"Your mother liked to go to funerals," my mother said from the front passenger's seat. She said this matter-of-factly to my father as he drove.

There was no acrimony in her voice. She spoke with as much bitterness as she might when relaying that Nipsey Russell was hilarious on Carson last night.

Which is to say, no bitterness at all.

I was 6 or 7, and I overheard her from my customary perch in the back seat—sitting on the carpeted bump in the floor above the axle. Facing backwards, rolling down the highway, pretending that the big bench seat was my desk.

My head was below the front seats when I sat like this, so I literally and figuratively disappeared from view. My parents forgot I was there.

That was fine by me, because from my spot on the bump I could listen for every nuance in my parent's conversation—the way some nosy kids do even when you give them a fresh Mad Libs to preoccupy themselves so they don't bug you.

When I drive on the highway now and I see kids strapped securely into the back seats of minivans with headphones on and staring into screens—watching Daniel Tiger or whatever on a loop—I feel slightly sorry for them. They'll never know the joy of free-range roaming of the back seat territory, liberated from five-point harnesses and side-impact protection.

But more importantly, those headphones mean they'll never know how much front-seat conversational goodness they're completely missing out on. Sad.

Anyway: My grandmother. I never knew her—she died before I was born—but I liked to hear the occasional name-check. Her name was my own name—she was the OG Ann Handley, so how can you not automatically perk up at that?

I've sometimes wondered why my mother said that about her mother-in-law all those years ago.

I thought of it while I was in Europe last week, when my brother-in-law, the husband of my oldest sister, died.

And then again this week, when I learned that the father of a close childhood friend had passed away. (I found out via Instagram. Because 2018.)

And again: at the same funeral home as my friend's father was the funeral of a woman named Jean Love, who was the owner of Jean's Curl and Swirl, a local beauty shop where my mother used to go.

(I say "beauty shop," by the way, because that's what it was. And Jean called herself not a stylist but a "hairdresser," a word that technically means the same as hair stylist but still sounds outdated and a little silly, like calling jeans "dungarees.")

Before I went to kindergarten, I'd accompany my mother to Jean's. I have vague memories of playing on the linoleum floor, using the slack of electrical cords to create makeshift houses for my Barbies, and using the snipped ends of human hair to build "wigs" on their bright plastic heads.

God that sounds horrifying now. ("You played with electricity? And human hair?") But that was before parenting was invented: When kids could get away with anything as long as they didn't make a peep.

At the funeral home last week, my friend Ron spoke about his dad, Arthur:

Arthur was a softball coach in town, and his private mission each season was to identify a "project"—the weakest batter on his team.

Arthur believed he could make anyone if not a star hitter—at least a better hitter. He could take someone who always whiffed at bat and turn them into a "terror in the batting box," as Arthur put it.

Arthur might've been a volunteer coach in a small town working with a team of no consequence. But, still, he called himself "the World's Best Batting Coach."

World's Best. I loved that story. And not just because Arthur himself sounds like a swell guy: You know it because his mission was, ultimately, not about him; it was about lifting up those around him.

But also because Ron's story held larger lessons:

1. Think of your own life, or your own work: What's your secret mission?

Too corny? No. You need this. I need this.

What is the thing that you aim to do that no else does as well as you? What's the thing you are World's Best at? Or seek to be?

I'm not talking about a specific job or a task. Your secret mission is more personal and bigger than that.

My secret mission is this: I believe I can help anyone become a better writer. I believe I can help any business be a bolder, braver marketer.

But that's me. How would you answer this backseat-inspired Mad Lib? Or how do you hope to?

2. No one bats alone. No one gets to be the World's Best Anything without a mentor. A champion. An Arthur cheering from the sidelines, coaching them to become a terror in the batter's box.

So find your Arthur, because we all need an Arthur to become the World's Best _______ who can make anyone _______.

My mother is gone now, so I'll never know why my mother thought that the OG Ann Handley enjoyed funerals. I'm sure she didn't actually love the pain, the loss, the melancholy.

But if she was anything like me (or maybe if I'm anything like her) I can see how she might have found an affirmation in them.

I can see how—laced between the sadness and the pain—there's often paradoxically a kind of optimism.

The World's Best.

If you've lived a good life, if you've nurtured your own gifts, and if you've lifted up those around you… well, isn't that all any of us really could hope for?

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