Still on the Air
The stories we broadcast
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
— Annie Dillard
What’s Your Juice? Unlock the Energy that Transforms Performance, Fuels Purpose, and Ignites the People Around You is now available on Amazon and now on Audible!
Still on the Air
It was the Fourth of July, and Uncle Jerry was ready.
He loved the holiday the way only a Korean War veteran who had spent his life learning history could love it—it meant something. The family was assembled on the beach by the lake, young and old, and Jerry carried a bulging bag of fireworks down to the dock. It would be a majestic display, the kind that would make his mother, Grandma Violet, beam with pride and exclaim, “Well, isn’t that something!”
Then a spark from his punk fell into the paper bag.
What happened next has been talked about and debated for nearly fifty years. Fireworks erupted in every direction. Kids ran for cover. Grandma Violet dove behind the embankment. And my godfather—hard-working, proud Jerry, a man who never wore shorts—jumped right in the lake.
For about twenty years afterward, he didn’t admit that any of it had ever happened.
What the fireworks don’t tell you is what his hands could do when they weren’t fumbling a lighted punk. Among many things, Jerry was a leatherworker. When I was a kid, he made me a belt. It wasn’t any ordinary belt; it was a full Hulk Hogan WWF championship-style belt, the kind any kid of the 80s would wear like a true Hulkamaniac. Made by hand, with care and love.
Jerry passed away this week at 93, after a full and wonderful life.
Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky describes lasting happiness quite simply. The experience of positive emotion, combined with a deep sense that your life is good. Not perfect or easy, but good. Jerry had both. Not because his life was without adversity. He served in Korea, worked hard, and lost loved ones too soon. But he was oriented toward life in a way that generated joy around him, even if it meant diving for cover along the way.
That kind of life doesn’t happen by accident. It’s a choice, made daily, to show up and contribute.
Researchers who study aging have consistently found that what people want most at the end of their lives isn’t about recognition, status, or a résumé. It’s the deep desire to pass something forward, to know that what you did and knew and loved will outlast you (something called generativity). This drive to shape the next generation is one of the strongest predictors of purpose and life satisfaction in older adults. At the end, what matters is impact. How you helped, what you passed on, who carries something of yours forward.
Jerry did this for decades from behind a microphone.
He was a radio man by trade. He gave farm reports and sat behind that mic putting his voice, his knowledge, and his stories out into the world so others could learn and benefit. He once told his listeners he was thinking of starting a coin collection, and the pennies came rolling in. Long before podcasts and platforms, Jerry knew that stories are only worth something when they reach people.
The Hulk Hogan belt reached me. I hope the fireworks story reaches his grandchildren’s grandchildren. The farm reports reached farmers who needed to know what was coming.
Jerry would broadcast his stories.
We are all broadcasting something. Every conversation is a transmission. Every time you sit with someone earlier in the journey and share what you’ve learned, you’re doing what Jerry did behind that microphone. And every time you stay quiet because the moment feels small, or because you don’t think your story matters enough, you’re leaving the airwaves empty.
Jerry was a coin collector, a leatherworker, a veteran, a radio man who loved horses and history and his family. He made things with his hands that carried his love forward, and he told his stories so others could learn.
Performative influence will fade. Lived influence becomes a fireworks story that lasts fifty years.
What are you broadcasting? And who needs to hear it?
“The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”
— William James
Connecting this quote to the story. What truly lasts isn’t the moment itself, but the stories, values, and impact we passed on to others … long after we are gone.
This week’s Chasing Influence tip: The way you show up today becomes the story someone else tells tomorrow. Make it count.