Day #2: How to think for yourself

In October 2009 William Deresiewicz walked up on a stage at the United States Military Academy at West Point to give a speech. Most people that spoke that day repeated tired cliches and stories everyone had heard in some form or another. Deresiewicz stood out. He looked bookish, with thin glasses and a salt and pepper beard, whereas many of the other people in the auditorium were built like the tanks some of them drove into combat. The other speakers that day had authored books on military strategy or had led platoons of men into deserts full of armed enemies and land mines. Deresiewicz’s most recent book was titled “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter.” And yet the speech that Deresiewicz delivered over the course of the next 30 minutes became one of the most popular military speeches of the 21st century and has since been read by millions of people online.

It’s a speech I think about often. And in my opinion it contains one of the most important and yet overlooked lessons about leadership.

On stage Deresiewicz railed against the American education system and argued that it was creating sheep when what the world really needs are people who can think for themselves. He told stories of unethical leaders who had led people to do awful things like the hazing scandal at a U.S. naval base in Bahrain and said, “It’s easy to read a code of conduct, not so easy to put it into practice… What if you’re not the commanding officer, but you see your superiors condoning something you think is wrong? How will you find the strength and wisdom to challenge an unwise order or question a wrongheaded policy?”

Deresiewicz argued that the only way to find courage and think for oneself is to spend time alone. He ranted about young people’s constant use of social media — back in 2009 when Twitter was just becoming popular and most people didn’t have smartphones — which likely filled the older audience members with pride. But then he attacked older forms of media too: “Sometimes, you need to put down your book, if only to think about what you’re reading, what you think about what you’re reading.”

As he began to wrap up his speech he said, “Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas. In short, thinking for yourself.”

“I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.”

I first read this speech four years ago. I’ve come back to it about a half dozen times since then. It gives me solace when I feel lonely, and reminds me to find solitude when I am busy.

The author and essayist Jonathan Franzen once wrote, “Busyness is a way of avoiding an honest self-reckoning. You might wake up in the night and realize that you’re lonely in your marriage… but the next day you have a million little things to do, and the day after that you have another million things. As long as there’s no end of little things, you never have to stop and confront the bigger questions. Writing or reading an essay isn’t the only way to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way.” 

I’m biased, but I’m with Franzen on this one: there’s no better way to put Deresiewicz’s ideas to practice than to sit down and write. To turn your phone on airplane mode, grab a pen, and open a blank notebook page. What you’ll find isn’t always pretty, but in my experience, it’s almost always true.