Words of Wisdom From Chief Tecumseh

     One of my all time favorite poems/speeches is Tecumseh's "So Live Your Life" speech to his men. The reason I love it so much is because there is so much wisdom to be gleaned from it, and if it doesn't get you motivated, then there is something wrong with you. So here is the poem for reference :

" So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion: respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.  

Always give a word or sign of salute when passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those who's hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."

Now, like I said, that Tecumseh was a pretty wise guy. So lets go through and break it down.

 " So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart." That's a tough order to follow. At some time or another everyone has, or will think about death and how they will handle it, and frankly its scary; but here the good ole chief is telling us to live our lives so that we don't fear death. Now this doesn't mean to completely ignore the fact that one day you will inevitably die, because it is a fact that one day you will cease to exist in this life. It means to live your life in a manner that when your time comes to die, you are content with how you used the time that was given to you on this earth and not to fear the crossing over from this life to the next but to embrace it.

 "Trouble no one about their religion: respect others in their view and demand that they respect yours." Now Chief T isn't implying that we all drive around with the coexist bumper stickers and t-shirts hugging each other and the trees  every chance we get. What he's taking about is a respect for that other person, even if in your eyes they are wrong or even crazy, or as the Bible puts it in Matthew 5:43-45, "love and pray for those who oppose you". He then goes on to say demand that they respect your view/religion. So often this is lost in our society. People want others to respect them and their views but are so often judgmental and quick to write off the same people they demand respect from. But that's not how it works; I'll respect your views and you'll respect mine, even if we don't agree.

"Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life and its purpose in the service of your people." This one is quite simple and straight forward: love your life, work daily to make it better and more beautiful and seek to serve those around you to the best of your ability. Have a servants heart.

"Prepare a noble death song for the day you cross over the great divide." Now the death song, to my knowledge, was the way the Indian warriors faced their deaths while at the same time celebrating their life. He was telling his men here to always be ready for when their time ran out, because well, it was an inevitability.

"Always give a word or sign of salute when passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show Respect to all people and grovel to none." Again it's simple wisdom, when you see a friend speak to them or acknowledge their existence, even speak to a stranger when you're in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. Show respect to everyone, we're all creations of The Almighty and were all loved by him.( Grovel to none , means don't kiss up to people just to win favor with them. You can't please everyone.)

"When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and the joy of living. If you see no reason in giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself." Here Tecumseh is giving his men a gut check. When you wake up you should be thankful that you have another day to live and that you have the necessities of life. If you don't see a reason for being thankful for what you have, no one is to blame for that except for you. Check yourself.

"Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision." Here is another gut check. Abuse of anyone or anything turns people to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. Self control is key.

"When it comes your time to die, be not like those who's hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home." This is a reflection of the first paragraph. When your time comes and the clock runs out don't weep and pray for a little more time to do things differently. Die like a hero who is going home. Tecumseh meant for his men to live their lives in a way that when their time comes they didn't regret anything in their lives, but they were content and died like the heroes he knew they were. 

   Tecumseh's poem gives us all wisdom and insight into how we should live our lives on a daily basis. Think of this poem as a gut check for your everyday life. Did you wake up thankful for another day to live your life? Are you abusing anything ? Do you speak to your friends even strangers during the day? Do you respect others for their views and make sure they respect you for yours? Do you love your life? Do you strive to make your life better, to find the beauty in it? Do you strive to serve others before yourself? Have you been living your life in a way that glorifies God or in a way that when your time runs out you are content and happy with the things you did with your time? If not then what's the point?
 
Tucker T.

Lone Survivor

   So..... this is my first attempt at blogging...anything....ever. So I figured for my first blog post I would tackle something I really like/appreciate; so the topic for this one will be the movie/ book Lone Survivor. Let me start off by saying the book is absolutely fantastic, if you haven't read the book I highly recommend you go pick up a copy and read it, and then go see the movie. The movie itself isn't an exact copy of the book but its close enough and tells the story that needs to be told. 

   For those of you who don't know the story or can't infer an idea from the tittle; a four man SEAL team consisting of Matt Axelson, Mike Murphy, Danny Dietz, and Marcus Luttrell was inserted into Kunar Province, Afghanistan. The SEAL team was tasked with capturing or killing a guy named Ahmad Shah, a senior Taliban leader. Now, you gotta understand, this Shah guy was a pretty evil dude, his main mission in life was to kill as many Americans as he possibly could, hence the four man SEAL team hot on his trail. But I digress. The SEALs were inserted into the mountains and hiked up to just outside of the village where Shah was known to be. They set up comms and began surveillance on Shah. After sitting on the mountain side for a while, the Team was compromised by three goat herders. Now the SEALs had an incredibly tough decision: They could kill 'em right then and there, hide the bodies and run; they could hog tie em, leave em and run; or they could turn them loose and run. It's important to note here that they knew these guys had ties to the Taliban and would definitely rat them out. But because of the media and fear of being buried under the jail for killing some "innocent" goat herders they decided they would turn em loose and run for the hills, literally. Of course, as soon as those darn goat herders got loose they ran straight to the Taliban crying "Americans!". From here a bad day turned worse, dang Murphy and his stupid law ( For those of you who don't know see Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, catastrophically). So in short the Taliban catch up with our SEALs and there was a massive firefight. Here the movie does the book justice, granted, it was a little more tame than the book but I understand why. I had a hard time watching it, and teared up a couple of times watching it. Murph's sacrifice for the rescue phone call, and the fact that he ended the call with " Thank You" through the gunfire and ultimately his own death is truly inspiring and heart wrenching. Another scene that's gut wrenching is Axe's death. Talk about going out like a lion. The man had sustained serious gunshot wounds including a head wound, and he crawls away with his pistol fighting like a lion, right up till the end. There was also some symbolism to mention; when the first rescue helicopter gets shot down, also incredibly hard to watch, Marcus is on the Helicopter in the movie. In many interviews Marcus talks about part of him dying on the mountain side that day, and this is a symbol of that. To sum it up though, Marcus survives and is taken in by a group of villagers led by Mohammad Gulab and protected. This is due to an old tribal tradition of Pashtunwali, which basically means that once these people decide to take you in, they fight for you to the death of every last one of them. Because of these brave villagers who stood up to the Taliban, Marcus was able to survive and be rescued. 

The movie does the story justice, and the actors did a heck of a job portraying these great heroes. Content-wise the movie is very accurate, that means a lot of harsh language, so if you do plan on going and have kids/ younger siblings you may want to leave them at home. However, I do recommend that everyone sees this movie and reads the book at least once. It puts a lot of things in perspective and shows what true perseverance in the face of adversity looks like.

On that note I would like to say thank you to all the brave men and women who serve or have served, You are the reason that I can sit here and right this, and the reason we have the freedoms we do. So again THANK YOU!!

At this point I want to talk about something that has recently come up in relation to the movie. An LA weekly writer decided that this movie came down to "Brown people bad" "white people good" but I guess she didn't read the story or actually watched the movie, because Gulab was a "Brown" person and he saved Marcus' life. But I guess she missed that part. She also goes on to say that the number of fighters wasn't close to 200 but more close to 10. Wait what? you mean to tell me that three out of four of some of America's most highly trained warriors fell at the hands of 10 Taliban fighters. Yeah, I'm not buying that either. I'll stick with Luttrell's story and numbers because, well, he was actually there. And by the way if you haven't "been there and done that" why would you think you have the right to criticize these men. In the (censored) words of Mark Wahlberg : " How Dare You." 

  You can read her very ignorant review here :http://www.laweekly.com/2013-12-26/film-tv/lone-survivor-mark-wahlberg-review/

And feel free to leave me comments on subjects to write about! I'm open to suggestions. 

Thanks for following my ramblings, 

Tucker