FORTITUDE This is a special post, for Kacie, for Deborah, for Beth, and for everyone else who is actually in the pit, asses-and-elbows, nose-to-the-grindstone, and whatever other metaphors I could come up with. They, and many other friends of mine, deserve credit and admiration. On April 23, 1910, USA President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech he titled Citizenship in a Republic at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France. It was a thirty-five page speech, and on page seven, there was a passage that has been posthumously coined, The Man in the Arena, and these were Teddys words: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Sure......if youre a spectator, youre certainly entitled to an opinion, and to voice that opinion. Hey, armchair quarterbacks are all the rage, right? But I can guarantee you that armchair quarterbacks are not respected by the players on the field. Armchair quarterbacks pay for their admission, either in stadium tickets, or in Neilsen advertising ratings (973,000 households, anyone?). But when it comes down to game time......none of them are on the field. The powerful people are. The powerful people are in the arena.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 08:33:25 +0000
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