Never Lose A Passenger
Speaking of her time leading the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman said this:
“I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
What’s inspiring to me about this statement is that Harriet’s leadership included politics, civil rights, forward progress, the human experience as it should be, severe personal trauma, contemplative faith, leading teams—and physical endurance.
Today, I don’t know for sure how to lead without losing a passenger, because in politics we can define things however we’d like.
However, today marks the start of the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, and I think sport brings meaning to life in ways that we can understand it.
Around the conclusion of the Paris Olympics, I found the values of Olympism listed on the website for the International Olympic Committee: excellence, respect, and friendship. They define them this way:
· Striving for excellence and encouraging people to be the best they can be.
· Demonstrating respect in many different manners: respect towards yourself, the rules, your opponents, the environment, the public, etc.
· Celebrating friendship, which is quite unique to the Olympic Games – an event that brings people together every few years.
You can read more on their website at https://olympics.com/ioc/olympic-values.
Personally, I don’t think humanity would survive without the Olympics, not only because of the Games every four years, but also because of what happens in between the Games—the preparation by athletes in communities all over the world. Sport is a shared, universal language and value system, and it can give us a coherent psychological reference point for what it can mean to never lose a passenger.
Finally, one of the assets I am currently compiling and editing for Liberatus stakeholders is a paper that covers dozens of ways we can collaborate, build trust, and build endurance—our version of excellence, respect, and friendship—based on what our writers have contributed so far. To make sure you get it when it’s released, sign up on this page by email.
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Mission: Inspire American Unity
Liberatus is a political organization and publication exploring how we make our country more just and free for the next generation. We create inspiration for American unity in beautiful, well-researched and faith-rooted illustrated journals, written by professionals across the spectrum, to inspire lifestyles where we collaborate, build trust, and build endurance—because nothing changes if nothing changes.
Journal Entry #154
ISSUE 022: FOUNDATIONAL ETHOS — PART 5