Vision + Action = Impact

Having a vision is good – it’s essential to moving anything forward. Vision can create, build and inspire.

Scouting America (Boy Scouts of America) has long been a beacon of personal development, leadership, and community service. At the heart of its mission is a clear vision: to prepare young people to make ethical and moral decisions throughout their lives. This vision doesn’t just shape the program’s structure but plays a crucial role in the lives of the scouts themselves. A well-realized vision can transform not only the organization but also the lives of the youth it serves.

Vision can be big, sweeping and global – and these are great, but not all visions need to impact the entire world. Smaller visions can be just as impactful, if not more-so to an individual scout.

People with vision are essential, but people who bring vision to realization are the ones that make vision have impact.

One vision realized is the axe yard at Camp Lowden, Blackhawk Area Council in Oregon, IL. Conceived on an unused patch of ground off the main parking lot, the implementation of this vision will serve and impact youth for decades to come. But the vision was not enough. It was key leaders like Bob Gingras and Jerry Coots that rallied volunteers, drew up concepts, found the needed resources and GOT IT BUILT. Without action, this vision would have remained only a dream.

Vision + Action = Impact

So thank you to the volunteers that brought this vision to life, so these scouts could learn and grow on a chilly Saturday morning in March.

Instant Change

Flight 93 National Memorial
6424 Lincoln Highway
Stoystown, PA 15563

My oldest son, Jack, and I just returned from a short trip to Pennsylvania.  Along the way home we realized how close we were to the Flight 93 National Memorial, and since the government didn’t shut down the other day, we decided to go.  I was struck by how a place can be so incredibly beautiful and simultaneously solemn.  Its importance is significant to honor those lost, but equally important to be a reminder of how the world can instantly change.

I’ve had some instant change in my life recently… and it hit me immediately that there was a parallel.  Now, please know I realize how insignificant my personal change is in comparison to the loss of 9/11, and I mean no disrespect… my change is a single drop of water in an entire ocean of grief.  But like all things we try to understand, it made me think a little differently than I had been this past month.

Change is hard when it is slow, but harder still when it is unexpected… On 9/11, I had no idea how much the world hated us.  It was the shock of realizing that I was insulated from what was real and now I was forced to deal with a new reality that was forever unchangeable.  I couldn’t wish things to go back to the way they were, it was a new world, even if I didn’t like it.

What came after was learning to adapt… we all had to adapt.  That was true then and it’s true again for me now.  There is no going back, now I can only to assess what has happened, learn from it and continue to influence those who are in the same orbit I’m in.  Going forward is really the only real option, as a nation and as a person… 

Our country has dedicated itself to improving our ability to see what is real, identify threats, mitigate risk and plan to protect itself.  I need to do the same… rebuild my resiliency, plan to get stronger and protect what is important at all costs.  Remembering is a key, not to languish but to heal and honor what was, and the Flight 93 National Memorial site is an elegant reminder that if we try, we can move forward with dignity and become stronger.

My original plan with this blog was to start out on a new journey, and I took a bit of a detour for too long.  The good news is I made more progress than I had ever planned.  The time is now to refocus, reeducate, and continue to build for a future… time to grow.  I don’t wish for a different past, to get in a Time Machine and go back to a specific moment and get a do-over… Because growth comes from the experience, and I think the experience was, in the end, essential.

9/11 knocked us down, but we came back.  2024 has done its best to beat me with all of its instant changes in my life… but my response back to 2024 is, screw you.  I win.

Progress & Hate

I am wearing a watch on my wrist that shows me time, temp (high and low temps), wind speed, how many steps I’ve taken, sunrise & sunset, Doppler radar, forecast, stock prices, calendar, photos, and many, many more capabilities.  This watch is a marvel of technology and progress – I have more information than I could ever need, and I get a sense of fulfillment that I have all this information at my disposal with no waiting.  In fact I start to “hate” when I don’t have the watch on, because I get frustrated I can’t see my dual-polarization radar in 2 seconds.  More progress and capability has made me a more impatient and pampered person, one who misses having what I want, when I want it.

We all want what we want, right.  I want my comfort, my son to be the champ, my daughter to be the student council President, my ideas about guns, my God, my President, my ideas on what the Boys Scouts should do…my, my, my…

And if you don’t see things that way, it’s ok for me to HATE you, and for you to FEEL that hate.

And transmitting that hate is so much easier now, isn’t it?  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, 455 Channels on TV – all accessible, all the time and ALL available now on my wrist…

Not sure all that this progress has really done is make it easier to transmit hate, faster and farther…