In this, I came to understand the choice at the heart of leadership: to pursue big dreams and suffer the consequences, or narrow one’s ambitions in an effort to get along. For me, there was only one choice. I knew of no way to become someone else, and so I chose to be myself, and in doing so, to serve a cause greater than myself. I decided that accomplishment mattered more than credit, more than popularity, more than title. It was not that I didn’t want those things; it was that having them in the absence of action and risk and courage would have been empty. There were easier ways to pursue
...more
