Nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
When I went to college, my dad, a recovering engineer, told me I could major in anything I wanted so long as it was chemical engineering. I followed his advice and did in fact receive an engineering degree from the University of Colorado, followed by a law degree from Stanford Law School. All that led to a legal career practicing environmental law and multiple leadership roles at the local power company.
And yet now, in retirement, I’ve written A Memorable Honor, a book about Shakespeare, Lincoln, and leadership (preorder today!). Some folks have asked me what led to this utterly unexpected point in my life.
I thought about this question this week when I read a short Wall Street Journal piece by Mike Kerrigan, a Charlotte lawyer. You can read it here (although it’s behind the paywall):
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/reading-shakespeare-in-suburbia-5e0b0fb9
Mr. Kerrigan writes about how he developed his life-long love of Shakespeare from his memory of growing up near a suburb called McLean Hamlet in Northern Virginia. He often visited the town to see friends as a youngster and was vaguely aware of the town’s theatrical name and its strange street signs: Portia Place, Falstaff Road, and Agin Court (get it?), among others. Only later in school did he realize that these names were all from Shakespeare’s plays, and that realization launched him on a journey that led to a deeper appreciation of Shakespeare.
My own love of Shakespeare started in a similarly unexpected way. When I was a sophomore in high school, my English class read Julius Caesar aloud. Our teacher assigned different characters to the students in the class; once assigned, you were expected to read your part to the class as it made its way through all five acts. I had some knowledge of Caesar’s story from television and, being a path-of-least-resistance kind of guy, I knew I didn’t want to spend a week reading out the speeches of any of the main characters like Caesar, Brutus or Mark Antony. So, I preemptively volunteered for what I thought was the minor character of Cassius.
As another poet said, “the best laid plans…” Cassius has 508 lines in the play, second only to Brutus and more than three times that of the play’s namesake, Julius Caesar. He’s hardly a minor character. If the youthful me hadn’t been such a bonehead and had known anything about history or Shakespeare, I would have picked Cinna the Poet (14 lines).
It was a brutal week of recitation for a high school sophomore who was both shy and lazy. And yet, while enduring that week, I started to realize that Shakespeare was up to something big in this play. From that moment, Shakespeare became an important part of my life, leading to my decision to add an English degree to my paternally-requested ChemE degree at CU. And leading ultimately to A Memorable Honor.
Abraham Lincoln also has a story, much bigger than mine. He probably first realized what Shakespeare meant to him and his life as a poor young man when he read the plays by the fire at night. (A stylized painting by Eastman Johnson showing a young Lincoln reading by firelight accompanies this post.) With almost no formal schooling, Lincoln had little but Will and the Bible to nourish his brilliant mind. Yet, he had enough. I believe that his time reading Shakespeare and the Bible as a youth served as the spark that led to the most extraordinary and important life in American history.
Our best leaders find inspiration and truth in the wisdom of the past. That wisdom lives in the faith, philosophy, and literature that come to us from history. It doesn’t necessarily have to come from Shakespeare (although I never would have written a book about him if I didn’t think he was an exceptional source).
As you think back on your growth as a leader, you may discover moments when inspiration and wisdom from long ago subtly found their way into your consciousness, growing silently within you to create your understanding of the world and define your leadership. You may even find them in the most unexpected places, like street names, teenage laziness, or firelight reading.
And, I hope, you may find them in a book like A Memorable Honor.
Until next time.
Frank
P. S. If you haven’t done so, please add your name to the “Who Art Thou” link below to receive updates as we get closer to the September 15 publication of the Amazon bestseller and hot new release, A Memorable Honor: Shakespeare, Lincoln and the Art of Leadership. You can also find below a link to preorder below.
