Leadership beckons: When no one knows what to do, humanity’s sole benefactor is the man who does.
How? With that Driven-sociable frame of mind: “I’m looking out for my own – my wife, my kids, my pets, my neighbors.”
It was all D. In an emergency, the Driven temperament we’ve spent the past 30 years trying to drug away is all that matters. I, S and C do what they’re told, often poorly, while the D’s figure out what to do and then get it done.
Strip away everything innessential, and what’s left is the essence:
Wealth is not invested capital. Absent the human capital to invent and sustain it, invested capital rusts and rots.
But wealth is not just human capital either: Knowing what to do and actually getting it done are two different things.
The wealth we own in such abundance that we never take the time to account for it is brought to us by the Ds temperament – and by nothing else in its absence.
That’s what we saw this week in Texas:
When everyone is wiped out materially and financially – when no one has anything except treasured trash bags full of rotting treasures – the richest man is the one with Ds frame: “Nothing gets better until we make it better, so let’s get to it!”
When everyone is devastated emotionally – distraught over lost loved ones, lost treasures, lost opportunities – the happiest man is the one who can’t seem to remember yesterday because he can’t ever forget how great everything is going to be tomorrow.
When everyone is crushed by the poverty of the spirit – plummeting from a never-doubted comfort to the misery-making mud in an instant – the most generous man is the one who sheds hope – by delegating tasks. “How do we know things will be better soon? Because you’ll be making them better, that’s how.”
When everyone is lost, the smartest man is the one with a better destination in mind – and a plan for getting there.
When everyone is lonely and afraid, the bravest man is the one who refuses to permit his fears to best him.
Then and there, among those people, yes, but also now and always, among all people:
When no one knows what to do, humanity’s sole benefactor is the man who does.
Civilization is Ds because all leadership is Ds. We live easy, most of the time, because Driven men have made life easy for us. And when we are forced by exigency to live hard, it’s Driven men alone who keep us alive.
Ds is the drive to survive: The love that makes a man risk his own life to save the lives he loves.
Accordingly, Ds is humanity.
Do what you can for Texas, but despair you nothing: Texans will do for themselves, regardless.
But whatever you do, be sure to thank them for reminding you what human beings are – still and always – when everything inessential has been stripped away.
