People often ask me why I write career advice, why I want to help people — especially young people — find happiness in their careers. This weekend I found the best way to explain it.
On Saturday night I attended the Litchfield Jazz Festival in Goshen, CT, and had the privilege of seeing Dave Brubeck perform. For those who don’t know, he is a world-famous jazz pianist who is now 87 years old.
From the moment Brubeck laid his fingers on the piano keys, I was mesmerized. And it wasn’t just the music, although he did play the most beautiful rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” I will ever hear. What I found most inspiring and transfixing was the look on Brubeck’s face. As he performed and watched members of his quartet perform, he wore a look of pure, unadulterated joy. It is the look of someone who is doing what he loves most in the world and appreciating every glorious minute of it.
I can’t help but believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to experience that feeling, whether they find it by playing music or writing a flawless sentence or building the perfect code or delivering a heart-stopping closing argument.
It’s hard to think there is anything better than doing what you love every day. Amazingly, as if he had to do anything else that night to impress me, Brubeck reminded me that there is something better. Near the end of his performance, he announced that a 12-year-old boy named Dakota, a member of the jazz camp accompanying the festival, had asked to play his saxophone with Brubeck. The audience laughed at the adorable audacity of the kid, and then Brubeck surprised us all by inviting the 12-year-old up to the stage.
The kid played a song with Dave Brubeck and his quartet — no doubt a moment he’ll remember for the rest of his life — and then Dave Brubeck, beaming even more than the boy, said:
“Dakota, thank you for inspiring me.”
And that, the joy of supporting someone else in the discovery of his calling — especially someone younger (in this case, 75 years younger) — is the only thing better than finding that joy yourself.
That is the best way I can explain why I do what I do. And why I hope to still be doing it when I’m 87 years old.
Thank you, Dave Brubeck.
