In 1994, Colin Powell taught me the power of saying yes

As humans, we are drawn to shiny, pat definitions of success. But how do we live in between the lines of our Instagram posts, GPAs, SAT scores, resumes and personal brands? What is the true measure of a life well lived?

With the passing of Gen. Colin Powell last month, and in a world so often fixated on superficial markers of success, it’s a question worth asking.

As I read about Gen. Powell’s extraordinary life in The New York Times obituary, what stood out to me was not what was noted, but what wasn’t — the life he lived and the quiet choices he made in between the headlines

Case in point: In 1994, Gen. Powell was coming to Boston to speak at a major fundraising event. In an act of near-delusional grandiosity, I wrote a letter to his office, inviting him to be the keynote speaker for Boston Cares First Annual Corporate Volunteer Day —— an event dreamed up by a group of postcollege grads to keep our fledgling community service organization from going under.

In the landscape of nonprofits, Boston Cares was a speck of dust. We had no fancy names on our board and no connections. But because he cared about the problem we were trying to solve — how to engage ordinary citizens in public service, and because he appreciated our brazen idealism, Gen. Powell said yes.

That one choice to say “yes” catapulted our organization to a new level of success.

Now 27 years later, Boston Cares is a national model for innovative civic engagement. Along with similar agencies across the country, including Hands On Bay Area, these organizations have changed the landscape of corporate citizenship and empowered millions of everyday workers to provide volunteer labor to people and organizations that need it most.

As I read through Gen. Powell’s astounding list of accomplishments as a national and world leader, I thought about the other side of the man I knew, ever so briefly — a kind, warm, funny man who made an immediate connection with everyone he met, who was as committed to public service in his private life as he was in his political life.

As I stood shoulder to shoulder on the Boston Fleet Center stage with Gen. Powell and former Mayor Thomas Menino, I was 24 years old and desperately trying to figure out how to live life, and what, in the end, mattered.

On that magical day, just by saying yes, Gen. Powell’s generosity and kindness was one of my answers, and became one of my life’s most enduring and powerful guides.

Our nature as a species is to categorize, measure and quantify. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were built on this. These social media titans have hit the motherlode by tapping deep into the vulnerabilities of human nature, putting our kids (and many of us adults) in a trance. They’ve engineered a socially sanctioned addiction to “likes” and “hits” and a culture of personal brand worship.

So what about the things we do for one another, behind closed doors, without public validation or promise of social capital?

And how do we help our children see through the blinding circus to what, in the end, matters in a life?

“Your generation basically messed up the world for us,” our 23-year-old daughter has pointed out to my husband and me more than once. Among other things, she’s referring to our wrecking the planet with climate change and creating a culture of greed and inequity.

There’s not much arguing with that. But besides our ability to mobilize ourselves to repair our wreckage, our generation can do something else.

Few of us have the platform or power of a Colin Powell, but we can all say yes. Say yes to mentorship, yes to choices that leverage the best in us, yes to sharing of our experience, support and an authentic connection with the generation that bears our legacy.

I think about Gen. Powell and about the countless lives he changed that day, and for years to come, just by saying yes.

Saying no is a lot easier. Saying no makes more time for the trance and the lists. But saying yes can make all the difference.

How do we help our children see through the blinding circus to what, in the end, matters in a life?