The Everyday Patriot

Those are the first words of the Introduction.

One of the consistent themes of my chats with my Yoda, Phil Stutz, is the fact that we are facing HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT challenges. Step back and imagine looking back at this moment in five hundred years. I believe it will have historically significant weight.

As I have said often over the last couple of years, we’re not just recovering from a global pandemic of COVID-19. We’re facing PANDEMIC levels of anxiety, depression, cancer, diabetes, environmental degradation and, of course, political polarization.

And, as I see it, the ONLY possible way we can meet these *historically significant* challenges is if each of us steps up and starts showing up as the best, most Heroic version of ourselves—not someday but TODAY.

Tom uses the phrase “everyday patriot” to capture the spirit of this call of our time. I like to think of it as “everyday hero.” Same thing.

In this context, however, I want to talk about what it means to be a noble “citizen” of the United States—or ANY country.

As Tom says: “Here is the key: Citizenship isn’t just a legal status; it’s a moral calling. And patriotism isn’t just a feeling. It’s an equally moral commitment that can be a powerful impetus for making our neighborhoods, our nation, and our world a better place. It is our duty, and can be an important part of our joy. When we have a deeper and richer sense of ourselves as Americans, we can do great things together.”

Imagine that. Imagine that our citizenship isn’t just a legal status. It’s a MORAL OBLIGATION. A call to GIVE BACK in equal measure to all that we have received.

That’s what it means to be an everyday patriot-hero. Let’s be one TODAY.

P.S. When I read the words “This is our time” and “This is our moment” I immediately thought of a Founding Mother and a Founding Father of our great democracy: Abigail Adams and Alexander Hamilton.

In a letter she wrote to her son while he was in France with his dad enlisting their support in our Revolutionary War (thank you for the support, France!), the wise Abigail Adams told us:

“These are times in which a Genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. ... The Habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All History will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruits of experience, not the Lessons of retirement and leisure.

Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the Heart, then those qualities which would otherways lay dormant, wake into Life, and form the Character of the Hero and the Statesman.”

(Read the full letter here. It’s amazing.)

Then there’s Alexander Hamilton. Well, more specifically, there’s Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant take on Hamilton via the inspiring lyrics of “My Shot.” Check that out here. And, if you haven’t watched Hamilton yet, I highly recommend it. Check that out on Disney here.

P.P.S. Did you know the word politics comes from the Greek word for “city” and basically meant “citizen”? Yep.

Which makes me think of this wisdom from Massimo Pigliucci’s brilliant book How to Be a Stoic where he tells us: “This led [the Stoics] to coin and use a word that is still crucial to our modern vocabulary: cosmopolitanism, which literally means ‘being a citizen of the world.’ Or as Socrates—arguably the most important influence on all Hellenistic schools of philosophy—put it: ‘Never reply to one who asks [your] country, ‘I am an Athenian,’ or ‘I am a Corinthian,’ but ‘I am a citizen of the universe.’”

And... You know that inspiring “Man in the Arena” wisdom from Teddy Roosevelt? Well, that’s from a speech he gave called “Citizenship in a Republic.” It’s worth reading as well.

Those are the first words from a chapter called: “The Everyday Patriot.” I read that and knew I needed to talk about Epictetus and Abraham Maslow.

First, Epictetus. He used to chide his students to quit looking at their history books for examples of heroism and to be the hero he could point to.

Then there’s Maslow. As we discuss in our Notes on Future Visions, he used to ask his college students: ‘Which of you believe you will achieve greatness?’ When they stared at him blankly, he asked, ‘If not you, who then?’”

To which I ask YOU... Which of you believe you will achieve greatness? If not YOU, then who?

P.S. Alexandra and I named our kids after two of our favorite American heroes: Emerson after Ralph Waldo Emerson and Eleanor after Eleanor Roosevelt.

Speaking of Emerson, Tom tells us that HE tells us:“He is great who confers the most benefits.”

P.P.S. Ambivalent about your ambition to do truly great things? I used to be as well. Now I’m unapologetically ambitious to do all I possibly can to inspire you and as many of us as we possibly can to step up and show up as our best, most Heroic versions of ourselves.

Doris Kearns Goodwin ironed out my remaining ambivalence in her BRILLIANT book Leadership in Turbulent Times in which she says: “No single path carried them to the pinnacle of political leadership. Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were born to extraordinary privilege and wealth. Abraham Lincoln endured relentless poverty... They differed widely in temperament, appearance, and physical ability. They were endowed with a divergent range of qualities often ascribed to leadership—intelligence, energy, empathy, verbal and written gifts, and skills in dealing with people. They were united, however, by a fierce ambition, an inordinate drive to succeed. With perseverance and hard work, they all essentially made themselves leaders by enhancing and developing the qualities they were given.”

Note: FIERCE AMBITION. With an emphasis on this important distinction: “The fame they craved, the recognition they sought, bears little resemblance to today’s cult of celebrity. For these leaders, the final measure of their achievements would be realized by their admittance to an enduring place in communal memory.”

We all know that the second sentence of the U.S. Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Here are a couple of fun historical facts.

First, the “happiness” that our Founding Fathers LITERALLY risked everything to help us pursue was NOT, as Ward Farnsworth would put it in The Practicing Stoic, based on chasing a “good mood.” It was to create the circumstances that would best support us in creating a GOOD LIFE. Their sense of happiness was EUDAIMONIC in nature, not hedonic.

Second, did you know that, according to Marci Shimoff in Happy for No Reason,“Back in Jefferson’s day... the common usage of the word ‘pursue’ was not ‘to chase after.’ In 1776, to pursue something meant to practice that activity, to do it regularly, to make a habit of it.

What a difference a definition makes! Thomas Jefferson, our wise Founding Father, meant that we all had the right to practice happiness, not chase after it—which isn’t very productive anyway. So let’s stop pursuing happiness and start practicing it.”

That’s from a chapter called: “On Fundamental Values” in which Tom walks us through the seven core values on which he believes our country was founded: the values of Life, Liberty, Equality, Opportunity, Justice, Security, and Service.

The point I want to emphasize here is the fact that, just as Maslow would say that there are no perfect human beings, there are NO PERFECT COUNTRIES. Yes, we have clearly fallen short of many of our lofty ideals from day one.

And... As Tom says, this disappointing truth should be no cause for cynical doubt about the ultimate realism of guiding ideals.

Which reminds me of Tal Ben-Shahar’s brilliant wisdom in The Pursuit of Perfect (that I discuss in Conquering Perfectionism 101 as well) where he tells us that our ideals are “not a distant shore to be reached but a distant star that guides us and can never be reached. As Carl Rogers pointed out, ‘The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.’”

Vote in the next election.

And...

Know that we are casting a vote EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY.

Tom quotes Confucius who tells us: “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

Let’s vote wisely as we embody the Wisdom, Self-Mastery, Love, Courage, Gratitude, Hope, Curiosity and Zest that will allow us to play our roles as Heroically well as we can to meet these historically significant challenges head on TOGETHER.

Heroes, unite!!

Day 1. All in. Let’s go!