If Only You Could Feel What I Feel! You'd Give Up Your Horse For This Kingdom!

It's no big deal. We eat, we sleep, go to work, do all we need to do to make our life comfortable and provide for our families. We think about ourselves and those close to us. If we are moved by some cause we open the checkbook. We feel we have done our duty for humanity. In the profession we are in we provide a service. What else should we be expected to do? Isn't that enough?

At 70 I am beginning a new journey. The fork in the road appeared three years ago while I was singing my heart out in Las Vegas. I had been in the desert for 23 years and was, for the second time, a widower. Had been alone, me and my guitar, for five years. I was comfortable, but not fulfilled.

The calling from my soul was a gentle progression, a nudge of sort that came from self reflection during all the hours with me and my memories.

To do something different and to be close to my daughters and grand kids in San Diego and Los Angeles, I had finally succumbed to the lure: I bought myself a plane. No, it wasn’t a mid life crisis. I believed I should be rewarded for years of struggle and a dream that the family’s responsibilities had kept on hold since 1971 when I had gotten my commercial pilot license. Then show business burst wide open from my heart and the flying career was exchanged for the lights of the cities and the marquees that saw my name.

Now something was telling me I needed to be of service to the world, but in a different way. Checkbook not required. This time something of more significance was being asked of me, but I didn’t know what that was. I knew I had to leave the desert. With my heart in my throat and faith in my heart I leaped into the unknown, accompanied by a new lady holding my hand during the 2000 miles journey eastward, to Michigan. ‘Go East, young man!’ the soul was saying.

Now, three years later, three years of daily study, Boni and I have found the answer, the purpose, the meaning. Service is the foundation to all prosperity or, as Tolstoy put it, ‘The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.’

Away from the lights, Boni and I have found our true light. We have embarked on a journey to save six million children from dying of starvation. We have joined forces with a network of philanthropreneurs whose mission is to build a group of entrepreneurs bound together by the philanthropic vision of ending world hunger by 2020.

Our goal is to provide 500 million meals a year by that time. Big heart needed. Checkbook not required. Satisfaction guaranteed. Apply within.

I feel I am on top of the world. Not even the records I made, the stages I’ve played on, the crowds on their feet, have ever brought me such wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

If only you could feel what I feel! You’d give up your horse for this kingdom!