Time for Humility--In America, and in my own Life

I recently saw that French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy has been instrumental in negotiating the cease fire with the Israelis and Palestinians. It sparked a number of thoughts in my mind.

First on our politics--What struck me about this was the fact that during the past few days, we have heard Condoleeza Rice talk about the need for a cease fire, and the need for all sides to come back to the table for further negotiations.

How has it come to pass that the American Secretary of State is no longer seen as the honest broker, but the "cheerleader from the sidelines" of the events on the ground, and in diplomacy circles? And the French Prime Minister is now the negotiator in chief in these affairs? Sarkozy was also involved in peace discussions between Russia and Georgia, while the US played up heightened threats, and World War III scenarios.

My concern here is that America is no longer seen, after 8 years of the abysmal failure that is our foreign policy, as an honest broker--as a leader for peace and diplomatic resolution. If (soon to be) Secretary of State Clinton is to help America regain this post, she starts with an awful lot to undo.

This got me thinking about other things. If we are no longer taken seriously as a broker for peace, what else are we no longer taken seriously on? Energy policy? Free Trade? Banking and Lending practices? What about being seen as the beacon of freedom and dreams? Are we still seen by the world as leaders of great vision, and grand ambition?

After thinking about politics, I started to think about myself, and what this meant to me personally. I was fortunate to spend some time abroad in Europe and South America during the 1990's, and I found that in a lot of ways, we did have grander aspirations, and were leaders on many fronts. My fear here, though, is that the Internet has been the great equalizer for the world over the past 10-15 years, and that people from all corners of the world have used this great encyclopedia of knowledge and news to learn, grow, and in many ways, catch up. While we continue to live in America, thinking the world is still a few steps behind, they in fact are not. It's time to start looking around at where the rest of the world is, where we are, and realize we no longer lead the world in the way we think we do in our minds. So I think it's time to challenge ourselves to do better.

But how?

1. Humility--as a nation, we can be tremendously arrogant. We force other countries to bow to our wishes in order to even have diplomatic relations. We scuttle environmental treaties for selfish reasons, pre-emptively start wars on dubious grounds, and couldn't care less about the world's reaction. We dismiss others not from our shores as unenlightened, and yet many of our leaders have never even left our borders.

Time to show respect first, listen to others more, and time to admit to ourselves that while we live in a great country, we don't need to be deferential, but we do need to think about how to be better citizens, individuals, parents, sons and daughters, and neighbors. We should all make an effort to do one thing more this year than we did last, to contribute to our well-being, or town, or family, or whatever. Just one more thing from all of us could make a tremendous difference.

2. Education--time to admit that our schools are not keeping up with other countries. Part of it may be a lack of funding, or even a bureaucratic education system, or too many scholarships. Part of it is Parents taking more of an interest in their kids schooling. I, for one, want to make sure that I spend more time talking to my kids about their schooling, and taking more of an interest helping them with anything from spelling tests, to addition tables. Everyone should think about ways to do more.

3. Hard work--the people in the rest of the world have a hunger to do better than their parents did. We seem to have more of a fear that we will do worse than our parents did. This is not a recipe for long term success. I will take some time this week to look in the mirror and ask myself, "am I working hard enough to care for my family? To help my company, or community? What else can I do?" I encourage all of you to do the same.

I don't want this to be too much of a downer. But if we don't start paying attention to what is happening around us, the world will pass us by, and we will wonder how it happened.