Cadet Maxim Redux
We have probably all seen the Cadet Maxim that originates from West Point, the U.S. Military Academy on the Hudson River. West Point is the longest continuously manned army post in the United States, having been established in 1778 and founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1802. That Maxim reads:
Risk more than others think is safe
Care more than others think is wise
Dream more than others think is practical
Expect more than others think is possible
It is one of my favorite mottos and despite being of military origin (I’m much more a dove than a hawk), I think it speaks precisely to my feelings about how we should all live our lives. It is a perfect compliment to the famous Teddy Roosevelt Man in the Arena speech since I believe we should all Dare Greatly in our walk through life.
The two words in the Maxim that resonate the most with me are Care and More. To me, risking, dreaming and expecting are all valuable components of how one might live their life to get the most out of it and give the most back to it, but caring in not optional. It is mandatory. If we don’t care we are simply not as human as we are supposed to be. Animals have a hard time caring. They are preoccupied with survival and instinctual activity. They neither have the time to care too much nor the inclination to care about other than their basic needs. Rene Descartes, the famous French philosopher said over three hundred years ago, “I think, therefore I am”. That may be the origin of existential thought, but the origin of humanity, which presumably came some time long before that, should have been “I care, therefore I am”. Caring is the difference between existing and living. We can exist as beings without ever caring about one another or anything, but we cannot be human beings without caring, and perhaps caring deeply and to an extent that is more than others think is safe.
That leads to the second resonating word in the Maxim. More may be less to Coco Chanel, but more is what man was here to strive towards. It is his purpose and meaning in its most distilled sense. To care is to achieve a degree of perfection and greatness. Not all human beings are as capable of caring either enough or at least as much as they should. But every being wants more and strives for more. Betty is not human and Kim would say she cares, which I might debate in my harsher moments, but no one would ever question whether Betty wants more. She is at an age where the things she wants more of are sleep and food and while sleep is limited only by the hours in the day, food is apparently not limited at all. She will literally never hit a limit in how much food she wants even if the natural constraints of her belly are such that there is, indeed, a limit. It is not a limit I have ever witnessed because if Betty is awake, she wants more food. I noted as much on our Holiday Card this year where I said that Kim’s passion is for more love and more song and my passion is for more motorcycles and more mulch (clearly while Kim’s wants are true, mine are metaphorical for adventure and purpose). Well, I went on to say that the only thing Betty wants is more food.
They say that it’s the journey and not the destination and that the joys of life come from striving. I think that is 80% true, but getting there and doing that still account for the other 20%. I suppose if we suggest that it is caring that sends us on our journey and our quest for more is about accomplishment, we may have found the right equation for balancing caring and wanting more. Care first and then do so more than is safe, wise, practical and even possible. Set your goals way out there so that you never catch the mechanical rabbit because that will be the end of you.
I often think about the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai where Ken Watanabe plays Katsumoto, literally the last Samurai (in reality, the last Samurai was Saigo Takamori, who went down in a comet’s blaze in 1877). The passion of bushido for the Samurai was epitomized in Katsumoto’s quest for the perfect cherry blossom. He dies in the movie on the battlefield looking at the falling cherry blossoms from a nearby tree and realizes on his deathbed that all cherry blossoms are perfect. In many ways, while I am no student of Japanese history or culture, I sense that bushido is in fulsome agreement with the Cadet’s Maxim, which, given its militaristic origins, would make some sense. Katsumoto cares about things, he cares about tradition, honor and beauty, all fundamentally human concepts. And the bushido code implies a degree of passion for these things that is best exemplified by the notion that they must strive for more.
As I look around my office the various things around me and on my wall tell me about Carpe Diem, that “Some Men Never Compromise, they Cope”, “Indian, From Here, There and Everywhere”, and The Art of the Motorcycle at the Guggenheim. Carpe Diem comes close to being the Cadet Maxim, but there are many ways to seize the day that may or may not involve caring and still, to me, the essence of my personal mission in life is to care deeply. The movie Serendipity will go down in the annals of film for one line when Jeremy Piven says to John Cusack that the Greeks didn’t write obituaries, but rather asked one question at a man’s funeral. They simply asked, “Did he have passion?” I looked it up and this was actually the philosophy of Aristippus of Cyrene, who lived around 400 B.C. and put words to the general Greek belief that all knowledge was derived from man’s stimulation of his senses. I guess to the Greeks, stimulation of the senses is another way of looking at passion.
I am a big believer in the value of passion in all things. Why undertake something unless you are willing to be passionate. The perfunctory is not worthy of recordation and yet anything in which one invests passion results in a story worth telling. These are the legends and the tales that have been passed down with the greatest impact on us all. I never served in the military and I am not entirely sure I like the notion that one of my favorite mottos is the Cadet Maxim. I somehow feel that passion for annihilation or even battle is the opposite of caring. But there must be something in military training that focuses the mind on the core principle of existence. At its base line, existential efforts must be about caring about life as we know it, so I can accept that cadets need to care about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I just wish it to be heavy on the caring and light on the aggression. That may be the ultimate Cadet Maxim redux.