American Exceptionalism

I watched much of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on C-SPAN this past weekend.  There were so many phenomenal speakers and there were several panel discussions that were very interesting.  I encourage you to visit http://www.cpac.org/ and view the videos.  Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) gave a particularly outstanding speech dealing with American Exceptionalism.  Basically, the thing that is exceptional about America is that we, every individual, have the freedom to choose our destiny.  We choose success or we choose decline with every decision we make.  She said, "We must be worthy of ourselves."  She is right.

We cannot continue to define success by the level of sameness in our society.  If everyone is normal, then no one is exceptional.  If there are no winners or losers, we will not know how to formulate a strategy to win the game.  We cannot continue to lower the bar so that more people can jump over.  We must raise the bar so that more people try harder.  We must teach our children how to compete so that our nation can compete.  We cannot continue to bail companies out of bad business decisions.  We must let those companies fail so that the policies and practices that led to the failure can be identified and discarded and new companies can rise.  When we allow failure to be rewarded, we kill innovation and we kill success. 

As I have shared with you in previous posts, we own a small construction company.  December through March in our part of the country are typically slow months for construction and the past two years have been slower than usual.  After worrying all last winter, I decided that this winter I would do things differently.  I wanted to do something positive and productive during this time because I don't find anxiety to be conducive to success.  Last August, I enrolled in a tax preparation class and secured a tax season job with a national retail tax preparation company.  As I was filling out my new hire paperwork, I was stunned when I reached a section that asked me what form of recognition would best motivate me.  It laid out several choices that included public praise, private praise, prizes, that type of thing.  I checked "other" and wrote in that I considered being paid for my work to be sufficient recognition.  How sad that we have reached the place in our society that adults are being treated like preschoolers, being encouraged to choose between pretty stickers or yummy suckers just for being special.

I can't even begin to get my thought process around this concept.  Don't get me wrong, I like to feel appreciated once in a while and I like to show appreciation to others.  We need that as human beings.  But when every man, woman and child in our society gets shiny beads and meaningless flattery for every breath they take, I have to wonder what's next when this no longer works.  Anything that we receive in excess only dilutes the pleasure that it once brought when it was rare. 

We must be worthy of ourselves.  We must get back to that place where our satisfaction and our motivation comes from the pure joy of knowing in our own hearts that we did the job well and to the best of our ability and that we moved forward.  We must try harder and work harder and fail more.  We must step back from the task of the moment and instead focus on the goal of the wider vision.  We can't do big things with small views.  God has a bigger purpose for all of us and if we allow ourselves to be satisfied with the small stuff, what richness, what beauty, what experience, what blessing are we giving up?  Friends, we must rise to a higher calling.  We must set a higher standard.  We must be worthy of ourselves.