Joy and Pizza

You've got to get your money's worth. Get the most bang for your buck. Find the best deal. Check the cost-benefit analysis. Mostly, if you're me, you've got to win, beating corporate America at their own pricing game. Put my wife and I together, and it's twice the fun. I was raised where we competed in a weekly game of "guess how much Mom saved in coupons at the grocery story this week"; she grew up in a family that considered crust a wasteful filler in the eternal quest to outwit the pizza buffet. It's why we have 40 rolls of toilet paper in our house right now.

It is in that spirit of maximizing every dollar that a I read a recent NPR article explaining why ordering a bigger pizza always pays off. Apparently geometric principles involving total area of circles determines that one can often double their overall pizza at a mere fraction of the original cost. That article may have changed my life, granting me a new-found confidence in my future pizza purchases, sure of the path to get more pepperoni per penny.

I may overstate the transformational qualities of this information, but it reminds me of a similar principle in chasing overall joy.

Too often, we settle for the small. We are too busy chasing C.S. Lewis' proverbial mud pies. And we do this by assuming that self-focus will bring self-fulfillment. It is my experience that in both my own life and in the lives of those I'm around (both as peers and as students and players), those thinking solely of themselves put a significant cap on their joy. Entitlement creeps in. So does pride. Satisfaction, however, is slow to follow. Rather, self-focus brings on disappointment, frustration, irritability, and the constant feeling of getting screwed over by the universe.

If you want to increase the overall area of your "joy pizza" and move from a small to a medium, seek satisfaction in service and self-sacrifice, not in self-focus. Be a part of something bigger than yourself. A team. A family. A staff. A community. Ask what you can do to make that something better. When it is, your joy will be double. Serve your spouse instead of waiting for them to make you happy. Cook for your neighbors. Shovel snow that isn't yours. Don't keep score. Work hard for the good of others, and receive twice the good in your own life. It's a good deal, and it requires no coupon.

If you want to really get value and move from a medium to a large, do it all for the Source of all Joy. Do it with an eye towards heaven. Sacrifice and serve out of the humility and gratitude of knowing from where your salvation comes. You will then not only have joy, but joy of eternal consequence.

Happy shopping.