Since initially sharing an early excerpt from RELEVANCE, the project has progressed. Structurally, emotionally, and in clarity of purpose.
What follows, is a short excerpt from the current working manuscript, reflecting where the book stands today.
Prelude: On the Nature of Relevance
Most of us don’t wake up one morning and ask, Is my life relevant?
That question sneaks up on us.
It arrives quietly, during a calm moment, between meetings, on a walk we’ve taken countless times before. Sometimes it appears when the noise finally subsides, sometimes when it becomes loud enough that we cannot ignore it any longer.
We often link relevance to visibility. To being seen, recognised, having a seat at the table or a voice in the room. For a time, that definition works. It even inspires us. But eventually, it begins to feel superficial.
Because being visible is not the same as being meaningful. And being busy is not the same as being alive.
This book is not about becoming famous, influential, or admired by strangers. It’s about something quieter and far more durable. It’s about the shape a life takes when it keeps showing up, long after the applause fades or never comes at all.
Over time, I’ve come to see life as moving through three overlapping seasons.
There is a season of rooting, when much of what matters is invisible. This is where habits form, values take hold, and early voices begin to shape us, often without our permission or awareness.
Then comes a season of rising, when motion accelerates. Ambition sharpens. Opportunity multiplies. We measure progress by milestones, promotions, numbers, and speed. Rising can be exhilarating. It can also be disorienting.
And eventually, sometimes sooner than we expect, we enter a season of reaching. This is not about climbing higher, but about reaching back, reaching across, and reaching inward. It’s where questions replace answers, and contribution begins to matter more than accumulation.
You may recognise all three seasons in yourself already. Most of us are living in more than one at the same time.
Before we go any further, it’s worth asking: Where are you in the journey right now?
There’s a second question that runs quietly beneath the first. None of us makes it through these seasons alone.
Along the way, we are helped forward by people who rarely appear in headlines or résumés. They don’t always know the role they’re playing. They don’t rescue us or direct us. They simply encourage us to take the next step, to keep going when stopping would have been easier.
I’ve come to think of them as cheeros, heroes who cheer us onward.
Some are with us for decades. Some appear only once. Some we know well; others we come to understand only in hindsight. Their influence is often disproportionate to the time we spend together, but it leaves a mark all the same.
If you pause for a moment, you can name a few of yours.
This book is a series of stories, reflections, and questions drawn from my own journey through rooting, rising, and reaching, and from the cheeros who helped shape it. They are not offered as a blueprint, but as an invitation.
An invitation to notice the patterns in your own life. To pay attention to the people who quietly helped you become who you are. And to consider what it might mean to live a life that remains relevant, not because it is loud or celebrated, but because it is grounded, generous, and still showing up.
That’s where we’ll begin.
