Opinion: Create magic by touching other lives

The fuzzy synthetic fibers of Santa’s beard were winding their way up my nose and the pillow around my middle was slipping south, broadcasting my faux fat, but those marshmallow-sized eyes only saw the magic.

I have always wanted to do this gig. I practiced the “Ho, ho, ho” in front of a mirror until I had just the right North Pole exuberance in my voice, then I perfected the St. Nick waddle (a prelude to my assisted-living stroll to the dining room).

There was one tough customer I knew would be in this crowd of preschoolers … my grandson. I thought I would be “outed” before my first “Ho.”

He never knew! To this day he tugs on my pants and says with excitement, “Papa, Papa, do you know that Santa came to my house?”

I have had standing ovations from 2,000 people, amassed a huge pile of laudatory letters and have not worn out my welcome with some clients for 16 years – but nothing even comes close to the euphoria of watching those unclouded eyes dance in that moment of pure magic.

At the beginning of another new year it is probably smart to remind ourselves that what we do for a living just fuels our life – our jobs are part, but not the sum total, of our lives.

Like many of you, I love my work. But loving our work is a tawdry excuse for not being able to love life.

So, at the beginning of a scrubbed and clean new year, I am suggesting that while you are making big bucks, you may want to add a little magic, because magic makes tomorrow worth living.

Think about it. We will sit through hundreds of hours of mind-numbing meetings in 2006. We will complain about things we cannot change. We will procrastinate doing the hard stuff. We will carp to a sympathetic co-worker about some Neanderthal management person. And we will cross off another set of squares on a calendar that represents our lost days until we can triumphantly hobble into retirement nirvana.

We will also miss the magic.

I plan on having more Christmas Eves in 2006. Here is my plan for sprinkling my rich life with some magic.

First, I am taking days out of my calendar when I will not be productive.

Whoa! If you are still reading this column, you realize I have just uttered the ultimate obscenity in the business community.

We strap on beeping devices early in the morning, constantly check our PDAs to calculate our next time-saving moves, write copious reports extolling our efficiency to our bosses and cannot get in the car unless we check the all-news station on Sirius Radio, just to make sure we are in “the know.”

I believe there must be dates in our Franklin-Covey Day Planners where the entire page, with the half-hour time slots, is smeared with large letters that read, “ME.”

This is a day when you will not get anything “done,” but it will be jammed with activities like staring in a quiet forest hallway, reading a book that has begun to feed your soul or leafing through old photo albums.

Notice this is not a day to go fishing, clean out a junk drawer or file pictures in a photo album. Those are all tasks that have a bottom line. These days are for you to look inside and nourish the person you know best.

Second, I will stop writing checks for charitable organizations and start throwing my body into the plate.

I could have paid a professional Santa to arrive, do the “Ho, ho, ho’s” and hand out presents I purchased. I could have bankrolled that moment and then taken a gazillion digital photos as proof of my beneficence.

Too clean … and no magic.

I needed to deal with the 97 degrees Fahrenheit inside my fake red suit and continue to readjust my sagging fake belly in order to get into “the moment.” I had to look through my plastic, cascading white hair at the wide, believing eyes of those children. There is no magic if our giving is only announced by the tearing sound of a painless check.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters is probably looking for adults who will play Chutes and Ladders or sit on a hard bleacher and scream “You can do it” to a parentless preteen. The Kitchen is probably looking for people to dish up the evening meal and then talk with someone who could not get eye contact on Commercial Street. Local hospitals are probably looking for people who will gently push a wheelchair filled with fear.

Giving money has to be linked with giving yourself in order to find the magic.

Finally, I plan on spending more time with children. They do not have the social graces, they are often politically incorrect, they get up and wander around during a meal, they clean facial orifices with little dirty fingers, and they do not do what I tell them to do.

But they remind me there still is magic.

My columns this year will supply you with practical, hands-on skills to make more money, get along with your cretin boss or plan your organization’s strategic future. But I believe this is my finest column of 2006 because it is about the best accomplishment you will ever attain: touching someone with magic.

Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.