The Sum – Meaning of the Week: Crossroads (Part 2)

“The first responsibility of leadership is the creation of meaning.”—Warren Bennis. ‪Word of the week is Crossroads (part 2) As in Charlottesville As in the junctions in life where we must choose hate or love, war or peace, yes or no. ‪As in if ever there was a week when we have to address the…

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THE BIGGER THEY ARE THE HARDER THEY FALL (and vice versa)

When I was four or five, my daddy took me to the Golden Gloves amateur boxing finals in our small hometown of Temple, Texas. The crowd let out a mighty roar as the two boxers came out into the ring and raised their arms in that cocky “I’m the man” stance. One contestant, dressed in white trunks and shirt looked significantly larger than the other more muscular man who was wearing red and black if my memory serves.

As both men surveyed the crowd while doing their pre-bout strut around the ring, I pointed to the man in white and said to Daddy, “That big one is going to win.”

My father stopped cheering, looked me square in the eyes, and said to me, “Dodie (his pet name for me), the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

Daddy’s admonition has come back to me so many times over, none more so than watching Eliot Spitzer resign from his post as governor of New York today in the whorl of a sex and illegal prostitution-procurement scandal.

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