So recently I was invited to my brother-in-law’s retirement ceremony in Washington DC at the Arlington National Cemetery women’s Center. I thought I would share a few impressions about the whole event.
If you’ve never been to Arlington you owe it to yourself if you consider yourself a patriot or even a historian. This place is a very impactful representation of how so many have given up the ultimate sacrifice to allow us to be safe and allow us to have the freedoms we so often take for granted. Just the size of the place made me emotional and touched me to my core. The next time I hear someone whine in a line at the grocery store about how long it is taking I will think of this place. The fallen in this place fought for you to stand in that line without fear.
I was in the Air Force for one stint and although I really don’t place myself in this group it makes me proud to know I served. I still get overwhelmed thinking of the first look at Arlington. There are no words I can write to describe the feelings.
Now on to the occasion that I visited this place; my brother-in-law Kelly was being honored in a way most NCOs’ are not honored. He was retiring from the Air Force having achieved what only 3% of Air Force NCOs’ do achieve and that is making it to the grade of Senior Master Sergeant. There were many other reasons to honor this great man. He served with some of the top Generals in the Armed Forces and also distinguished himself everywhere he went including some pretty difficult theaters.
To meet Kelly is to know Kelly. He has no pretention about himself and you never need to wonder where he stands on any particular issue. You do have to have a pretty radical sense of humor if you plan on keeping up with him. He is honest to a fault….thoughtful….intelligent…..a great friend; husband, brother, uncle and Son. If he never served in the Air Force he would have distinguished himself wherever he went.
I know no better honor for any man than the last paragraph. So to close this I just want to say thank you Kelly. Thank you for spending all those lonely nights….those challenging days….and those 28 years as guardian of our great country. Most importantly, thank you for allowing me the privilege of knowing you.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Passion
For some strange reason that escapes me as most strange reasons do, I seem to be thinking about a word lately and just how it relates to life in general. The word gets tossed around frequently and can sometimes be misconstrued. Its killing you now right? Ok, enough toying with my reader…..the word is passion.
Now I’m not letting the discussion degrade into the sexual connotations of the word although I do believe the parallels are uncanny. Let’s do something I do frequently when bringing up words and look to the origins of the word. So here is what I found out about this word:
Date of Origin 12th c.
Latin patī meant ‘suffer’ (it is the source of English patient). From itspast participial stem pass- was coined in post-classical times the nounpassiō, denoting specifically the ‘suffering of Christ on the cross’. English acquired the word via Old French passion, but its familiarmodern senses, in which ‘strength of feeling’ has been transferred from ‘pain’ to ‘sexual attraction’ and ‘anger’, did not emerge until the 16thcentury. Also from the Latin stem pass- comes passive (14th c.), etymologically ‘capable of suffering’.
I had a feeling that the origin would be through Christ’s passion specifically about his suffering during his last human days. This topic now becomes even more relevant as we are into Lent now and that suffering for many Christians is about to be relived once more. That will always be the ultimate display of “passion”.
Another by-product of passion, at least in my eyes, is how successful people always have it in their lives. Most people I know do not luck their way into success. Think about anyone you deal with, work for or read about who is successful. If you ever listen to someone speak about what makes them successful almost all will say to have a dream, work for that dream and you will realize success. Having dreams is important but I think without the passion to work for that dream, the dream by itself is of no real value.
This passion does not always reveal itself in a most abundant or recognizable way. Take my Dad, for instance (God rest his soul), you might not always see his passion. He was often a soft spoken man but if you knew him and I mean really knew him, you knew where his passions resided. Here are a couple examples…Yankees, politics, family, working with hands. I threw the last piece in because those other aspects were pretty in your face and obvious but if you knew how he kept busy in his woodworking long after he retired you understand what I am talking about. It wouldn’t matter if it was a flower box on his house, or a picture frame or clock he would always use the same meticulous passion for detail that made anything he worked on extra special. That’s the kind of passion I’m referring to at the moment. I’ve had bosses who had it. If you take the average person and inject passion into them about something, it spills over and becomes very inspiring to others.
Passion is not something you are necessarily born with and that may be the best news of all. There’s still time! You may be confusing passion with self-respect and although most that have passion have the second trait there are many who don’t hold both characteristics. There are many hard working people that don’t necessarily exhibit passion about their work and that’s OK. The leaders that are successful generally take care of that.
I took on this subject not to bore you….ooops too late….but really to kind of make you step back and perhaps look at yourself. Do you have passion about something? Do you share that passion? If not you should. You may just impress someone who could change your life. Food for thought….or perhaps not.
Now I’m not letting the discussion degrade into the sexual connotations of the word although I do believe the parallels are uncanny. Let’s do something I do frequently when bringing up words and look to the origins of the word. So here is what I found out about this word:
Date of Origin 12th c.
Latin patī meant ‘suffer’ (it is the source of English patient). From itspast participial stem pass- was coined in post-classical times the nounpassiō, denoting specifically the ‘suffering of Christ on the cross’. English acquired the word via Old French passion, but its familiarmodern senses, in which ‘strength of feeling’ has been transferred from ‘pain’ to ‘sexual attraction’ and ‘anger’, did not emerge until the 16thcentury. Also from the Latin stem pass- comes passive (14th c.), etymologically ‘capable of suffering’.
I had a feeling that the origin would be through Christ’s passion specifically about his suffering during his last human days. This topic now becomes even more relevant as we are into Lent now and that suffering for many Christians is about to be relived once more. That will always be the ultimate display of “passion”.
Another by-product of passion, at least in my eyes, is how successful people always have it in their lives. Most people I know do not luck their way into success. Think about anyone you deal with, work for or read about who is successful. If you ever listen to someone speak about what makes them successful almost all will say to have a dream, work for that dream and you will realize success. Having dreams is important but I think without the passion to work for that dream, the dream by itself is of no real value.
This passion does not always reveal itself in a most abundant or recognizable way. Take my Dad, for instance (God rest his soul), you might not always see his passion. He was often a soft spoken man but if you knew him and I mean really knew him, you knew where his passions resided. Here are a couple examples…Yankees, politics, family, working with hands. I threw the last piece in because those other aspects were pretty in your face and obvious but if you knew how he kept busy in his woodworking long after he retired you understand what I am talking about. It wouldn’t matter if it was a flower box on his house, or a picture frame or clock he would always use the same meticulous passion for detail that made anything he worked on extra special. That’s the kind of passion I’m referring to at the moment. I’ve had bosses who had it. If you take the average person and inject passion into them about something, it spills over and becomes very inspiring to others.
Passion is not something you are necessarily born with and that may be the best news of all. There’s still time! You may be confusing passion with self-respect and although most that have passion have the second trait there are many who don’t hold both characteristics. There are many hard working people that don’t necessarily exhibit passion about their work and that’s OK. The leaders that are successful generally take care of that.
I took on this subject not to bore you….ooops too late….but really to kind of make you step back and perhaps look at yourself. Do you have passion about something? Do you share that passion? If not you should. You may just impress someone who could change your life. Food for thought….or perhaps not.
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