Yes, I need some time to absorb this but what has seeped in so far has received a bad reaction from me.
We are victims these days of the Stockdale Paradox. Hope, anticipation that our fears and enemies will be vanquished only to have the rug jerked out from under us again. Belief in the “system” does that to you. The “system” does not give a damn for you or I.
In a business book by James C. Collins called Good to Great, Collins writes about a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.
“I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”
When Collins asked who didn’t make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
“Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Stockdale then added:
“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
Witnessing this philosophy of duality, Collins went on to describe it as the Stockdale Paradox.
This is the post of the year. Fantastic post. We cannot and will not throw in the towel on this. We need to show absolute resolve here and not back down an inch. Eyes on the prize. We will prevail in the end.