LIVING A SUCCESSFUL LIFE AND CHINESE STREET SWEEPERS

One of the first sounds I hear EVERY morning about 6:30 when I wake up, rain or shine, is the street sweeper below our third-story apartment. Our campus streets are lined with trees and in the fall when thousands of leaves were falling it appeared that each street sweeper’s personal mission was to limit to five minutes the amount of time any leaf was allowed on the ground. I often think of the lives these people live as I walk among these broom pushers on a campus filled with bright students whose dream it is to someday help design a state-of-the-art airplane for China’s military or to become a great scholar or diplomat.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said about street cleaners.
“If a man is called to be a street cleaner, he should sweep the streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts in heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lives a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

I think Martin Luther King, Jr. knew some Chinese street sweepers.

So one day in class I asked my students to define what a successful life would be to them. Many spoke of achieveing something great for China, traveling wherever in the world they wanted to, or making lots of money. After listening to their ideas I wrote on the board a famous quote by a very wise man:

“No success can compensate for failure in the home.”

I described a hypothetical man who was so successful in his business that he had so much wealth he could travel anywhere and buy anything he wanted. However, because he devoted so much time and energy to his business, his family was terribly neglected. He barely knew his children. His wife was lonely and unhappy. Home was not a happy place.

Then I described a hypothetical street sweeper who loved his family dearly, worked hard at his sweeping to support them, and each day when he came home from his sweeping his children ran to him so happy that daddy was home. He loved and respected his wife and she knew how important she was to him.

Then I asked, “Which of these two men would you say is the most successful? All who expressed themselves said, “The street sweeper.”

I’m saddened to hear some of my female students say they don’t think they want to marry because they want to devote their energy to a career. With China’s One Child policy, more baby boys than girls are born. Quite frankly, every Chinese woman needs to some day marry if there are to be enough women for every man in China who wants to marry and raise a family. I’m quick to share with my students that my greatest fulfillment in life has come from the happiness of having a family.