Go and find your bloody fight
I’m a contextual writer. What does that mean? It means I look to the past to find meaning and guidance for our personal and professional struggles.
The poet Longfellow said it best:
“Lives of great men all remind us we can make ourselves sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time.”
There’s beauty in learning about our ancestors. Where today’s superstars, artists, and politicians are subject to corruption and ambiguity, we etch the stories of our past in stone. It’s a part of you that remains unchanged. It already happened so it just… is.
History has hardened my resolve, and, I hope, that’s rubbed off on you through this newsletter.
Yet, I keep hitting a snag.
Many of our heroes grew into leaders only after some history-defining war. In fact Alexander Hamilton, Florence Nightingale, and Winston Churchill spent their twenties looking for a fight because it was the only way they could prove themselves to the world. Lucky for them (I guess), fights weren’t hard to find.
Take Churchill. Born into an aristocratic family, he had no reason to enlist in the calvary. But there he was, an educated twenty-four-year-old fighting in whatever skirmish the British Empire happened to get into that year. He even used his influential American mother to curry favors with members of Parliament— not to receive a commission away from harm, but to thrust him into the front lines. Who does that?!
People say things are different now. To quote the movie Fight Club: “We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no great war.”
A generation born into an endless cycle of boring desk jobs; falling in and out of love.
Nonsense.
There are fights going on all around us. Perhaps not on a battlefield, but like Churchill, we can hustle our way to the bleeding edge of a revolution or some history-defining moment.
You see people do it every day.
How about the kid foregoing a career in finance to start a blockchain company.
Or the student who dropped out of school to organize a charity for a long-ignored cause.
Or the people who sacrifice hours and hours a week to raise money and qualify for the Boston Marathon.
There may not be a great war, but don’t kid yourself, there are little wars everywhere.
Find yours and prepare yourself to die on that hill.
It was Florence Nightingale who wrote: