A LUMINECENT LIFE

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Having just finished the three thousand page three-volume biography of Winston Spencer Churchill called The Last Lion I figured that I would share my largest takeaways.

Before I do that a few interesting facts. In the early 1900's Winston was captured as a POW during the Boer War only to escape two hundred and fifty miles on foot back to the English front lines. During the First World War seeing the potential in the novel invention of the automobile, he invented the tank.

TAKEAWAY 1: EDUCATION

It is commonly assumed that given Churchill's literary, and political skills he must have graduated from Oxbridge, or a school of similar prestige. Not the case. Winston nearly flunked out of his middle and high school years. After graduating at the bottom of his class he went to Sandhurst (the English equivalent of West Point) where he was exclusively taught military strategy and small-unit tactics. He was not taught to write, speak, or do arithmetic. When he was later stationed in India with a noncombative cavalry unit he spent eight or more hours a day reading. Everything from the works of Aristotle, Plato, and Shakespear, decades of parliamentary records, and thousands of old newspapers. You see he taught himself the skills that became known the world over and revered by the most powerful men on earth.

As per usual Winston said it best "Schools have not necessarily much to do with education….they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school."

TAKEAWAY 2: GRIT

Perhaps you do not associate Churchill as a gritty person, but so often is the case that the public never sees the decades of hardship that precede a "big break". Even after being labeled as a gifted young parliamentarian, and being appointed to a senior military role in world war one, the House, the media, and the country would soon turn their back on him. From the late 1920s right up until the start of world war two in 1939, he was mocked, attacked, harassed, and cajoled for his "extremist" views of what he called the emerging Nazi menace. And yet over the course of those nine to ten wilderness years not once did he ever relent. He continued to stand up and speak in parliament despite being booed and jeered. But one day when hope seemed all but gone, annihilation of the English race all but eminent - Churchill was no longer considered a political pariah. He was now considered their only shot at survival.

Consider if after five years of doors being slammed in your face, after being called idiotic and any number of other less flattering names thousands of times, if you would have bought into the seemingly overwhelming consensus. Would you have quit? Would you have chalked it up to not being possible? Most would have. Winston was not most though - he had the resilience and determination of a man possessed. Had he not, we would likely not know his name, nor would we know the little island he called home for what it is today.

Churchill lived a luminescent life, to say the least, possessing the courage of a great combat general, the vision of a tremendous entrepreneur, the intellect of a true genius, and the generosity of a saint; men of his caliber are certainly an enigma and don't come around very often. When they do it would be advisable to study them.

REMEMBER

WINSTON

CHURCHILL