Move beyond a Laurel

Today in the state of California is a foreign born governor called Arnold Schwarzenegger. California is also called the Golden State and is one of the richest states in the Union. How did this happen, that a foreign born person out of at least 100 million eligible individuals in the country would end up at the helm? Here is a man who saw beyond his limitation of not being a club member. He had done well in his native home of Austria as a body builder but that did not fulfill his desire. He still wanted more and pressed on for an opportunity that did not exist in his home and sought it out elsewhere. He found a lot of people sitting on laurels. Most folks were happy to be talking about sports, movies, cars among other things.

Did the gubernatorial position Arnold holds come easy? In my opinion it was easier said than done. For starters, he had to learn English and be comfortable doing business in English, and be paraded in his Terminator and other movies. Each time he had a movie success, he was winning people on his side. When opportunity presented itself through a referendum of recall of Davis, he availed himself for the position. Governor Schwarzenegger could have stopped at his success as an action hero, after all he is the Terminator, but instead he pressed on to the next challenge.

I have often listened to candidates running for political office. They want to remind us of what they achieved in the past while others give excuses why they did not keep a pledge from last time. Rarely do you hear of the vision for the future, where they will go and what they will do. If there are such blue prints, at most they are fuzzy. You wonder why people are so fascinated with laurels. Laurels provide an escape from reality to bask on what we have been, buy yesterday’s victory, a resource for a foregone season. Today and tomorrow have a different challenge. Life around us tells us differences in time, there is time for winter, spring, summer and autumn. We rarely have summer intermeshed with winter; these are distinct seasons with different manifestations.

If we master the art that a victory for today is not eternal although it can be stretched to overlap into another season, the better we will be to confront our future. We just have to stay hungry for more as life itself can be daunting, especially when we are ill prepared for its many challenges. In most cases we celebrate prematurely, and confuse means to an end. Instead, we should cultivate and master the means (tools) for more intended outcomes.