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       Daring Greatly, Perhaps

      Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

       Theodore Roosevelt

      When I was a boy, my family lived in different countries in eastern Asia, Eastern Africa and the Middle East. As I grew up in these dictatorships and tribal kingdoms, I was acutely aware of being different, as an American, and of the special status and privileges conferred by my nationality. My family’s household wealth, ordinary by American standards, was enormous by the standards of our host countries. During upheavals in these unstable places, my family needed only to board the next plane home, while the country’s native inhabitants had to stay and suffer. The United States was a refuge we could always seek in times of trouble.

      During our rare visits to the US, I felt a weight lift, knowing that I could think or speak as I chose. Prosperity, openness, creativity, and freedom surrounded me in a great roaring tumult. In Africa and eastern Asia, I’d never seen a road larger than two lanes, usually potholed or unpaved. The Los Angeles freeway system, with its six and sometimes eight lanes, astonished my young eyes. Even then, I foresaw the immigration of coming decades, when getting to the United States became the goal of people everywhere in the world. I understood that a person could earn more in the US in a few hours as an unskilled laborer than he could in a month in most of the rest of the world. Everything functioned in America. The tap water flowed, the electricity worked, and the police were honest.

      Despite the disillusionment of the 1970s, I thought an American living in America must be in heaven, going about daily life in a state of elation. I also felt a bit out of place in the US, and as if I had something to prove, to show that I genuinely belonged there.

      The most visible Americans in our African city were the Marines who guarded the US embassy. They lived in the Marine House, just a block away from our own residence. Before sunrise each day, the Marines ran in formation through the neighborhood. The tropical climate and open drainage systems kept the city awash in powerful smells. As they ran, they chanted in time with the pace, in restrained voices so as not to awaken the neighborhood. At that early hour, Africans walking to work or setting up outdoor stands selling fruit and bread softly sang out greetings in English and Swahili upon first seeing the Marines, contributing a sort of accompaniment to their chants.

      The Marines raised the American flag in front of their house each morning after their formation run. That’s my flag, I said to myself. The Marines were my connection to my home country. I often ran the same route they did on my way to school in the morning.

      I came back to the US to go to college and the Marine Corps boot camp for officer candidates—that head-shaving and hollering introduction to the Marine Corps’s unique culture. It took two summers. Most of the candidates from the first summer never returned for the second. I was proud to be one of the few who stuck it out. It was truly difficult to go back for a second summer and endure boot camp all over again.

      It was particularly unstylish on college campuses of that era to join the Marine Corps. Fashion dictated that long hair was chic, while shaved heads signified some deep emotional disturbance. It was the path less traveled—not the path of conformism. I was an infantry officer for three years and I thoroughly enjoyed the Marines’ camaraderie and sense of mission. Although most Marines leave the Corps after their first three- to six-year commitment, we all behaved as if we were there for a lifetime career, because the Marines gave us a sense of ownership. The Marine Corps was not a faceless bureaucracy but a living institution, and it belonged to us as our personal property.

      The Marine Corps has an effective and winning culture that inspires a powerful motivation to succeed. When the Corps fails, Marines die. When something goes wrong, as in Vietnam, the Marine Corps studies and improves its weaknesses. Adherence to traditional rank structure actually helps keep management layers flat, and prevents the creation of new management layers.

      While in the Marine Corps, I spent a lot of time traveling with my infantry company, and some time alone on special assignments. One night, sitting on the top of a hill on an island in the Indian Ocean, I realized what I wanted to do next: get married and start a family. I had a vision of my ideal wife. I’d saved most of my pay during my service, so had plenty of money to take time off. I went to graduate school, met the woman I had imagined, and before long we were married.

      After graduate school, I took a job on Wall Street. I went to work early each day and made telephone calls to people who didn’t particularly want to talk to me. Money drives business, and in order to make money it’s necessary to make contact with people. I learned to “make the call,” to make contact even though the outcome might be rejection and humiliation. It’s tough work, and not something one puts up with unless he truly cares about getting what he’s after.

      In the competitive American economy, the rewards go to people who can make contact. I’d learned from talking to military recruiters and to retail stockbrokers. They had to make cold call after cold call, facing rejection hundreds of times a day. As time went on, their personalities seemed to harden and they became emotionally distant, but their hard work made them successful.

      Contact is what drives human progress. Bill Clinton and George Bush have made thousands of contacts to gather money and political support. All businesses are built and sustained by people who get out and meet others. This, the importance of “making the call,” was the most valuable lesson I learned on Wall Street.

      Money, however, had never been much of a motivator for me, so after a few years I found myself feeling a familiar pull to service and adventure, the same pull that had drawn me to the Marine Corps. As Aristotle asked, how should a human being lead his life? I did a lot of pondering about the important things, so to speak—about deeds and destiny. I resolved to send my résumé to the CIA. Weapons of mass destruction had always concerned me. With the proliferation of nuclear and other gruesome weapons technology, I knew it was only a matter of time before an American city was targeted and possibly destroyed. Would the CIA be a path to great things, to preventing a nuclear war or giving advance warning of the next Pearl Harbor?

      A CIA REPRESENTATIVE responded to my résumé and sent me to a local college where Agency recruiters had scheduled a series of written tests.

      I waited with the other applicants outside a lecture hall, all of us wondering how we ought to behave. What if the “testing” had begun already?