Archive for September, 2011

When I reflect on 9-11, the day that changed America as we knew it, I have to ask, did it change us for the better? Sadly, in the long run it hasn’t so far. Initially, our anger over a homeland attack, and our fear of more, united us as Americans. But that unity was short-lived. A decade later, we are a country divided by ideology instead of united by ideas.

We literally play the Big D!ck Contest of Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong all of the time. Even the majority of cable news has a “they are wrong” slant to their reporting or simply offer commentary. We’re so busy disagreeing over the micro issues of the day that no one is thinking of the macro vision of who we want to be in 20, 50, or 100 years, much less set a plan in action to create it.

Without question, 9-11 changed the course of our history. But it didn’t and doesn’t have to change our history for the worst. It doesn’t have to make us smaller. We could use this anniversary to unite and create a vision of greatness for America.

If you think we’re already great, in many ways you’re right, we are. But ask anyone at the top of their game and they don’t sit on their laurels. If they want to stay great, they can’t. They find ways to keep winning, to keep improving, and to keep getting better. That’s what America needs to do now. Unite. Think. And grow.
There is no one path to this. It’s a path as diverse as each person who walks it. And our patriotic duty as Americans is to make walking the path available for all the people living in America.

It’s not a one-sided path, but a path of balance. The path has a bit of everything on it: law enforcement and defense because bad people exist; a strong business environment, but not an irresponsible one; a government because like it or not someone has to create and enforce some rules; taxes because money really doesn’t grow on trees; education because when we’re stupid, it’s really sad not funny; health care because if you’ve ever been sick, you know health is the most important BDC to win; infrastructure because we need big things like roads for commerce and pleasure; you get the idea. We need to be fiscally responsible, but we also need to have a vision of a great future that we are in the process of creating.

To maintain greatness, it must be built and improved upon every day. It can’t be something that we are nostalgic about because we quit our quest for it because we thought we achieved it. Other countries are striving to be more like us. A country, like a company, must continue to grow and reinvent itself to maintain relevance. That includes America. We are a nation of great people that need to unite because in the end, we’re Americans first, and more kinds of apple pie than there are different kinds of apples second.

It might surprise you that I’m an optimist. After all, writing a book about the life game, The Big D!ck Contest, that focuses on winners and losers seems counterintuitive to optimism. But the optimist in me wrote the book because it’s easier to quit playing something if we understand why we play in the first place. Sure, sometimes we need to play or feel we have to play. But other times just play to play.

On this anniversary of 9-11, let’s play the Big D!ck Contest for America by uniting to create an even better America.

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