Page 170 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2026

FINAL SAY
JONATHAN WOODWARD, PH.D.
Vice President of Teaching
& Learning/Community Campus, MGCCC
People often ask how I balance business and philanthropy, as if the
two sit on opposite ends of a scale and my job is to keep them level.
After many years of trying, I have concluded that balance is the wrong
goal altogether. In physics, perfect balance is called equilibrium, and
equilibrium means nothing is moving. A life
in complete balance is a life standing
still. It is stagnant. A pendulum only
has impact because it swings. The
question is not whether your life
will lean. It will. The question is
whether it leans toward the things
that matter.
So how do you know what your
life is leaning toward? I believe
you can learn everything about
a person’s priorities from two
documents: the calendar and the
checkbook. I realize “checkbook” is a
dated word for a generation that
taps a phone to pay
for coffee, but the
principle has
not aged a
day. Where
does your
time go?
Where
does
your
money
go?
Those two records will tell the truth about a person faster than
anything they will ever say in an interview, including this one.
I did not invent that idea. The greatest person who ever lived stated
it two thousand years before anyone printed a business card: “Where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” For years I read that
verse backwards. I assumed it meant that once you discover what
your heart loves, your money will follow. But that is not the order
given. The treasure comes first. The heart follows the investment,
not the other way around. Place your time and resources somewhere
on purpose, and your heart will eventually move there, too.
That has certainly been true in my life. I did not begin with a deep
affection for community college programs or workforce training,
or for Goodwill’s mission, or for a symphony board’s spreadsheets.
I began by showing up, first in a Gulfport classroom, later shaping
learning experiences for students of every age, and eventually in
boardrooms. The affection arrived after the investment, never before
it. Had I waited to feel called before giving my time, I might still be
waiting.
This is why I have stopped viewing my work at the college, my
service on nonprofit boards, and my Sunday mornings leading
worship at church as competing categories. They are the same
discipline practiced in different rooms. At Mississippi Gulf Coast
Community College, we invest public dollars and grant dollars
into people, believing that welders, nurses, musicians, and future
accountants are worth the wager. At the Symphony, at Goodwill, at
the Chamber, and at church, I practice the identical conviction on
a different ledger. It is all one treasure, moved deliberately toward
the things I want my heart to belong to—being a light to positively
influence people.
So, if you want to change what you care about, stop waiting for the
feeling. Open your calendar. Open your checkbook. Move something
real in the direction you want your heart to travel, and give it time to
catch up. It will. Mine did, and it still is.
Let the pendulum swing. Just make certain it swings toward
treasure worth keeping.
170 | October 2026 www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living