“Those who chose to lead must follow. But if you fall you fall alone.”
Robert C. Hunter and Jerome J. Garcia
An old adage says it is lonely at the top. It has never been truer than in this time when no one cares to act except by mass consensus and in concert with the consent of the media. I don’t think there is time left for Americans of conscious to sit idly by waiting for somebody else to stand up first. It is time to take the lead. Stand up and be counted.
The best way to be an effective leader is to learn to follow. I suggest this begins by learning to follow your heart. Doing the right thing is seldom easy and never without consequence. Great men are not born great. They are made great by a lifetime of following their heart through a series of small actions.
Jesus once told a story about how this works in common folks like you and me. People were given talents—whether this gift is from birth, acquisition of skills by education, opportunity, or mere happenstance if you believe in that. When they were judged, each person was responsible only for what he did with what he was given.
You have been given life and liberty and talents to exercise in the pursuit of your own happiness. Do not bury them in the ground out of fear your neighbor will see you being free.
I wasn’t raised in church—that came later in life—and in those later lessons, I heard things I never would have believed anywhere but in church. I heard that freedom was neither free nor forever. I heard that our right to gather, worship, and live by our conscious was a fragile thing needing constant vigilance and safeguarding.
And the people laughed.
I heard that television would creep not only into our homes but into our minds until it became our gospel. When that didn‘t work the call went out to turn off the news and the TV “news magazines”.
And the people laughed.
I heard that the day would come when we could not work at our job, go to visit our family, or shop where we chose without submitting ourselves to the State for permission and having all we buy monitored.
And the people laughed.
I know this is so. I was the one they were laughing at.
They are still laughing, all the while calling to one another “Peace” and “Safety”. My life would be simpler if I obeyed the exhortation that a man who refuses to heed a warning after the second admonition should be left to his folly. I cannot live with that. Nor can I live with letting people who have been their own undoing stay down. Can you?
The consequence of taking the lead, of taking a stand, is that you do it alone. Those of you old enough may remember the image of the solitary man standing in Tiananmen Square with the Chinese tank bearing down upon him. That is taking the lead and America needs that from us more than ever.
You walk alone, you bear the ridicule alone, and you fall alone. And at night, when the darkness closes in and you want to quit, you get back up alone. Until, one day, out of nowhere, somebody gets up next to you.
Maranatha
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