One rainy day in May, I went to Texas. Beyond DFW, which is a transportation spectacle in itself—27 square miles, bigger than all of Manhattan (23 square miles), with a proclivity for crippling thunderstorms—I have only been to Texas twice before. One time was to go dove hunting—yes, the little birds of peace. There weren’t that many doves, but it did seem there were all kinds of things trying to kill me: snakes, weird spiders, scorpions, and other creatures I had never heard of. It was Australia with a 10-gallon hat and no dingoes.
I was there this time to visit the newly built National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, which a good friend was instrumental in building. As much as I dislike clichés—such as “things are bigger in Texas”—sometimes they are true. The museum site is part of a massive complex, including the stadium for the Dallas Cowboys (which cost a mere $1.2 billion), the stadium for the Texas Rangers (which also cost $1.2 billion), and the old Ranger stadium, now called Choctaw Stadium that hosts United Football League games, a sports league I didn’t even know existed. Some of the smaller buildings in the area include a 266,000-square-foot, 5000-guest convention center; a 44,000-square-foot Arlington Museum, a Walmart “Supercenter” of unknown dimensions, upscale hotels, and, of course, acres and acres of parking for snazzy pickups.
Compared to all of this, the National Medal of Honor Museum is understated but elegant in its symbolism and simplicity. There are five concrete pillars—each representing a branch of the military—Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard—holding up the massive steel Exhibition Hall, which houses interactive exhibits, stories of some of the 3,528 recipients, video presentations, and a history of the medal (first awarded for valor in the Civil War). There are archives on site, as well as a leadership education center.
For the uninitiated or those without a storied history with the military, of which I include myself, the Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest military decoration awarded for extraordinary valor in battle. Each citation highlights a recipient’s particular actions that demonstrate, in the words of the award, “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty."
While the building, the grounds, the medal, and the exhibits are remarkable for their power of narrative, what I find more compelling is what you can’t see there. And these are values—gossamer fine yet invincible threads—that weave together the extraordinary and the ordinary, the hero and the saved. The values that the Medal of Honor celebrates are Courage, Sacrifice, Commitment, Integrity, Citizenship, and Patriotism.
It is worth thinking about these values, one by one, and deliberately. We don’t do that enough, or, at least, I realized that I don’t do that enough. We tend to gloss over words like this. They remind me of reading novels when I was a kid, blazing past words I didn’t know so I could get to the end of the sentence or chapter. That one word couldn’t matter that much, could it? But it can and does.
I admit that I had to look up a few of these words. What exactly is the difference between courage and valor? What is citizenship in its true sense, not the political cudgel it has become? How is integrity different from honesty?
It occurs to me that values are no longer the metrics by which we measure our lives. Somewhere along the way—it’s hard to know when or why—we began to focus on markers like salary, title, deal flow, number of followers, prestige of one’s education, social status. These are the ways in which we now measure life success. And they are all focused on individual achievement, none of which really relates to anyone else around him or her. Say we learn that some Tom, Dick, or Harry earns $200,000 a year. The reflex is to say, “Wow, he must be a good guy.” We instantly equate the monetary value with personal value. However, “good guy” doesn’t mean he’s a good guy.
Certainly, values are commonly mentioned at funerals: “He lived a life of integrity.” That’s all well and good, but it’s a tad late. Why isn’t integrity rewarded when one happens to be alive? Why doesn’t the guy with obvious integrity get promoted, elected, followed?
What is so striking about these six values of the Medal of Honor—Courage, Sacrifice, Commitment, Integrity, Citizenship, and Patriotism—is that while we may assign them to an individual, they are absolutely meaningless without the context of others, without the greater whole. They are all values that pertain to serving others, helping others, fighting for others. What is sacrifice if there is no one to sacrifice for? What is citizenship without a community of which to be a part? These are all values that look outward for meaning. They take root in people only in the context of others.
I know the familiar refrain: “Values are so subjective; who’s to say what is sacrifice?” To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: You’ll know it when you see it.
Granted, objective markers like scores, salaries, market share, and titles are easier to use and superficially more transferrable. Maybe so.
But I would say the real moments of life, that is, the enduring ones, take place in the squishy, subjective territory of our lives. Values—which we seem to be so afraid of these days—are actually the glue that holds us together. Values live between the digital certainties of day-to-day life. That’s where you go to find joy, where meaning and connection, love and friendship reside.
If you don’t go there, where are you going to go?