“The hardest role to play is the one where you play yourself and allow yourself to remove the mask and be yourself.”
— Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland
There will be tests in this life to show people who you really are.
These tests create the ‘fork in the road’.
Former Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates to the Air Force Academy:
“Here at the Air Force Academy, as with every university and company in America, there’s a focus on teamwork, consensus-building, and collaboration. Yet make no mistake, the time will come for each of you when you must stand alone in making a difficult, unpopular decision; when you must challenge the opinion of superiors or tell them that you can’t get the job done with the time and resources available; or when you will know that what superiors are telling the press or the Congress or the American people is inaccurate. There will be moments when your entire career is at risk – where you will face Boyd’s proverbial fork in the road. To be or to do.
To be ready for that moment, you must have the discipline to cultivate integrity and moral courage from here at the Academy, and then from your earliest days as a commissioned officer. Those qualities do not suddenly emerge fully developed overnight or as a revelation after you have assumed important responsibilities. These qualities have their roots in the small decisions you will make here and early in your career and must be strengthened all along the way to allow you to resist the temptation of self before service. And you must always ensure that your moral courage serves the greater good: that it serves what is best for the nation and our highest values – not a particular program nor pride nor parochialism.
Gates was dropping bombs on the pilots… Get it?
Ok, serious time… What are the takeaways from Gates and Zeland?
Force puts the mask on to play someone else.
Power takes the mask off to play their true self.
Force says they do but they don’t.
Power is integrous.
Force serves and preserves self.
Power serves others and would die for the cause.