The Lessons of John McCain - Here in the Trenches

After the death of Barbara Bush, we all knew what it meant when John McCain's family announced on Friday that he had discontinued medical treatment.  Just as with Mrs. Bush, however, that didn't make the news of his death yesterday any easier to hear.  I'd like to take this post to talk about John McCain and two of the things that we in the Trenches can learn from him. 

First and foremost, if you know your core values, it doesn't matter what anyone else does.  You will always follow your own star.  Mr. McCain was offered the opportunity to be released by the Viet Cong only a year into his captivity.  He declined it because he knew it was because of who his father was, and that it would be used to break others who had been held longer but who didn't have well-known parents.  In other words, early release violated his personal ethics, so he didn't do it, even though it meant he was held almost 5 years longer than he could have been, in that hell-hole known as the Hanoi Hilton.  I don't think I need to talk about Mr. McCain's action in voting against the repeal of the ACA, against the mandates of his political party, because it was wrong.  (I don't care if you agreed with him.  It took guts and conviction to stand his moral ground against his political party).

Here in the Trenches, there will be people who do the wrong thing.  They exaggerate or outright lie.  They manipulate the children.  They hide money.  It's wrong to do that.  Yet, often it seems nothing bad happens to those people, that there are no consequences for bad behavior.   It's so tempting when faced with unpunished bad behavior to engage in it as well.  It takes a strong person to stay true to your inner self when your world is in chaos.  It takes strength to say no to short-term satisfaction.  John McCain knew the cost of not being true to himself - it's a looking yourself in the mirror for the rest of your life kind of thing.  If he can do it, so can you.

Second, he knew that mistakes don't have to define you.  John McCain's first marriage ended after his return from Vietnam.  Some of that was caused by the trauma of that captivity.  Some of it was caused by his infidelity.  Yet, you never heard about that during any of his campaigns.  I think that was, in large part, because he didn't hide it.  He owned it.  He moved on from it.  I am certain he felt guilt and regret, but he did not let them overshadow the rest of his life.  He made other mistakes as well, notably failing to speak his mind about the removal of the Confederate flag from the Capital building in Columbia, South Carolina, and his mistakes during the Keating scandal. All of us make big mistakes, luckily usually not in a national forum; he owned up to them and used them to inform his future actions and to teach the rest of us what humility looked like.

Here in the Trenches, folks do a lot of things of which they're not proud.  Some of those things are big; some of them are not. Some people kick themselves endlessly about what they could have done differently.  Some people let what they did wrong brand them for life.  Of course, there are those who behave badly who feel no guilt or remorse and we're not talking about them. The point is to face what you did wrong, what you didn't do right and deal with it.  Use it as a learning moment.  Embrace it.  Then us it to instruct your future self, move on and let the rest of your life show the rest of the world who you really are.  R.I.P. Senator John McCain.  Here in the Trenches