The Cost of Success

We all define success in different terms. For many people, especially men, success often seems to be measured in terms of prosperity and influence. The world tells us to work hard, pay our dues, make sacrifices and the American dream of prosperity and financial security can be ours. True enough, there is ample opportunity in this country for most people to realize their American dream in those terms. However, far too often people sacrifice their families in the pursuit of that success. We rationalize that we’re doing it for them, but when our work focus nudges our loved ones aside it can become self-serving and, in the end, it preys on the very people we intended it to benefit. Some people can balance work and home, but there are always choices and trade offs to make in that balancing act. When we begin to trade our families for financial success we might need to take a step back to reexamine our priorities. We can argue that the money is all for them, but in the end real love is always spelled T.I.M.E. When men become the CEO or the Chairman of the Board, but lose their wives or estrange themselves from their children what have they really accomplished. Clearly none of us are perfect, but we all need to take a step back now and again to reconsider our priorities. Otherwise we may find ourselves so entangled in our lives outside the home that we can become strangers to it. As an example of this point I’m going to make it personal by sharing an excerpt from my own father’s unpublished memoirs:

“… in 1967, I began to realize that my business interests and activities, coupled with politics, had led me to increasingly give away more and more of my time and of myself to other people and other causes. Due to the fact that my children were perfect and my wife was a saint, it was so much easier to let other people influence me into these activities for the good of one cause or another, and the most important one of all to me, was to be sufficiently successful so that I could provide for them in an appropriate way. We had been moving up the ladder financially due to these efforts, but that began to look shallow to me compared to the lack of time I was able to spend with them … By early 1968 I was of a mind to sever our marital ties, simply on the grounds that she, being a few years younger than me, could find a husband she deserved a great deal more. It was not a desire to be noble, but I did recognize that I had involved myself in a web of commitments to so many people, in both business and politics, that it would not be easy to extricate myself. I finally convinced her that this was the appropriate thing to do, although she never really agreed to it. And I was acting substantially against the advice of my then closest friend, a prominent Newport Beach psychiatrist who convinced me I either had to give up everything else in order to do right by my family or turn aside to my dreams of being able to be more successful for their benefit. Rightly or wrongly, I chose to secure a divorce.”

So, you see, even in my own family the lure of success and outside commitments became stronger than the bond of commitments at home … even though the family was the initial reason for all of the hard work and outside commitments. In my case I see it as all having worked out for the best, but divorce affects each person differently and also creates a legacy we pass on to our children. They are the unwilling heirs of our success and failure on the home front. In order to illustrate a different perspective, I offer a poem which was written by my younger brother, Scott Carpenter. This poem captures eloquently a recurring dream he had when he was younger and offers valuable insight into a child’s perspective on the choices some people make in order to achieve their particular brand of success.

The Vat
When I was six I had a dream
that my dad took my mom and me
to the warehouse where men work.
It was all dark except for one door
in the side where you could walk out.
In the middle were some stairs that
led up to a giant vat of waste or acid
or something, and at the top of the stairs
partly in the dark stood the devil.
No one said anything but I knew that if
my dad jumped into the vat then the devil
would let my mom and me go free.
The last thing I remember was my dad
standing up on the stairs next to the devil
looking down into the giant vat, and I
remember my mom and I just stood there
silently, staring at their shadows and the vat.
My mom and I got away so he must have
jumped in. I guess he must be a hero.

That was when my dad left home for good.
He didn't really die. That was only a dream.
And He didn't really jump into the vat
of industrial waste. He just had work to do.
Now that I'm grown up I still have the dream
sometimes. When I wake I think about how
quiet and normal it seemed around the devil.
The warehouse isn't so scary or strange.
And now I have a little boy of my own.
He comes to visit me at the office sometimes.
I give him candy and let him play at my desk.
I still haven't told him about the vat.
By Scott Carpenter

When we look at it from that perspective, it reminds us of how our choices affect other people and how their perspectives thereon may be entirely different. We all have our lives to live and many of us are already living with the consequences of decisions which may or may not have brought about the results we desired. What I do know is that our spouses and children are the most precious commodities we possess and we must carefully consider anything which might trade away some part of them, or our relationships with them, for the promise of success … even if they are the intended beneficiaries thereof. In the end what our families desire more than all the stuff in the world is our hearts. We must not, therefore, allow our hearts to become divided.

In conclusion, I hope and pray that we all might weigh our priorities and make our decisions accordingly. I certainly have not done everything right, not by a long shot. However, I would not trade the love of my wife or the respect of my children for any material thing on this earth. We don’t have a lot of stuff, but in the true essentials of life I’m the richest man I know. Each of us must choose our own path, but let us always keep in mind the potentially high cost of success … and the immeasurable value of the loved ones who will share it with us.

A Grateful Nation

There was such a huge response to my July 4th entry I decided to expand briefly upon that theme, especially since I came up with another poem I wish to share. I began writing this poem on Memorial Day, but it never came to fruition. However, I became re-inspired on July 4th and it finally came together. I have had several military friends serving in the Middle East in recent years and have seen first hand the price they paid personally in order serve our country in that way. Regardless of how you may feel about the war, the politics or our national leadership, I charge each American to extend the respect and gratitude our men and women in arms deserve. They are doing their job and their duty, often at great personal cost and inconvenience to themselves and their loved ones. They do so just as our fathers and grandfathers did when they responded to duty’s call in the great wars of the past. And as before, they are fighting not so much to defend our current borders, but the ideals which those borders represent. It must be noted as well that our soldiers have fought and bled and died on foreign soil time and again, while we have never asked for any more new territory than that required to burry our dead.

On Memorial Day we remember those you have made the ultimate sacrifice for this great nation. On July 4th we celebrate the birth of our nation and the founding principles which make it so great. On all the days in between, however, may we continue to remember those who guard our beloved freedom and champion the rights others who deserve those selfsame freedoms. May all those who proudly wear the uniforms of the United States military, who are our heroes, instruments and emissaries, receive the respect they deserve and ever feel the earnest appreciation of a grateful nation.

A Grateful Nation
How little do I understand
Here, so safe and far away
The sacrifices you have made
And the meaning of this day
Never have I risked my life
Or known the kind of loss
Real heroes or their families know
Who pay for freedom’s cost
So here I pause, as each should
To offer up my heartfelt thanks
For those who fought so bravely
And marched in freedom’s ranks
From Lexington and Concord
To Kabul and Baghdad too
You stood for truth and justice
To see your missions through
And the very least you should expect
That you most certainly deserve
Is the gratitude of your nation
And those you so bravely serve
By Frank Carpenter ©

The Forever Factor

I was recently reading Psalm 136, which repeatedly employs the phrase, “His love endures forever.” That got me thinking about the big picture that word forever implies. I’m not quite sure how a finite human mind can even begin to grasp the concept, but suffice it to say that it’s a long time … unimaginably long. With that in mind as a backdrop, I daresay most of us think very little about the future which lies somewhere out there beyond retirement. However, can any of us really afford to ignore that gaping void of eternity future which looms ahead. Let’s call it the “forever factor.” Today, I’d rather speak about this subject in more general terms rather than engage you in a long theological discussion. My observation is that life is relatively short, compared to the magnitude of eternity, so perhaps it behooves us to think and plan towards that inevitable end (or beginning). Our time here can be very distracting and often, before we know it, the years have slipped away and all that time we thought we had left has evaporated. Let us not forget, also, that we have no guarantees about that length of our earthly lives. Usually, I suppose I’m quick to draw conclusions and spout my particular brand of truth, but today I’ll just climb off my soap box and let the great eternal paradox speak for itself. So I l eave you today with food for thought and encouragement to spend some time digesting that food. Don’t take too long, though, because forever is a really long time and none of us can be sure exactly when it’s scheduled to begin.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this subject, I encourage your response. Also, Remember to include your own email address if you’d like me to respond to you. Have a great day … and may you be blessed with many more.

The Shortness of Time
We are so easily entangled
In the daily rituals of life
Wooed into marching with the others
When we hear the drum and fife
Until our time grows so congested
With commitments we have made
That they rule our private worlds
And things eternal seem to fade
We forget about our first love
The God we say we care about
We slowly nudge Him to the background
Until He's shut completely out
Wake up! What are we doing?
These things we've let monopolize
Are merely meaningless diversions
It's time we finally realize
That only the things eternal
Matter in the larger scheme
We must not let the world seduce us
With its promises and dreams
We must shake ourselves and understand
And train ourselves to see
The shortness of the time we have
And the magnitude of eternity
By Frank Carpenter ©

Independence Day and The Declaration of Independence

Well, here we are at another 4th of July. Mostly we shall celebrate this holiday with fireworks and the consumption of great quantities of hot dogs and potato salad. Indeed, with all of the activity, it would be easy to forget exactly what this day is really about. However, on that fateful day 230 years ago when members of the continental congress signed the original Declaration of Independence something amazing began. Those delegates of the original thirteen colonies who signed that document might well have been signing their own death warrants for treason against the British crown. Fortunately, they were victorious in their war for independence and their little experiment in democracy is still going strong today. Furthermore, it has become the example of freedom worldwide over these past two centuries. So let us not take too lightly the gift of our own freedom or the price that has been paid to purchase it for us. Enjoy your fireworks and family fun, but pause for a moment sometime during the holiday to remind your friends and loved ones why we are celebrating. There are still many regimes, even in this modern world, which deny basic freedoms to their people. We owe ours to a small group of courageous men who dreamed of a better life and began the revolution that won it for us. We should all thank God for their foresight and wisdom, as well as the precious and sacred blood which was spilled to purchase their vision for all of us. Along with my own poem on the subject, I have also included below the text of the Declaration of Independence and I encourage you to read it over and share it with others. We need to remember what we have and what they fought so valiantly for. We are the heirs of liberty and we have an obligation to preserve and protect it. Enjoy your 4th of July and may it also be a day of thanksgiving as well. God bless America … and let freedom ever ring in the hearts of men.

Song of Freedom
Still ringing are the battle cries
Of freedom from the past
Sung out by brave young men who spilled
Their blood and breathed their last
Still waving is the flag
They proudly served and held aloft
Yet, we must be ever wary
Lest our resolve grows dim and soft
Our children need to know the legacy
Of freedom which is theirs
As the gauntlet passes on to them
For they are freedom's heirs
Sons and daughters of a liberty
Which was born of trial and strife
Paid for dearly by the countless men
Who gave both limb and life
We must keep the fire burning
May we never let it die
So our children's children's children
Know the sound of freedom's cry
It's not enough to just be born here
We have to guard our liberty
And pass it on so generations
In the future will be free
By Frank Carpenter ©

And here is the text of the Declaration of Independence:

“IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
… and that’s how it all began, 230 years ago. May we ever let freedom ring.

And, if you’ve bothered to read this far, you deserve a bonus poem, which is one of my personal favorites on this subject:

The Voice of Freedom
I am the voice of freedom
The words of Franklin and Jefferson
The cry of Patrick Henry
And the cheers of the minutemen
Mine was the pen of Francis Scott Key
In the battle of Baltimore
As he saw the stars and stripes flying
At dawn on that smoke shrouded shore
I was at Vicksburg and Shiloh
Harpers Ferry, Pea Ridge and Bull Run
Lincoln spoke of me at Gettysburg
After that bloody battle was done
I was sung by immigrants
As they passed the Statue of Liberty
I was heard in the trenches of France
And I returned at Normandy
Twice, I spread across Europe
As my oppressors fell and fled
Rising out of the hearts of men
Who thought I was left for dead
Even today, I linger
Upon the lips of those who are just
Who right the wrongs of evil men
By making the sacrifices they must
Whenever a people downtrodden
Dare to whisper a prayer of me
Wherever a tyrant is toppled
By the ideals of democracy
I will be there, upon their lips
In the step, in the heart, in the eyes
Of those who struggle against oppressors
For I am their battle cry
I resound throughout the nations
Overcoming both doubt and fear
I am the voice of freedom
The voice all men long to hear
By Frank Carpenter ©