing on tax structure was to make our state's tax system more equitable for rich and poor while generating the necessary resources to meet human needs. We were in a break-out session afterwards and a woman raised her hand and said: “So Mr. Gates, it seems to me like what you're saying is that we're all in this together?” I now quote her all the time. In fact, this line has become my favorite axiom. The fundamental idea here is interdependence. We simply.
Citizenship by staying informed and adding our voices to key societal debates. That is how we maintain the ideals that are at the heart of our way of life—and nourish those powerful forces of regeneration that renew our society. The Older You Grow the Taller You Get People have some funny ideas about aging. When my grandchildren were young—since I was both six feet, seven inches and the oldest person they knew—some of them were under the impression that the older a person gets the.
Young, have been recreated for the grandkids, although Mimi and I are finding it harder to run the relays. Competition and games have been long-held traditions in our family. In addition to being a way to engage with others, games have given our children an opportunity to learn to take risks in a safe place where all was not lost if you didn't win. The Cheerio Olympic Games made a celebrated return during the first fifteen years of Microsoft's life, when our family helped Trey produce events he.
I know we can change these numbers. In fact, I've seen dedicated people all over the world changing them. We can and will conquer these problems when, instead of turning away, we learn to embrace them as our own. Public Will Time and time again I've seen optimism triumph over pessimism. During the Great Depression of the thirties you didn't have to be a pessimist to worry about the American dream of a better life ahead. But what we learned from those grim times is that the human.
Looking back, I think one of the most deeply rooted and enduring lessons I took away from those times was that each of us has an obligation to speak out about the things we believe in. I've had many opportunities since then to observe people who are masters at speaking out in ways that generate real change in the world. One of those is former president Jimmy Carter. President Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, and my wife and I were on a trip to Africa aimed at getting people there to talk openly.