It is said that Samurai warriors trained specifically to not fear death, in order to clear the way to victory. In a perverse sort of way, that sounds magnificently martial. But it’s wrong. Whether you fear failure, or purge yourself of that fear, you are focusing on yourself, and not the fight into which you enter.
So, what do you do? Do you concentrate instead on success? Does positive thinking alone drive you to victory? That’s better, but it can unravel with disturbing rapidity if you meet jarring setbacks along the way. Somehow, the problem here is that your own person – your psyche, reputation, ambitions, and inevitably, your fears – still interpenetrate everything you do.
In his WSJ column today, Fouad Ajami used the phrase “He fears failure . . . and nothing more.” How about us? Is there nothing more for us, nothing more that we care about?
There is.
However confused we become in times of transient ease about what it may be, they pass, and we rediscover what we do it all for. We may have strayed from this awareness in our personal lives, our careers, in our citizenship. But sometimes when it is under threat, when we are in danger of losing it, it becomes desperately easier to make out. We can see it. We can see little else.
We march toward the sound of the guns, throwing ourselves into the battle to save what matters more, what matters most, to all of us. Our fear of failure is submerged in our commitment to an infinitely greater cause.
We forget ourselves, our own fate, clearing the way to victory. In our personal lives, our work, in our citizenship.
Don’t we? I’m convinced that we do. How about you?
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Today’s tip: And how about today’s youth, barely old enough – just barely – to understand the event that we remember today? Well, please see the WSJ again for what Peggy Noonan discovered in several conversations with these young Americans.
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Note: The book review originally scheduled for today will be published on Monday. We’ll then return to our discussion of what matters more to us than us, if anything, at work.
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Technorati Tags: warrior, death, victory, failure, success, positive thinking, reputation, ambition, WSJ, Fouad Ajami, career, citizenship, threat, commitment, Peggy Noonan, American
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