TAKING A STAND
In the movies, taking a stand is always framed as fighting for what is right, fighting the oppressors, and eventually achieving justice before we all leave the theater to return to our own daily struggles. We side with the hero because the movie allows us to see the origins, the decision points, and the injustice we root for the actors to overcome.
Yet, real life doesn't normally workout as neatly as a two-hour script. The great majority of citizens never choose to stand up for what they believe is right, and if they do, many times they only experience the struggle and scorn, and not the victorious reward. This is real life.
But, this week I want to shake you from your fear and complacency, and urge you take a stand. The honor is not only in the hoped-for victory, but, more importantly, in the struggle for what you believe is right, your principles. In "Man's Search For Meaning," Nazi death camp survivor Viktor Frankl attempted to teach us that even during a man's worst experiences, there is meaning in the struggle, honor in the battle, regardless of the outcome. In your life, you hopefully will never experience something as horrific as Viktor Frankl, but if you have the guts to start your own company, build you own charity, and advance your mission and cause, at some point you will be faced with a monumental challenge which will require you to "go along," or to accept defeat, or to take a stand.
This week the newspapers announced President Trump's pardon of Conrad Black. I read Conrad's book which he wrote in prison a few years back, and I am friends with one of Conrad's previous "cellies." Conrad founded the National Post in Canada and Hollinger International, which formed a media empire that included Britain's Daily telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of others.
In 2003, a few Hollinger shareholders and political opponents demanded investigations into the multitude of financial transactions and, not surprisingly, concluded that Mr. Black had stolen hundreds of millions to support "the personal lifestyle Black and his wife had chosen to lead." U.S. prosecutors (including the corrupt Patrick Fitzgerald who also railroaded Scooter Libby) indicted Mr. Black on 17 counts and accused him of stealing $80 million from shareholders. Conrad then decided to be the 1% who takes a stand and reject the fictional plea agreements. He chose to go to trial and defend what he believed to be the truth, while risking a tremendous net worth, lifestyle and reputation. The Chicago jury acquitted Conrad on 9 counts, the government abandoned 4 other counts, and he was convicted on the ubiquitous counts of mail fraud and obstruction. He was sentenced to federal prison, but he continued to fight his battle, reduced his sentence, a judge then added more time, and he was finally released after three years incarceration.
The Wall Street Journal wrote, "Mr. Black endured public humiliation in three countries: his 2014 removal from the Order of Canada, his longtime business partner's betrayal and testimony, and demands that he resign from Britain's House of Lords. Mr. Black even had to watch the people who defenestrated him drive Hollinger into bankruptcy." The shareholders and investigators killed their own golden goose, like Baltimore residents burning down their own neighborhoods. Nothing different.
We don't know if Conrad's decision to take a stand was the correct decision, but he felt it was the right thing for him to do, even in the face of so much loss. He swore in his book in 2011, "Whatever happens, this will not be the end of my modest story." Now, he is pardoned, the investigators have "paid Mr. Black the largest-ever Canadian libel settlement," and the Wall Street Journal recently published, "Lord Black spent more than three years in federal prison, where he tutored fellow prisoners, wrote admirable books, and comported himself with remarkable dignity under the circumstances."
If you succumb to all of my weekly harassments to start your own company, forge your own mission, and do something remarkable, you will always have a target on your back. If you choose to build successful businesses and create wealth from nothing, you will be faced with difficult challenges, but also at least once in your life you will be faced with a monumental choice which will hold tremendous consequences for everything you hold dear.
You will be presented with a multitude of excuses and justifications of why you must give in and go along, with your own brain providing endless more rationalizations. In "Braveheart," Lord Robert Bruce urged his father to join the fight for Scotland's freedom from England. "This Wallace, he doesn't even have a knighthood, but he fights with passion. He inspires! Maybe it's time!" But, his father told him, "Your the 17th Robert Bruce because the 16 before you received land and title because they didn't charge in. Uncompromising men are easy to admire, but it is the ability to compromise that makes a man noble". Lord Bruce then gave up Wallace to be executed by the English in order to receive more land for himself.
In "Jerry Maguire," agent Jerry finally has the honest argument with his football player client Rod Tidwell. "I'll tell you why you don't' have your $10 million yet, because right now you are a paycheck player. You play with your head, not your heart. Personal life, heart, but when you get on the field its all about what you didn't get, whose to blame, who under threw the pass, whose got a contract you don't, whose not giving you your love, and that is not what inspires people. That is not what inspires people! Just shut up, play the game, play the game from your heart and I will show you the 'Kwan.' That's the truth man, that's the truth! Can you handle it?"
Life bring us great challenges, but I believe this was the whole point in coming down here this time around. You can't make me believe it was to finish our schoolwork, work hard in a job for 50 years, produce 2.3 children (now 1.8), and make sure you catch the Alaska cruise in retirement. Can't be!
You came down here to inspire yourself, inspire others, overcome fear, and do amazing things until your last gasp, which could be your next one! You are going to have to decide, most likely at one of the most difficult points in your life, to take a stand, or to not. It is not my place to ever judge you, or for you to judge me, but I just want you to know that you are stronger than you have ever imagined.
If you decide to stand, eventually everything is going to be okay, and maybe like with Job, God and the Universe will bring you even double the success and prosperity you knew before. Do what you believe is right, simply because it is the right thing to do. And, if you never do achieve that final victory, you will achieve great honor in your struggle. Don't stay in the middle of the flock. Your place is not among them.
"This one time our house was overrun by partisan border guards, dozens of them. My father was beaten, my mother was beaten. This man, my father's friend, he was beaten, and I watched this man. Every time they hit him he stood back up again, so they hit him harder. Still he got to his feet. I think because of this they stopped the beating, and they let him live. 'Stoikiy muzhik!' I remember them saying it. 'Stoikiy muzhik!' It sort of means, like uh, 'Standing Man!' 'Standing Man!'" - Colonel Abel, Bridge of Spies
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