Reflections from The Rock

Our founders knew a lot about character. It was character that led these three ordinary men to a limestone outcropping 150 years ago. It was character that sparked these men to create “the light of our fraternity.” That same light has illuminated the greatest friendships and the most cherished memories of my life.

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It was a great honor to serve, with brother Bill Courtney, as the keynote speaker for the 2020 College of Chapters. (Full video of speech here.)

Bill and I both shared important lessons we’ve learned from a combined 100 years on this planet. Below are ten lessons from our speeches, along with some relevant quotes from my “partner in crime.”

1. Friendships:  Culturally, we are struggling to understand what modern friendships look like. We’ve replaced long-term, “mono e mono” friendships with the digital efficiency of social media. It’s digital, but not deep, and these superficial, digital relationships are part of what’s making men increasingly lonely.

In contrast, both fraternities and team-based sports create opportunities for lifelong friendships. Both encourage the type of bonding that only happens in close proximity.  That comes from having a common purpose. That comes from focusing on something bigger than yourself.

Coach Bill Courtney led an underdog team with uncommon valor. We watched the season unfold in the documentary Undefeated. Coach Bill repeatedly encouraged the Manassas team to “put the team first” and “show some character”. 

2.Isolation:

A recent analysis of over two decades of survey data on social isolation, published in the American Sociological Review, found that adult, white, heterosexual men have the fewest friends of all people in America. Apparently “pale, male & stale” is an accurate moniker. 

According to a more recent poll, 22 percent of millennial kids say they have “no friends” at all. This despite being widely lauded as the most connected generation in history.

Thirty percent of millennials also say they “always” or “often” feel lonely. Could there be a blooming epidemic of loneliness in our country?

Vivek Murthy, the 19th surgeon general of the United States, has said many times in recent years that the most prevalent health issue in the country is not cancer or heart disease or obesity. It is isolation. And there’s good reason to believe he is correct.

The rate of suicide is highest in middle-age white men. In 2017, men died by suicide 3.54 x more often than women.

3. Experience

After 50 years on this planet, here is what I’ve learned:

• Time passes

• Jobs come and go

• Careers change

• Life goes on

• Children grow up

The one thing that stays true and constant through the seasons of life is friendships. Like this poignant photo of Brother-Regent John Hearn (Mu 2000) and his father, Judge George J. Hearn, III. Judge Hearn is surrounded by five Mu brothers, four of whom served the Mu chapter as Commander. This is what friendship looks like.

The Judge passed away quietly at home three weeks later. I wrote more about Judge Hearn’s legacy here.

Solid friendships, like the kind you are building now will serve you for the rest of your life. Who will be in your picture 35 year from now when you need a hand to hold onto? 

4. Authenticity

If you’re a professional football fan, you know that the Philadelphia Eagles had a tough season. They lost in the Wildcard game after their quarterback, Carson Wentz, was injured and removed himself from the game in the first quarter. What you may not know is that this physical injury was preceded by another player’s voluntary removal earlier in the season. 

In late November 2019, Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman Brandon Brooks voluntarily left the game against the Seattle Seahawks. It was the first quarter. You see, he left the game due to nausea and vomiting from anxiety. And he was brutally honest about it.

You can watch a 90 second interview with Brooks here. It’s worth the 90 seconds of your time.

Brooks later tweeted this:

The massive 6’ 5”, 346 pound Guard who played college ball at Miami displayed what most of us cannot fathom. He was open and honest about what was going on in his life. And he did it in the most challenging of circumstances. 

5. Wisdom

I’ve had a few rough patches since my carefree days in college. Experiences do not make you wiser. Learning from experiences makes you wiser.

I once heard Jeff Foxworthy describe wisdom as: 

Like the Roman candle fight with my brother at ten years old. I learned from that. I learned that fire is hot and it burns your skin when it hits you. Check. Lesson learned.

We don’t grow by having experiences. We grow by surviving them. It’s what we learn that counts. 

Much like pruning a tree, surviving rough patches leads to healthy growth. New life emerges from the old way of existing. 

“The measure of a man’s character is not determined by how he handles his wins, but how he handles his failures.”

Coach Bill Courtney

Our actions, not our thoughts or intentions, define who we are.

-Tom Greene

6. Relationships

It’s counter-intuitive, but creating a meaningful life is not an individual journey. It’s a relational journey and one that derives meaning from the strength of your personal relationships. And friendships require authenticity and vulnerability, neither of which are easy for men. 

Do you know what they call someone who has an incapacity for friendships, grandiose sense of self and shows little emotion? They call them sociopaths and our jails and prisons are full of them. 

Despite our best efforts at creating the perfect life, happiness is really about deep and meaningful connections with other people. It’s about lasting and intentional friendships. It’s about the intertwining of our lives in a deep and meaningful way. We must have people of substance to “do life” with. And you cannot “do life” with people on Facebook and Instagram.

7. Adversity

Your life is shaped by the road you’ve traveled. And not all of those roads are paved (or straight). The simple truth is that you are a collection of your life’s experiences; both good and bad. Sometimes the things that inspire us are not our favorite memories.

8. Pride

We all wanna be great in other people’s eyes. It’s part of the reason you volunteered to serve. There were many other things you could have chosen to do. But you chose to serve something bigger than yourself. Good for you. But part of why you chose to serve is in your DNA. See you and I are all that different. I’m betting we are both cut from the same piece of cloth: competitive, driven, Type A personality, you get the point. People look up to you. It’s part of the job. And the younger they are the more “Giant-like” you are to them. Where this starts to cause a problem in leaders is when we start to believe we are invincible. We aren’t. But we still maintain a desire to constantly demonstrate that we have it all together, even when things around us are falling apart. 

It’s called Pride. And it’s also the thing that makes it incredibly difficult to share genuine thoughts and emotions with other men. For me it’s reflexive. I am almost always “fine”. It’s in our DNA to be “fine”. That’s what we do. 

But there will be times when you aren’t going to be “fine”. And there are times when you need to get out of your comfort zone and seek the ear of a friend. This whole “manly” I got it all under control thing does not serve you or me. And it’s high time we put it to rest. So if you only remember one thing from our time together in Roanoke, I want you to remember this: being authentic has nothing to do with your masculinity. It doesn’t make you less of a man. 

As a leader you are the tip of the spear. As much as I’d like to think that the statistics are going to improve, they won’t. Big trends don’t typically reverse course unless something changes. As I said in our time together in Roanoke, we have never needed fraternities more than we need them today. 

I think it’s what our founders were talking about when they spoke of the “light of Sigma Nu”. It’s time for us to get out of our comfort zone and be the light for others. 

9.  No Sudden Moves:  

When your life is turning into a dog’s breakfast, you become singularly fixated on trying to find a solution. As if the solution is suddenly going to pop in your head if you ruminate on the problem long enough. 

In full disclosure, nobody ever described me as a patient man. In true form, one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in times of trouble is trying to “force the solution.”

This is probably a pretty common mistake in men. After all, we are “fixers” at heart and I desperately wanted to fix the problem. In your world the best thing you can do in a crisis is not to “force the solution” or try to solve it by yourself. Someone once told me that in times of crisis, you must seek wise counsel. I think that is exponentially true for you today. When things go wrong, you should immediately seek an Advisor to guide you through the rough patch. Trying to solve things on your own or make sudden moves usually just makes things worse. 

But, take my advice, when the music starts at the Poo Party, don’t make any sudden moves. 

10. Faith 

I need to tell you something. It’s important. You are going to die someday. I hope it’s a really long time from now. In the meantime, you are going to have an enormous variety of life experiences. The simple truth is that:

People we love get sick. 

People we love get hurt.  

People we love die. 

Just ask Commander and High Council member John Thomas (“J.T.”) from Missouri Science and Technology. Back in November one of his brothers tragically committed suicide in the fraternity house. 

In times like this, belief in a higher power creates, at least, the perception of interconnectedness in the random and unexplainable events in the universe. The occasional, yet incomprehensible, pain and loss that can accompany life. Terrible things occasionally happen to some very good people.  

The good news is that you joined a fraternity that was created with “faith” as one of it’s cornerstones. Frankly, the very founding of our fraternity 150 years ago was hatched in a bible study at VMI. And our ritual is based on faith. 

I’m not suggesting that you drop out of college to join a mission and live in a yurt in eastern Africa But, just because you’ve never been exposed to faith or God or any kind of spiritual life, doesn’t mean you cannot create one in college. We all have some idea of who God is and what he might look like. Fix your mind on that in times of trouble.

And if all else fails, turn on Taledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Watch Cal Naughton, Jr. describe his version of Jesus playing lead guitar for Lynard Skynard. You’d have to be in a Coma not to think that’s funny. 

No matter how many good deeds we perform, they aren’t the ticket to earning God’s favor. God graces us in spite of what we do in this life, not because of.

-Coach Bill Courtney

God can be found in the kindness of a stranger or the setting of the sun.  I’ve seen God in the birth of my daughter, the beauty of my wife in a wedding dress and watching my father’s last gasping breaths. 

-Tom Greene

So that’s it. Ten things to remember from our pilgrimage to The Rock. In the coming year I wish you light, love, wisdom but, most of all, I wish for you “the friendships that abide”. 

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