The Warrior Mentality

I have recently had the genuine good fortune and great pleasure to meet an individual who has had a profound impact on me. I have always believed that life is not merely a random series of events, but that the situations that we find ourselves in, the people that we encounter, and the choices that we are faced with occur for some reason, that there is a higher power, I know him as God but others may have different names and perceptions, yet some higher power that we can never fully know or understand that is responsible for putting us in certain situations with certain people. While I am generally thankful for all of the people that I encounter in life, and while I certainly try to appreciate and learn something from everyone I meet and come to know, there are some people that for various reasons have a larger impact on my thinking and on my life. Calvin Terrell is such an individual, and rather than get into the details of how I have come to encounter him and what he does for a living, I will get right into the way in which he has affected my mind, my heart, and my soul.

Calvin talks about five different kinds of people in life, the fifth and highest level of personhood being that of a warrior. A warrior is someone who not only talks the talk but walks the walk, he or she is a person that not only knows what the right thing is to do, but who has the energy, the passion, and the courage to do the right thing. A warrior is someone who not only believes in racial, ethnic, and gender equality but who stands up for those beliefs through action. A warrior is someone who not only respects and appreciates diversity, but who will defend those who are harassed and discriminated against because of their sexuality. A warrior doesn’t merely tolerate differences in people, but rather celebrates them and learns to truly appreciate what he doesn’t know or understand. A warrior believes that the poor and oppressed peoples of this world deserve a helping hand, but beyond that belief, a warrior actually takes steps to help people in need, be it a working class parent struggling to keep afloat and raise a family, or a transient struggling to make it down the street from one bus stop to the next. Maybe he is drunk, maybe he is mentally ill, perhaps he is just lazy and has given up trying. A warrior doesn’t place blame or make judgment, but when she sees another human being, a fellow soul in need, she looks him square in the eye and relates to him on a human level. That is compassion, and a warrior is defined by compassion, action, understanding, empathy, and a genuine love for all of humanity.

Mother Teresa was a warrior. She gave up most worldly possessions and luxuries to help the poorest of the poor, the downtrodden, those whom society had discarded and given up on. She was an imperfect person, as her revelations that she at times lost her faith can attest. But rather than this being some opportunity to criticize or question her, this only makes her feats more amazing as it shows that she was a human being first and foremost, fallible like us all, yet she overcame her own weaknesses and insecurities to live a life of greatness by selflessly serving others.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a warrior. Like Mother Teresa, he was far from a perfect person, his marital infidelity is documented, but again this only serves to show that flawed human beings can nonetheless perform amazing feats of strength, love, and courage. MLK sacrificed much of his personal wealth and time with his own family to serve a cause greater than himself, and in doing so motivated others to join the cause of human rights that is arguably one of the greatest and most effective social movements in the history of this or any country. Warriors beget other warriors, and as a result of the work of MLK, Andrew Young, Stokley Carmichael, and countless others, we are on the verge of our first warrior president since John F. Kennedy. While he was a soldier, I am not talking about John McCain either.

This brings me to the other types of people in Calvin’s hierarchy of humanity. Just below warriors are soldiers and rebels. Soldiers follow orders, they do as they are told and don’t ask questions. Sometimes that is desirable, and there are times when even a warrior must be a good soldier and do as he is told. But soldiers too often go along with the majority even when they know better, they too often do what is popular instead of what is right.

A rebel also has a place in society, there are certainly times when rebellion is called for and necessary. Paris in 1789, Russia in 1917, and the U.S. in 1955 after Emmit Till was brutally murdered are some historic examples of when the warrior and rebel mentality coincided for good. Yet all too often rebels are simply acting out of anger and bitterness, and they express their resentment in ways that are neither positive nor productive.

The bottom two groups are thugs and cowards, and these descriptions do not require elaborate explanation. Cowards live out of fear and make very little if any mark on society, while thugs leave behind a trail of destruction, they thrive on chaos and hurt.

The world needs more warriors. A world of warriors would be one where people were more free to live their lives as they see fit, without concern for discrimination, harassment, and oppression. Such a world would have less social injustice and more social equality. There would be less of a gap between rich, middle, and bottom, it would be a world where working class people lived a life of dignity, one where what they bring to the table would be respected and appreciated. It would consist of a society where those at the top felt a gratitude for their privilege, and where the majority of people who fall in the middle would not resent those above them nor would they try to keep a safe distance from those below them on the social ladder. It would be a world where people whose skin color was black or brown wouldn’t have to feel like second class citizens, or believe that they had to act white in order to fit into what is still in many ways a white man’s world.

It wouldn’t be a man’s world at all, but a world where women and men lived as equals in all senses of the word, where expectations and limitations based on gender would cease to be. It would be a world where people could fall in love with and build a life, and a family if they desired, with whoever they desired. There would be no need for same sex marriage because there would just be marriage, and it would be open to all who wanted to partake in it, gay, lesbian, transgender, or straight. It would be a world without artificial borders and walls to keep people out, a world where basic human rights of life, liberty, and property would be respected, which means that all would have the human right to pursue their economic goals, and these would super cede national sovereignty. It would be a world where the artificial divisions between east and west, between white and non-white, between Christian, Jew, and Muslim, between rich and poor, urban and rural, young and old, gay and straight, big and small, short and tall, would recognized as unnecessary and would be eliminated.

A world with more warriors would be a world where people looked after each other, where they dedicated themselves to the greater good and to a higher purpose than simply adhering to the motto of getting rich or die trying. It would bring us closer to the notion espoused by the great musician and songwriter, lyricist and poet John Lennon, of a true brotherhood of man, where the term man is meant to apply to all mankind or humanity. So what can anyone of us as individuals do to bring about such a world? We can live our lives in pursuit of excellence in all we attempt, always striving for a perfection of mind, body, and soul that we know we can never attain. We can fight the good fight, preach the good word, and live the good life every day. We can become and be warriors, knowing that we will often fall short, but also knowing that we will get better every day if we choose to make that a priority, and in making ourselves better we help those around us and the world as a whole to become better. The words of one of history’s great warriors, Mahatma Gandhi, will serve to close here, as they sum up the answer to the question of what we can do to bring about a world heretofore described. When asked by a journalist what his message to the world was, Gandhi simply replied, “My life is my message.” So it should be with each of us.