I love that old saying: “Winners focus, losers scatter.” It is truly accurate. A sense of purpose fills me with energy — the energy of knowing exactly what you want. And that is a wonderful thing.

There is a story I love to tell about Harry Bernstein. People often misread it as a tale about doing great things late in life. But that is not what it is about. It is about the shift from personality to purpose.

Harry was ninety-three. His wife had just died of leukemia, and Harry did not know how to go on; for years his whole purpose had been to care for her, to be with her, to make her happy. And so, all at once, at ninety-three, his purpose was pulled out from under his feet. When he woke each morning, he no longer had the energy to live.

That is depression. Harry was low. “What’s the point? Why bother? Why go on?” he would ask himself. There is nothing to excite me, nothing to stir me, and so all my attention turns back onto myself — onto my feelings, onto what I think and grieve over. My attention is turned entirely inward.

But Harry Bernstein did not stay trapped in that world for long. The moment his mind turned from his own personality toward a purpose, his body climbed out of its heaviness.

He did something extraordinary, though we do not quite know what inspired him. When the mind changes, the soul finds a way in. As Leonard Cohen sang, there is a crack in everything — that is how the light gets in. And so Harry decided to do something that defied all logic.

He sat down and began to write his life. So much had happened in it, so many fascinating things. He would no longer merely react to his wife’s death; instead, he would create. He would bring forth a book that others could read — all the excitement, the sorrows, and the incredible things lived by a man who had spent ninety-three full and interesting years. He decided to create his life once more, this time as a book that would bring great joy to other people.

He was ninety-three! Though he was no longer twenty-five, he was learning to be a writer, trying to connect with people, planting the seeds of a future. And what kind of future can a man expect at ninety-three?

Most people spend ninety percent of their time on the future, scattering their intellect and imagination on the false idea that they must find some powerful person to pull them up the ladder. What Harry Bernstein did is something all of us can do, even at eighteen. We do not have to wait until ninety-three, nor wait out a lifetime full of heartbreak. We can have a purpose — and that purpose will give us zeal.

Harry spent a year working on his book around the clock. Then, after every publisher in New York had turned him down, he found one at Random House’s London office. His manuscript waited there a year before it reached the desk of an editor named Kate Elton. She read it and called it “unmissable.” That was her word. Unmissable!

— Steve Chandler