ISSUE #028 | THE LEADERSHIP CONTRARIAN
A quick note before we begin: at the end of last week's issue, I told you Uncertainty was next. It still is, one week from today. But today is the 250th birthday of the United States, and I couldn't let that pass without writing to you about it.
There's an old sword leaning against a wall in our home.
A saber - long, thin, and tired-looking. It still has its sheath, tattered as it is, and the metal is pitted and tarnished.
It's the definition of old. Some would say it's a piece of junk.
I love it.
I wasn't supposed to have it.
The sword belongs to my mother's side of the family, the Mullens. I'm the eldest grandson, but I don't carry the last name of Mullen. I'm a Redman, and yet, through a strange twist of fate and after fifty-plus years of eyeing that sword in my grandparents' home, I inherited it from grandfather Roland Max Mullen, just before his death at 98.
So why does an old, tarnished saber matter?
Because it has been handed down in our family for six generations. It was carried in battle during the Civil War by a great-grandfather of mine, three or four greats back.
It helped keep him alive.
That's what separates it from junk. It has history attached to it.
Some of that history is good. Some of it is very hard for me to think about from the world of peace I've grown up in. No matter how tumultuous our world feels, how divided our country looks, it’s nothing compared to brother against brother fighting and dying over disagreements that covered our young nation with a black cloud for generations.
The Civil War was probably our country's greatest test, a test of everything the Revolution had won. It threatened the whole experiment of democracy while the nation was still in its adolescence.
That sword went through it, and so did the story attached to it.
Some of our founding fathers and mothers saw a test like that coming.
John Adams was profoundly aware that future generations might take for granted the blood spilled to build a free society. In the spring of 1777, far from home in Philadelphia and bogged down in the politics of a war that could still be lost, he wrote this to his wife, Abigail:
“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
In today's language? It was as if he was declaring out loud, through Abigail, to every generation still to come: “I'm working myself to the bone here. People are dying. And I'm terrified that the future citizens of this country won't appreciate what we went through.”
John and Abigail knew their letters might become history, because they knew they were living through history.
And here's what hit me the most:
When he wrote “Posterity,” he was writing to us.
We are the posterity John Adams was worried about.
But that's only half the truth because we aren't only somebody's posterity.
We’re also somebody's present generation.
This is where it lands on you and me as leaders.
Everything we lead, we inherited. The country we get to build businesses in. The laws that make a contract mean something. The markets, the roads, the freedoms we use so often we've stopped seeing them.
And everything we're building right now - our companies, our cultures, our families, our reputations - somebody is going to inherit it.
Whether we mean to hand it down or not.
I believe we're living through another pivotal time in history.
The internet has tied most of the world's population together in communication. AI is accelerating faster than our ability to predict what it will mean. The people who think hardest about these things are convinced this is one of those moments in history that changes everything after it, and we just happen to be alive for it.
Just like John and Abigail.
I sometimes think that sounds grandiose. Overly self-important. But then I look at the patterns of history, and I stop arguing with it.
I don't know what will happen. I'm not important enough, and I don't have a big enough voice, to steer the way the world will go.
But I know what I can do.
I can be grateful.
Grateful for where I live, thankful for this country and the place God has us right now.
Grateful for the men and women and families, across multiple generations and multiple centuries, who volunteered and sacrificed so much. Some gave their lives. Some gave their loved ones. Some made sacrifices short of death that still cost them dearly, for the betterment of all of us, even though they weren't perfect.
My wife Kathryn is an immigrant. She came to this country as a child, along with her father and brother, too young to understand the implications. You could say I'm very grateful she found her way here.
It has caused the two of us to reflect on how privileged we are to live in this country, as imperfect as it is.
Some of you may be thinking, “That's ridiculous.” Others of you get it.
So today, on our nation's 250th birthday, that old sword is whispering from the corner.
It's reminding me that this country has been through horrific seasons that tested our experiment as a nation, and we are still here. Not perfect. But far from ruin, no matter how bad it looks at times.
Two things have been handed down in my family. A physical sword. And the freedom it fought to preserve.
One of them leans against a wall. The other one lives in how I lead, how I build, and how I treat the people God has put in front of me.
Freedom isn't a possession we inherit. It's a trust we hold.
The sword just reminds me whose turn it is.
So here's my question for you this Independence Day:
What are you doing with the trust you've been handed?
If this was helpful to you, email me and let me know.
Until next time,
Happy 4th of July!
Keep learning.
Keep growing.
And God bless,
Michael