The Memorial Days of Your Life

A note from peter@thewealthyattitude.com for Monday May 26 2008

Welcome to a shiny new week.

For our U.S. friends, we wish you a happy Memorial Day holiday today.

Now, down to business.

The “reader” came out later today as we wanted to reserve the space until our friend Philip sent us his Memorial Day message. He always delivers a great one.

The Memorial Days of Your Life

by Philip Humbert

This is our Memorial Day Weekend, a time traditionally set aside to honor those who gave their lives for our freedom.

Liberty and democracy are fragile things and they do not flourish by themselves. They require loving care and, too often, costly sacrifice by those who cherish them. Every day, liberty is under attack by those who would censor our words, our thoughts and our prayers. Every day, freedom is challenged by those--often good, well-intentioned people--who want "order" at the expense of chaotic, inefficient democracy.

We are free people and we can disagree about where, and when, and how we should defend freedom, but we are only free because brave men and women have resisted tyranny. In honor of those who died on 9/11, and to those who have sacrificed in the past and are continuing to sacrifice every single day so we can enjoy our holidays, have our picnics, and have our debates: Thank you.

And now I want to make a tricky intellectual "pivot" and turn from talking about honoring those who fought for our freedoms, and talk about how we build our own lives, and the "Memorial Days" that signify our progress. Clearly, we must first acknowledge Memorial Day the way it was intended and honor those who have given their lives for our freedom, but we honor them most by USING our freedom, not merely luxuriating in it.

I'm going to make a strong, blunt statement that may offend some, but here goes: I believe too many of us (around the world, not only in the U.S.) have grown flabby and lazy. We enjoy our freedoms, our wealth and our opportunities, but we also squander them.Too often we use our freedom to become consummate consumers, rather that expert builders. Too often we use our freedom to complain rather than to create.

Too often we use our wealth and our power to become couch potatoes and channel-surfers rather than pursuing our potential and exploring the limits of possibility.As you celebrate this national Memorial Day, I encourage you to note the key Memorial Dates in your own life.

As you look back, do you mark the date you graduated, or the date you launched your business? Do you mark the date you set your own course, perhaps the day you risked it all for your dreams?

On a warm, sunny day in July, 1984, a friend and I reached the summit of Mt. Blanca, a 14,110-foot mountain in Colorado and as we enjoyed the view, I knew we would climb many mountains together. I didn't ask Mary to become my life partner for two more years, but that day on that mountain is one of my "Memorial Days." I remember it well. The view, the struggle to the summit and the partnership we forged that day changed my life forever.

I remember a blustery, rainy day on December 12, 1997. That was the day I turned in my keys and walked away from the clinic I had built. I'd sold it earlier, but agreed to stay until the end of the year, and on that Friday afternoon, I launched a new direction. It is one of my Memorial Days.

How about you? What are your personal Memorial Days? Have you used your freedoms, your talent, your dreams and abilities to create the life you want? Some dates are specific and easy to recall, others may not have seemed special but in retrospect, we know they were turning points. We all have these Memorial Days and they are important.

Honor them. Honor yourself! Freedom and opportunity only exist if they are used! And more than that, one of the ways we fuel our dreams and empower the future is by "borrowing" confidence, courage and momentum from the past. Celebrate your achievements and use them to know, deep inside, that you can boldly go wherever your wish in the future.

Go climb some big mountains!

Options and Liberty

by Brian Klemmer

Here’s a novel thought: All people have freedom. What about those who live under a dictator? They, too, have freedom. Why? Because it’s the ability to choose, and all human beings have that, as Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl has so eloquently described, even in unimaginable circumstances. However, the consequences of their choices are far different than average circumstances. And even though all people have freedom, very few enjoy liberty.

Liberty is the ability to do what you want to do when you want to do it, to go where you want to go when you want to go there. Most important, it’s the ability to be what you want to be when you want to be it.

Compassionate samurai search for choices, solutions, and meaning in life, rather than waiting for them to appear. They try to increase the liberty that they and others enjoy. They don’t shrink from tough choices simply because they don’t like the perceived outcomes.

I believe that of all the gifts God grants us, the most powerful is choice. It’s also a very useful tool if used skillfully. It has a power that gives us the potential winner’s edge all of the time. It’s the ability to create liberty. That might sound like an unrealistic philosophy, but it isn’t. What you pick now determines what you enjoy tomorrow. What you decide not to choose also determines what you’ll never have in this lifetime.

So at the end of the day—or even at the end of your life—you can be an average person and blame others for what did or didn’t happen for you. Or you can be a compassionate samurai and enjoy yourself even amid dire circumstances and create a life of liberty for yourself and others.

If liberty is so great, why aren’t there more compassionate samurai experiencing it? The answer is because there’s a cost for everything. There’s no free lunch. Every benefit has a corresponding cost or something you must give up. There’s a price to acknowledging that you have choices (as there are different consequences for pretending that you don’t). There are costs for making the compassionate samurai choice, as well as for taking the easier way out. At West Point, we were taught always to choose the harder right rather than the easier wrong. They were teaching us to be compassionate samurai. Some might argue about the compassionate part, but we’ll save that for another discussion.

If we wimp out and don’t make the right choices, we lose our liberty.

Frankl once recommended the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be complemented by a "Statue of Responsibility" on the West Coast. Perhaps he was saying that our liberty requires us to make good decisions. If we wimp out and don’t make the right choices, we lose our liberty. When we do this, we choose obvious short-term benefits with not-so-obvious long-term costs over obvious short-term costs that have not-so-obvious long-term benefits. The very nature of a compassionate samurai is to pick the latter.

I’m concerned with what I see in American society; in fact, that was the impetus for writing this book. Listen to average people complain about how their children won’t benefit from the Social Security program, yet they’re unwilling to change their lifestyle in any way. Look at how average people enjoy the benefits of their current status, but they shrink from considering the future environmental impact of their excesses on their grandchildren even to the point of being "confused" about whether global warming and other such issues are real.

Consider those who made huge amounts of money in the Enron, Tyco, and even Arthur Andersen scandals, with no concern for the thousands who lost their retirement savings as a result—let alone the damages the economy suffered or the cynicism about business that was generated. This isn’t really a new thing. Such behavior has occurred throughout history in nations and families who received abundance rather than earning it. A different, higher value is established when something is earned. When life is painful enough, moving forward becomes a more obvious and easier choice to make for the average individual.

Excerpted from The Compassionate Sumurai: Being Extraordinary in an Ordinary World by Brian Klemmer