Managing Leadership^®

Some years ago I worked with a fellow who came from a reasonably privileged background, had enjoyed a fashionably elite education, and who was clearly on – and viewed himself as fully entitled to be on – the fast track to dizzying heights in his career. For all that, he wasn’t a particularly unpleasant guy – just unabashedly self-aggrandizing. And he plainly thought that everyone was that way – or, at least, everyone who mattered.

On learning of my service background, he blurted out some ill-advised commentary about the intelligence, character, and even the “breeding” of the sort of person who he thought would do something as pointless and wasteful as serve in the military. This was an error of judgment on several levels, of all of which he was disabused in the ensuing conversation.

But it was interesting to see how truly eye-opening that discussion was for him. Because, as stupid as his remarks had been, there was no practiced, premeditated rancor in them. They were the instinctive and honest reaction of someone who simply could not comprehend people who were not like him.

How can clearly capable people be so ignorant of the nature – even the existence – of those who work, and sometimes sacrifice themselves, to safeguard one of the most profound foundations of the former’s security, freedom, and prosperity? And what’s more, how can a society composed of such people continue to produce those willing to subject themselves to the hardship of uniformed service for the benefit of those who are so unaware and unappreciative of their sacrifices?

The question that worries many of us is the second one. But it needn’t. All the diverse sorts of people – with their often mutually incomprehensible array of motivations, hopes, and ambitions – who make up American society inevitably contribute in their various ways to the broad and deep strength and vibrancy of the community – and to the continued generation of that very diversity of motivations, hopes, and ambitions upon which we all, really, depend. So, we can pretty much rely on continuing to produce subgroups among us that mystify and frustrate each other.

But for our purposes this weekend, we can be assured of one more thing: the great Americans whose sacrifices helped build and preserve our past have not left exploits that cannot be equaled. Rather, they have helped bequeath to all of us a society that routinely and inevitably produces people fully capable of filling their remarkable footsteps – and of leaving grand new paths of greatness for yet new generations to follow and build upon.

The young men and women who serve today are such. They are fighting and dying in a struggle to keep at bay a new and especially depraved generation of foes threatened by and determined to destroy our society. This Memorial Day, then, we honor not only the distant legacy of our fathers, but regard with fresh respect and wonder the achingly current sacrifices of our siblings and of our children.

That’s pretty eye-opening, isn’t it? And worth remembering.

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It’s good to be back. See you on Tuesday.

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