The Lighthouse Effect
From a book by Steve Pemberton
Many of us have at least one individual that completely changed the course of our lives through acts of kindness. Heroism exists beyond the wealthy and well-known. It is found in the ordinary people who live alongside us – those who are willing to be lighthouses in a stormy and often unsettled world. In his book, "The Lighthouse Effect: How Ordinary People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact in the World", Steve Pemberton tells the stories of some ordinary people who have had an extraordinary impact.
Here is a summarised story of one of these:
On Father's Day in 1969, 16 year old Rick Rock was alone with his dad at the family farm. His dad, who was a dentist, complained of being unwell, and he went to lie down. Hearing laboured breathing, Rick found his dad having a massive heart attack and, unable to do anything, his dad died. Rick had an overwhelming feeling of not being able to help him.
Not only had the family lost their patriarch but the family's entire way of life changed. Rick took on odd jobs to help support his mother and afford his schooling. He'd obviously lost his guide at a time when he most needed him, but his church and two teachers at school stepped in. The latter helping him leave school with top awards.
Rick could have become a teacher or an engineer, but that changed when his father passed away. He wanted to know what should have been done and what he could have done to save his father, and medicine would provide those answers. So he applied along with 10,000 others for one of 150 places at the medical school and was accepted.
Rick's dad had chosen dentistry because he wanted to take care of people. So Rick followed him in in his footsteps and focused on obstetrics and gynaecology and, when he graduated, he started his medical practice.
Prayer had been a staple throughout his life. From medical school days and into medical practice, he asked God to give him the wisdom to heal a life or bring another into the world, to help him make the right decisions to be strong and to accept when he has given his best.
Over the years, he has helped thousands of patients, including one where a woman had complications in pregnancy and only had a two percent chance of survival. He says, "Medicine is a competitive challenge, either you win or you lose, especially when you're performing surgeries or delivering babies and you don't want to lose in medicine. You have to win. It's you against a disease, you against a disruption with a life hanging in the balance."
It is the patients who once felt hopeless, and who later had their hope restored that motivate Rick to keep helping and healing.
His dad is still a lighthouse as time and life move on, and now as a father, Rick is ever mindful of the man his dad was - his lessons of discipline, service and education firmly imprinted.
Human lighthouses bend the arc of our lives. They appear to us as real life angels, and they are but there is no such thing as a pristine lighthouse, unmarked by the elements of the sea. From a distance, the lighthouse is majestic and magnificent, but as you get closer, you'll see that lighthouse is windswept and weathered. It pays a price for the mission it fulfils.
We are so appreciative of their kindness that we might not notice that lighthouses often guide us from a place of loss themselves. Part of their motivation for being a lighthouse is because they remember their own storms and their times they needed lighthouses.
What Rick felt on Father's Day in 1969, motivates him to assist his patients today at critical junctions in their lives. This might be the case for you too. Perhaps the pain of your past is a present reality for someone else. When others see that you have made it though, it gives them hope that they can find a path through their own struggles.
True leaders take action without checking to see if anyone is looking; for there is no better reward than making a fundamental difference in someone’s life. The Lighthouse Effect is the idea that any of us - immersed in the hustle and bustle of our lives, wrestling with our own ambitions and imperfections - can pause, and change the arc of a life now and for generations to come.
See more stories here.
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From a book by Steve Pemberton, 08/04/2025